What are some of the greatest marketing disasters in history?

 

1. The Bunny fight:

Energizer a battery company used a pink Bunny in its advertisment. The ad became popular. But the company's profit went to half.

On the other hand, Duracell, their rival actually doubled their profits. Later Energizer found the loophole and are still regretting.

Actually the loophole was…

Duracell used a similar pink Bunny as a mascot few years back and Energizer was using a similar pink Bunny in its ads.

Energizer actually managed to advertise its competitor Duracell. Viewers thought it as an ad of Duracell and rest is history.

From that very day, Duracell started using that bunny in there ads.

2. The comic tragedy of Balloonfest ‘86

In 1986, United way tried to raise funds for charity in a unique way.

In Cleveland, they attempted the world record of most released balloons by releasing 1.5 million balloons in air.

This was thought to be a harmless fundraising publicity stunts.

But…

Balloons are no human. They got drifted away by air and surrounded the whole city. The Balloons choked the traffic system and airport of the city resulting in many traffic accidents.

Even water transport system. Later it was reported that some of the boaters drowned and lost life as a consequence of this.

Later the organisers were sued by the victims and had to give millions as a compensation.

What are some of the greatest marketing disasters in history?

 In 1974 Indian government introduced FERA (Foreign Exchange Regulation Act) after which foreign companies operating in India were asked to dilute their equity to domestic companies (upto 60 percent). Indira Gandhi executed it with iron hand partuclaly during Emergency.

In 1977 Janta Party defeated Congress and for the first time a non Congress government came to power. At the same time the protectionist Morarji Desai government asked Coca Cola to dilute their 60% equity to local companies and give their secret recipe as part of fair competition policy. Coca Cola agreed to the first condition but refused the second. The Janta Party government refused them permission to conduct trade in India and Coca Cola left the country. Now there was a 100 crores Cola market in India untapped. The government decided to launch their own soft drinks brand. After deliberations the name of the brand was fixed as “77” (Double seven) to commemorate the year of launching and he year of formation of Janta Party government (1977). So the Cold Drink was staged as an achievement of the Janta Party and this political marketing didn't do great favours to either the brand or the company. Their advertisements promoted the cold drink with the promise of “Good Times” (the promise of Acche Din started from there only!!)

The cold drink was launched in late 1977 with massive PR claiming the cold drink to be a Swadeshi brand and claimed that it tastes exactly like Coca Cola. But this claim failed badly because people gave negative response to the brand and considered it way inferior to the taste of Coca Cola. Also Parle Agro launched Thums Up which was much superior Cola brand. So the sales were poor gaining a profit of only 93000 and after that the losses started piling so that government stopped issuing the sales reports of the company.

Another problem was that the Janta Party government was itself very unstable and within 3 years and two PM’s later the government lost the 1980 elections and Congress came back to power. Congress Party saw Double Seven as a Janta Party initiative and therefore didn't promoted it due to which the company died gradually. By 1990’s Pepsi and Coca Cola reentered Indian market and Thums Up was bought was Coca Cola. Double Seven was long forgotten.