Transcript:
These seem like good ideas at the time welcome to watchmojo.com and today we’ll be counting down the top 10 marketing mishaps in history number 10 McDonald’s and the 1984 Olympics McDonald’s when the u.s. wins you win contest mint free food based on the United States medal count at the 84 Olympics gold got you a Big Mac silver mint fries and Ron’s won you a coke the problem the Soviets boycotted that year and the u.s. took home 174 medals including 83 gold bottom-line don’t run a campaign where you can’t control how much free stuff you’re giving away number 9 Facebook beacon in 2007 Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook launched beacon which allowed users activity around the web to be shared with advertisers controversy erupted immediately and the initiative was eventually shelved but not before Facebook’s reputation with privacy watchdogs was significantly damaged number 8 Burger King creepy monarch that’s right double cross sandwich we go king someone will need to explain how waking up next to this guy could ever be a good thing BK tried to resurrect this mascot with the wakeup with the king campaign the character was so creepy it crossed over into funny I guess and went viral however the campaign did not perk up sluggish sales so the Kings reign ended in 2011 number 7 Snickers mister T add a pity the fool that came up with this commercial watch mr. t as he hunts down his prey a slightly effeminate speed Walker mr. T evidently does not think men should speed walk so he shoots Snickers at him until he runs a rights groups did not see the as humor and accuse the company of approving of discrimination it was quickly pulled number 6 skittles touch the rainbow campaign hey Kim show Joel how everything you touch turns into skittles miss skittles campaign start a man who could turn anything into skittles by touching it sounds cute right awesome is it awesome when you can’t hold your newborn baby boy in your arms until you realize the guy actually killed every person he ever came into contact with I met a man on the bus today I shook his hand he’ll never see his family again don’t worry these marketers redeem themselves by using the same touch the rainbow theme in a series of interactive online videos you really can’t lose with cats on the Internet number five eight diet candy with a diet list so the weight came off well this one’s obvious aids diet candy was a popular appetite suppressant in the 1970s that quickly dropped off once the AIDS virus started to spread it really could not have been more unfortunate that a candy that was supposed to help people lose weight had a name similar to a disease that among other things caused intense weight loss why not try aids they work number for honda llamo who doesn’t want a robot Honda tried to appeal to the sci-fi lover in us all with a Shimo which was designed to help people with low mobility it was actually a great idea if only they could execute here’s a tip Honda you should probably make sure your machine can walk upstairs before demoing it for the world fail number three Netflix is Qwikster rebranding in 2011 Netflix was the go-to service for video rental and was riding high at a market value of 16 billion dollars Hugh the dumb decision the company decided to embrace digital downloads which meant shunning their core dvd-by-mail business and splintering it off into Qwikster customers dropped the service in droves and by year’s end Netflix boasted a market cap of less than four billion number two Ford Edsel Ford built so much hype leading to their 1957 release of the Edsel it worked against them they could not deliver the goods actually tons of things made the Etzel an unmitigated failure the name sucked the car was but ugly and Etzel was competing with another division of Ford Mercury quality issues were the final nail in the coffin and Ford was out four hundred million dollars by the end number one New Coke introducing the new taste of coca-cola the best coca-cola ever that’s all I’m going to say in fact that’s all I have to say no more words taking the top spot on our list is a case of if it ain’t broke don’t fix it it was 1985 coca-cola was winning the cola wars but for whatever reason they decided to pour time and money into developing a better tasting beverage new coke one blind taste tests against Pepsi and even classic coke but when it was launched on April 23rd the public responded with a resounding no it was yanked from stores by July while most considered new coke a huge disaster it did manage to get people caring about coca-cola classic again so that’s something really I’m sorry there have been lots more marketing disasters which were the ones that made you scratch your head and wonder what were they thinking
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