• From corporate marketing wars that fail to compromising on liquor ingredients andpaying the price, we count 15 times companies have been awful decisions for greed, ignoranceor desperation 15 - Star Wars, (DONT SAY TITLES)• It was 1977, Star Wars hadn't even released when 20th Century Fox did the dumbest thingever - they handed all merchandising rights to George Lucas• In return all they got was a measly $20,000 dollars, but George became the head of a 3billion dollar plus company with reach all over the globe, its profits continuing togrow with each passing day • Fox had absolutely no idea what Star Warswould become, and for this blunder they missed out on claiming one of the biggest media franchisetrademarks ever 14 - Cosby Show,• Before The Cosby Show passed into the hands of NBC, becoming a huge hit right fromthe first season, ABC passed on their chance to get a slice of the pie• Cosby made a pitch to ABC for the show, but they wouldn't offer him a commitment withouta script or pilot ready, so he turned to NBC where it catapulted from third on the Nielsonratings to 1st for 5 more entire seasons • It went on to become the biggest hit ofthe 180s and almost single-handedly revived the sitcom genre13 - E. T, • 1981, the blockbuster hit E. T the ExtraTerrestrial - Steven Spielberg approached Mars the confectionary company to featureM&Ms as a small plot device in the film • The chief executives at Mars declinedoutright and the producers behind E. T were forced to go with their second choice: Hersheyand their Reese's Pieces • When the film was released, Reese's Pieceswere having dire sales but then E. T came along and sales of the candy triples with re-orderscoming in as many as 10 times a day for over two weeks• Mars, pissed at the missed opportunity, heavily implied they'd never even receivedan offer 12 - Kodak,• We're in the age of rapidly advancing technology with the first digital camerasonly appearing in the early 90s • But 15 years earlier in 1975, Kodak madethe world's first ever digital camera with a patent ready for mass-production - but theydid nothing, and so let their competitors invent it first• The reason? They didn't want to destroy the film industry and subsequently end theirown company, but had they produced this revolution for mass market, you might've ended up witha Kodak brand smartphone • Instead, they went bankrupt in 2012 andfell into obscurity 11 - Schlitz Beer,• Back in the 70s, Shlitz was one of the biggest beer manufacturing companies in allof America only behind Budweiser • Then they made a fatal decision - to cheapthe ingredients in order to produce beer faster, which, for a while, worked quite well• But then people began to notice that the beer would form floaties in the bottom whichcongealed into a thick mucus - and Shiltz didn't recall them, even after realising• Eventually they had to cave in, but not after 10 million cans had been shipped, cripplingtheir finances and ending their juggernaut company not even 10 years later10 - Google, • It was in the 90s that search engineson the internet were few and far between - you had Yahoo, Excite and Lycos - myself I usedWebcrawler before it got bombarded with ads and paid links when InfoSpace took over• The original owners of Webcrawler called Excite were actually offered all of Googlefor only a million dollars, but Excite declined - to pour further salt into the wound, Googlelowered their offer to $750,000 but still not interested• Not even 10 years later, Google went public and today they're earning 60 billion dollarsannually • Excite ended up getting merged with Ask. comin 2004 9 - Oil,• 1859, back when shovels and picks were the tool of choice to dig up oil - then alongcame Edwin Drake and his uncle who invented the first ever oil-drilling apparatus• When Drake approached some salt-well drillers with his machine, they laughed and calledhim crazy • Very soon after, diggers realised howmuch of a goldmine it was - they rushed in and became overnight millionaires, althoughpoor Drake forgot to patent the machine but luckily the state of Pennsylvania and oilbarons paid him to express their gratitude 8 - Telephone,• Western Union, a big name in the communications industry during the late 1800s with the presidentinfamously scoffing at the idea of a telephone • For $100,000 he could've bought a patentthat changed the world, but instead he wrote a letter calling the invention an electricaltoy with no commercial possibilities • Two years later, the president of WesternUnion realised his giant mistake, so spiteful that he employed Thomas Edison to outdo it- which never really happened 7 - Microsoft Bob,• Back before Windows 95, we had Windows 3. 1 and this infamous piece of software knownas Microsoft Bob • It was like Clippie from Microsoft Officebut 10x more insulting - it displayed software icons as objects inside a house and was thesoftware responsible for the text font Comic Sans• It might've been decent if it hadn't come out the same year as Windows 95, which incorporatedan easy-to-use interface without the silly dumbed-down experience6 - Apple, • There was a time when the corporate giantknown as Apple worked in a garage, but when they went to Atari to sell their revolutionarypersonal computers, they said no • Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak the foundersof Apple even said, hey, it's built from your parts, and you can have the computer justlet us work for you - but still the answer was no• Apple now has a market value in the 100s of billions of dollars, whereas Atari prettymuch faded into obscurity 5 - Beatles,• 1962, a time before the Beatles were celebrities - they auditioned at Decca Records in Londonand the executive of talent rejected their performance• He said to his manager, groups are out and four-piece groups with guitars are finished• Unfortunately for him, over 2 billion Beatles albums sold all over the world inBeatlemania 4 - New Coke,• It's hard to imagine that Coke has been around for over a hundred years, and it washard to foresee that when the producers of Coca-Cola introduced a new formula under thebrand of New Coke, the backlash would be intense • But that's exactly what happened - despiteNew Coke tasting fine, the emotional attachment built over a hundred years from a consistentbrand was too deep, and customers exploded with fury• Within 3 months, New Coke was gone and Coke Classic returned to enormously high salesnumbers thanks to all that controversy 3 - Blockbuster,• A more recent one, the year 2000 when video rental stores were booming, Netflixoffered itself to help Blockbuster sell their brand online• Blockbuster did NOT accept their offer and instead had a terrible 10 years whileinternet movies and tv shows became a thing, eventually filing for bankruptcy in 2010• They could've bought Netflix for $50 million and instead, their stubbornness made themcrumble into nothing 2 - M*A*S*H,• 1972, M*A*S*H became a surprise hit for 20th Century Fox, but then a couple of bigstars dropped out after a few seasons and Fox panicked• Foreseeing the show wouldn't have long to live, they decided to sell rights for oldseasons to various local TV stations, earning $25 million dollars• But then 4 years later, a thing Fox thought extremely unlikely happened - the show wasstill massively popular, each TV station grossed over a million dollars per aired episode outof 168 and Fox got nothing 1 - Wal-Mart• A story about one of the few times when marketing fails and customer support wins- a war between K-Mart and Wal-Mart in the 1980s• When both companies decided to duke it out, K-Mart launched an all-out publicitycampaign to raise public awareness of their store and Wal-Mart, without the funds to beatthem, decided to focus on improving stocked shelf efficiency and immediate checkouts• Wal-Mart obliterated K-Marts sales in the U. S simply from good customer serviceand K-Mart had been struggling to keep up ever since
No comments:
Post a Comment