Epic fail: how to do really badly

This is a light hearted one, aimed particularly at those of you preparing for exams. It’s got nothing to do with exams really, just reflections on Disney’s mega flop “John Carter” in The Economist, which is said to have made a loss of over £200m and cost the boss his job. Are there any common patterns behind famous marketing failures?

The article identifies three vague principles that have proven particularly effective over the years.

First: mess up a proven formula. The most spectacular example was Coca-Cola’s decision to stop making Coke by the same recipe. Coca-Cola was arguably the most beloved American brand ever. But in 1985 the company decided to replace “the real thing” with New Coke, on the grounds that it had discovered a new, tastier “secret formula” but in reality because it was worried about Pepsi’s growing market share. Angry Coke-drinkers accused the company of doing the equivalent of redesigning the American flag and less than three months after their foolish decision, Coke’s bosses grovelled to customers and reintroduced classic Coke.

Second: mix ingredients that are incompatible. McDonald’s spent $100m launching a burger for upmarket customers, the Arch Deluxe. The snag was: who goes to McDonald’s for upmarket food? Ford once produced a pickup truck for the luxury market. Same problem. Colgate made TV dinners; you could eat one and then brush your teeth with Colgate toothpaste. Few found this appetising.

Third: produce a genuinely awful product. The Ford Pinto had a nasty habit of catching fire if it was rear-ended (the petrol tank was behind the rear axle). Microsoft’s Vista operating system appeared to be incompatible with every other programme.

By now you might have spotted an obvious flaw in these arguments. The surest way to guarantee failure in the long term is to be so paralysed fear that you don’t try anything new. The line that separates a hit from a flop is thin. Lots of companies have only survived by making dramatic U-turns and strategic leaps into the unknown. Some of the most successful products are the result of mixing unlikely ingredients. What looks like a flop can flip into a success. After New Coke fizzled, sales of the original version rebounded, lifting the firm’s share price and reviving what had been a fading brand. Pringles started life as one of Procter & Gamble’s greatest flops. In fact, the list of happy “failures” is a very long one, with often risky experimentation proving to be a key part of innovation. Who would have guessed that the adventures of a boy wizard could be turned into a publishing sensation and series of blockbuster movies?

I’m reminding myself now to put Tim Harford’s recent book, Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure on my department’s reading list!