Brand Failures_ The Truth About the 100 Biggest Branding Mistakes of All Time - Matt Haig [102]
The problem [Oldsmobile] encountered is that brands, particularly brands with a well-established image, cannot be repositioned. At best they may be nudged slowly in a new direction but not one that is the antithesis of what it stood for [...] A better solution, and a more unique approach, would have been to accept the brand as it was, with its older profile, and give its older customers a product they wanted to own with a message that appealed to their needs. In addition to capitalising on the existing profile of the brand, that strategy would have taken advantage of the growing number of mature Americans and their increased spending power.
The Oldsmobile hadn’t always been viewed as staid and boring though. Although it had never been a youth brand, it had been considered an innovator in its field. The most critical brand damage therefore occurred when this reputation faded, and the motivation to buy an Oldsmobile (as opposed to another GM car) no longer remained so great.
However, despite these obvious failings, affection among Olds-mobile’s traditional customers is still strong. There is even a website (www.saveoldsmobile.org) dedicated to encouraging GM to reverse its decision to phase the brand out. But a visit to the website will only serve to remind you that the significance of the Oldsmobile brand is confined to the past. The affection most feel for the car is already tinged with nostalgia. Indeed, if it is the job of branding to distinguish one product from the next in the mind of the customer, the Oldsmobile brand failed decades ago.
Lessons from Oldsmobile
Make your brand distinctive. When GM decided to adopt a policy of uniformity, the Oldsmobile brand became too, well, general.
Don’t betray your brand values. ‘One can change some of the elements providing that the consumer continues to recognize that the same brand values are still present after the change,’ says Jacques Cherron of brand consultancy JRC&A. Attempting to convert Oldsmobile into a young and hip brand was clearly one brand betrayal too far.
91 Pear’s Soap
Failing to hit the present taste
Pear’s Soap was not, by most accounts, a conventional brand failure. Indeed, it was one of the longest-running brands in marketing history.
The soap was named after London hairdresser Andrew Pears, who patented its transparent design in 1789. During the reign of Queen Victoria, Pear’s Soap became one of the first products in the UK to gain a coherent brand identity through intensive advertising. Indeed, the man behind Pear’s Soap’s early promotional efforts, Thomas J Barratt, has often been referred to as ‘the father of modern advertising.’
Endorsements were used to promote the brand. For instance, Sir Erasmus Wilson, president of the Royal College of Surgeons, guaranteed that Pear’s Soap possessed ‘the properties of an efficient yet mild detergent without any of the objectionable properties of ordinary soaps’.
Barratt also helped Pear’s Soap break into the US market by getting the hugely influencial religious leader Henry Ward Beecher to equate cleanliness, and Pear’s particularly, with Godliness. Once this had been achieved Barratt bought the entire front page of the New York Herald in order to show off this incredible testimonial.
The ‘Bubbles’ campaign, featuring an illustration of a baby boy bathed in bubbles, was particularly successful and established Pear’s as a part of everyday life on both sides of the Atlantic. However, Barratt recognized the ever-changing nature of marketing. ‘Tastes change, fashions change, and the advertiser has to change with them,’ the Pear’s advertising man said in a 1907 interview. ‘An idea that was effective a generation ago