Facebook - Facebook Home

Facebook. The phenomenon of the last decade, that had reached a billion users in 2012, and had a movie dedicated to its creator. Well, facebook had its failures too.
In 2013, Facebook decided that its customers, who are using more and more their smartphone for basically... everything, would probably like an alternative user environment, closer to them and that would facilitate their communication with their friends. And this is how Facebook launched Facebook Home, an Android app, aimed to replace a smartphone home screen. You could thus view your friends' updates and notifications on a full screen environment, which was also made in order to hide as much as possible the Android shape of the phone : the research bar is not visible for example.
On its app launching, facebook collaborated with HTC in order for the phone company to sell its new smartphone, the HTC First, with the pre-loaded app.

The facebook Home design

The problem is, no one wanted the facebook Home app. Not the users, not the phone sellers. The app was too invasive on the consumers' phones, and quickly on internet topics were created with a "how to get a rid of Facebook Home on the HTC First" subject.
Another face of the failure arose, that is quite embarrassing for Facebook : the app has been created by... Iphone users, who were therefore not aware enough of how an Android user thinks. The thing is, Android' USP (Unique Selling Point) is its personalization possibilities. Widgets, folders, or docks are all things that Apple doesn't offer in its smartphones. The constat is simple: How can you possibly create something that personal for a target that you don't even know ?

Morale of the story: Don't pull all your eggs in one basket !

Harley-Davidson - Perfume

When someone asks you to think about a good motocycle, you have two solutions: to think about a japanese brand, or to think about an american brand. Would you think about Yamaha, or rather Harley-Davidson ?
Well, whatever was your answer, today is about the american brand, which is responsible for a wonderful and full-of-lessons failure.
Harley-Davidson's customers are extremely loyal to the brand due to its values: liberty, authenticity, power, testosterone. This brand has an iconic stature, and many customers even have the brand's logo tattooed on their body. In a noticeable logic, Harley-Davidson's marketers thought that if customers were that loyal, then they could buy tons of derived products. Starting from baby clothes to ties and lighters, Harley-Davidson developped a whole range of derived products that had nothing to do with the original product.
In the 90's, the motocycle brand finally crossed the red line when it launched the Harley-Davidson perfume and aftershave range. The purist fans strated to accuse the brand of "disneyfication" and to believe that Harley-Davidson was fallen into the "more products = more purchases" trap. Isn't that the worst thing that could happen for a supposed authentic brand ?

Does anyone see the authentic biker in this ad ? No one ? Great, me neither.

However Harley-Davidson didn't suffer that much from this mistake, which has finally been recognized and corrected by the company.
In 2014, the brand's market share was 57% in th US, with an increase of 20,5% in Asia and 8,2% for Europe. It is still the leader in front of Ducati, Suzuki, or Triumph.

Morale of the story: All that glitters is not gold !

Just For Feet - Racist Ad

Sometimes the marketing strategy is good, and the fail is in it application. That has been the case of Just for feet, an american shoes brand. In 1999, as the company was becoming more and more popular, it decided to (and could afford to) do an advertisement that would be seen during the Super Bowl, that would gather more than 127 million homes in front of their TV. Here is the video of it:

Just for feet Super Bowl ad (1999)

A huge storm of protests immediately arose from the population to denounce this fully racist and violent ad. By what right dared the company to compare an african man with a wild animal hunted by a white man ?
Just for feet reacted in alleging that they trusted Saatchi&Saatchi, their communication agency, and relied on their expertise. The shoes company sued Saatchi&Saatchi for damages in advertising malpractice, and finally dropped the lawsuit.
Not only this ad was racist and violent, but also pointless: how would the consumers want to buy shoes that a top-world athlete doesn't even bear ?

Today Just for feet doesn't exist anymore as the last shop closed in 2004.

Morale of the story: An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure !

R.J Reynolds – Smokeless cigarettes

Smoking is an old habit of the world. When, in 1988, Americans began to understand that tobacco could be dangerous, and so could the passive smoking, R.J Reynolds (Camel, Pall Mall, Winston) decided to invest 325 million dollars in a smokeless cigarette. The idea was that, if the cigarette didn’t release any smoke, then this cigarette would wealthier for both the smoker and the people around. The cigarette is baptized Premier. 

The Premier cigarette

But dreams don’t always become true and even if it does its part of the contract, the Premier cigarette faces a lot of issues. First of all, according to the consumers, it tastes like hell, and the first consumer to admit it is… Reynolds’s CEO. Then, due to its technology, the cigarette is really hard to light and a match isn’t enough: when you wanted to smoke a Premier, the lighter was the minimum required. Premier works indeed with a charcoal that heats the tobacco, so that it doesn’t burn and release smoke. This is where we meet the last main problem: the inhalation is really difficult and requires a lot of efforts.

To finish, one of the most pleasant aspects in smoking, according to smokers, is precisely the smoke. This product had therefore no advantage for smokers. After 4 months of weak sales the Premier cigarette stopped being sold.

However, Reynolds, unlike the other brands that we saw before, did not understand this lesson: a few years later, in the middle of the 90s, the anti-smoking campaigns keep increasing in intensity. Reynolds decided that this was (again) the right time to launch a smokeless cigarette. This is how, in 1996, the company invests 125 million dollars to improve the Premier cigarette, and release the Eclipse cigarette. But this is a new failure. Stressing on the healthier and cleaner aspects of its new products due to the charcoal and the heated tobacco (same method than the Premier cigarette), Reynolds didn’t anticipate that some studies would attack it because of the toxins released by the charcoal when it burns, especially when the smoker inhales hard. In addition to all of this, smokers still did like the smoke of a cigarette… And this is a new fail. But it is still sold today, and became more appreciated since smoking is restricted in most of the public areas.

In spite of these failures Reynolds is the second tobacco brand on the American market with 33% market shares and is now looking for becoming the e-cigarette market leader. It recently fused with Lorillard (which owned the e-cigarette brand Blu) to achieve this goal. And this is how, after 50 years to wait for a successful healthier cigarette, Reynolds has the serious opportunity to finally triumph.

Morale of the story: Bear and forbear!

Mattel - Earring Magic Ken

In the toys stereotypes' history Mattel is one of the major leaders. This company produces indeed the Barbie dolls since 1959 and her lover Ken since 1961. Barbie and Ken in addition to be the perfect man and woman, they are supposed to embody the perfect couple: they both are beautiful, rich and smart and sincerly love each other. It has always been a challenge for Mattel to keep them up to date.

In 1993 Mattel decides to interrogate several little girls to know what they expect about the Barbie and Ken couple. Mattel asked them a simple question : do you think that Barbie should have another boyfriend or should she stay with Ken ? The girls answered that she should stay with Ken but that Ken should be cooler.  This is how a new Ken, baptized Earring Magic Ken has been launched.

The Earring Magic Ken

As you can see, the Cool Ken wears a purple vest, a purple fishnet T-shirt, has an ear piercing and is blond. It seems therefore that the new Ken... is gay. At least this is was the public opinion's mind. A lot of journalists wrote and talked about it, from the New-York Times to People Magazine and CNN. A columnist wrote an article in a gay journal, The Stranger, talking about how heterosexuals had begun to take the homosexuals codes. Later in his article he also explains his point of view concerning this (bad) marketing choice. According to him the little girls' "cool" concept was not coming from the boys from their environment like their fathers, brothers or uncles. They were actually looking at MTV, Madonna's dancers clothes, or at these guys on TV parading for the rights equality.

After a few times where Mattel did not know what to do (criticism was going on but they couldn't take Gay Ken out of the shelves without being seen as homophobic) they finally decided to stop its production after the The Stranger's edition. 

Mattel's mistake has been not to understand where this "cool" concept was coming from, and to forget that even if the dolls are designed to be liked by little girls, parents actually buy it so they must be convenient for them as well.

However the Gay Ken had a lot of success in the gay community and is now a collector item, being sold around 50$ on Ebay.

Today the Mattel's dolls are convenient for everyone and the new dolls range, High Monsters, is the latest brand's success. Mattel is still one of the toys brand leaders next to Hasbro and Lego. 

Morale of the story: One man's meat is another man's poison!

Kellogg's - Cereal Mates

When in America the number of working hours began to increase at the same time than the fast-food development, Kellogg's saw an opportunity on the breakfast market. The idea was that american people had less and less time on the morning to eat, especially when they live far from their work. To gain some of this precious time that is the morning time, Kellogg's began to offer a little box of cereals with some conditioned milk and a plastic spoon: the Cereal Mates. This box was declined with four kinds of the most popular kellogg's cereals : Corn Flakes, Frosties, Fruit Loops and Mini Wheats. It believed so much in this new product that it launched a TV advertising campaign:

But this product never worked and the following year in 1999, when Kellogg's rival General Mills became the market leader, it was abandonned.
The fact is, Kellogg's did not understand the need of its customers and did several mistakes in its product elaboration.
Its first and main mistake was the milk conditioning. As the product was stored on the breakfast shelves the milk was warm, and when Kellogg's decided to store it on the refrigerated shelves nobody thought of buying their breakfast cereals in there. In addition to that, advertisings show children using the product by themselves, while in reality the packaging was not practical enough to enable them to serve the milk properly. To finish, the taste of a conditoned-in-a-sanitized-way milk was not very good.
The second main mistake was the price. Sold at more than a dollar, the product's price was considered way too expensive compared to its quality and its promises it couldn't keep: indeed, the Kellogg's Cereal Mates were supposed to be a practical product above all. But serving the milk and using a spoon was no practical way to quickly eat breakfast for a huge majority of consumers.

A few years ago Kellogg's tried again to create a practical breakfast product, and launched the Nutri-Grain range, some cereal bars which need neither milk nor spoon. And it is now one of the Kellogg's biggest successes, as Nutri-Grain became the second most liked breakfast biscuit market brand within nine months.

The moral of this story: Forewarned is forearmed !