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Sell the brand in the right place. Cereal Mates was, essentially, a cereal rather than a milk product. Consumers would have therefore expected to see it on the shelves next to the other cereal products.

Be the best in at least one thing. As a cereal product Cereal Mates failed because there were tastier and equally healthy alternatives. As a convenience product it failed because breakfast bars proved to be a faster, more flexible option.

Don’t price too high. Consumers did not expect to pay as much as they did for a 4 oz-box of cereal.

6 Sony’s Godzilla

A monster flop

If one word saturates the brand consultant’s vocabulary more than any other, it is ‘synergy’. When big companies formulate a brand strategy they increasingly try to synergize their marketing efforts. In other words, the aim is to extend the brand into other relevant product categories.

In recent times, cross-promotional tie-ins have become all the rage and have proven, if indeed proof was needed, that brands have become larger than the specific products they represent. This trend is particularly obvious within the entertainment industry.

Take pop music. Gone are the days when all that mattered was what a pop group sounded like. Now, it is all about branding. As Michael J Wolf tells us in The Entertainment Economy, ‘brands and stars have become the same thing’. Ever since the Spice Girls phenomenon, record executives have been spending as much time thinking of ways to strike deals with toy manufacturers, television executives and fast-food chains as they have about pushing singles and albums. In the case of a band like SClub7, the brand extensions were planned right from the start, with the SClub’s debut single and TV show appearing simultaneously. TV series such as the UK’s Popstars and the US series American Idol, where popstars are created through the show itself, also exemplify this new way to cross-publicize an entertainment brand via different media.

Nowhere, however, is brand synergy more apparent than in the world of movies. George Lucas’s Star Wars franchise was the first to exploit the full possibilities of brand extension. As well as through movies, consumers have been able to interact with the Star Wars brand in numerous other ways. They have bought Star Wars action figures, read Star Wars novels, played the Star Wars computer game and worn Star Wars pyjamas.

Now of course, we are used to the ‘movie as brand’ concept. Men in Black, The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Toy Story, Monsters Inc. and numerous others have replicated Star Wars’ cross-branded success. While this means the Hollywood studios can make potentially more money than ever before from a movie, it also means they have more to lose if things don’t go to plan. Just ask Sony.

With the 1998 release of Godzilla, Sony believed it had created a monster movie hit. Indeed, it is difficult to think of a movie that looked more likely to become a blockbuster. Sony had spent US $60 million implementing the teaser campaign. They had Puff Daddy rapping his way through one of the most expensive promo videos ever made, for the Godzilla theme tune. Furthermore, a replica of the star of the movie – a skyscraper-high green monster – was guaranteed to make a fantastic toy.

Most significantly, owing to Sony’s newly consolidated cinema holdings, the film was shown on more screens in its opening weekend than any other in movie history. On the day of its launch, one in five cinema screens were playing Godzilla.

The only trouble was that for all the money spent on a slick ad campaign, the word of mouth publicity surrounding the film was pretty bad. Even before the movie launched, news was spreading on the internet of just how terrible it was. However, Sony was determined to get the online reviewers on side. The company even paid for Harry Knowles, the owner of the highly influential site AintItCoolNews, to fly out for the premiere in New York. But nothing could stop the growing number of terrible reviews. Here is an extract from James Berardinelli’s one star review