Failing to take off

Successful brands and companies put in a lot of grunt work that rarely grab the headlines

There is a huge amount of money and time of professionals involved in the new brand/product launches. Most of them study the consumer and the market in the great detail with the help of researchers. They drum up all the mass media support possible. And then despite coming up with ‘infalliable strategies’ more than 90 per cent of new brand/product launches fail to make a mark in the market place. Why?

There are no easy answers to this question but more often than not brands fail because of one or a combination of the following reasons:

It might be a bad product or
idea, after all
If the customers don’t want a certain product, no amount of clever advertising or marketing brouhaha are going to salvage the brand. Take the case of New Coke which was launched as a response to Pepsi’s massive marketing campaigns. Coca-Cola was forced to withdraw it after a few months for fear of alienating the existing Coke consumer.

MAKING THE RIGHT CONNECTION Figures in %
Samsung Galaxy Note	27
Apple iPone 4S	11
The Dirty Picture	11
M&M SUV XUV 500	10
Singham	8
Toyota Etios Liva	5
Bingo Tangles	3
Bodyguard	3
Hero Moto Corp IMPULSE	3
Nissan Sunny	3
Business Standard-Ipsos report

There was no spadework to
begin with
Does the consumer want the new product? What need is it going to fulfill? The two important questions a marketer needs to answer before unleashing his products in the market. Take the case of Virgin, which couldn’t make much headway in computers or in clothing. Going back to Coca-Cola, its Diet Coke brand is a global hit. The bottom line: ask your consumer and listen to what she has to say.

HITTING THE WRONG NOTES Figures in %
RaOne	26
Blackberry Playbook	7
Nokia Lumia 800	5
Bajaj KTM Duke 200	4
Honda Brio	4
Renault Fluence	4
Hyundai EON	3
Nissan Sunny	3
Nokia Asha 200	3
Nokia Lumia 710	3
Business Standard-Ipsos report

The brand failed to deliver
This is perhaps the biggest mistake a marketer can make. “The consumer is not stupid, she is your wife,” advertising guru David Ogilvy had famously said. With the new reality of social media this is one place where no new brand can afford to trip. Apple, for instance, puts in a lot of behind the scenes work to deliver its brand promise reliably day after day and continuously improve it year after year. This aspect may not grab many headlines, but provides the foundation for all the success stories that do.

That said there are several examples of brands that were perhaps ahead of their times or simply failed to take off due to the lack of marketing support. As we said before there’s no one clear answer, no one-best-way to go forward.

Having said that let’s look at the launches that have been listed as “unsuccessful” by the survey respondents. Some of the findings are as surprising to us as they might be to you. Take RaOne, which has set a new record at the Indian box office by earning a gross of Rs 170 crore worldwide in the opening weekend (first five days of release). Still it is perceived as unsuccessful. Why? “RaOne as a product was fundamentally flawed. A guy in his 40s playing a sci-fi hero didn’t go down well with the audiences. More than that, our kids have seen better special effects,” says Kishore Chakraborti, vice-president, consumer insights, McCann Worldgroup. “Overall, the product was eminently forgettable.” In other words, the perception of the brand was very different from its actual performance.

So what puts Nokia or Blackberry on the same list? Chakraborti says, “Nokia’s appeal has been going down over the years and for many consumers in this category it is simply not an aspirational brand anymore. And Blackberry, in its bid to be all things to all people, has lost its Branhminical exclusivity.”

So there you have it. There’s no such thing as an infalliable strategy for any battleground. Battlegrounds are won by gear, individual skill, and the ability to adapt.