Success is a learning curve. Every company will take risks that will either make or break their business. As the old saying goes, you’ll never know if you never try. Even the largest, most well established companies have created a number of marketing fails, some of these businesses are still going strong others caved in and are no longer existent.
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A great example of this is the brand Coca Cola. Being constantly successful against any other brand in their field, they never really needed to make any changes……until Pepsi. Pepsi, for a short while, was beating Coca Cola in sales and popularity with regards to taste. In response to this Coke changed their recipe and adapted their flavour to keep up with the sweetness of their rival Pepsi. This did not end well as Coke’s customers stopped receiving what had made them loyal to their brand of cola in the first place, therefore posing the risk of losing their current fan base all together. Thankfully for this company, they realised their mistake and changed the recipe back just 79 days later, regaining their reputation and customers along with it.
Unfortunately, not all fails can be turned around. The Osborne Computer Company made a mistake that cost them their entire business. April 3rd 1981, when the business was just a start-up, The Osborne Computer Company launched the Osborne 1, the first ever portable computer. With the current thoughts of this being impossible, Osborne’s launch was a huge success.
The first shipping was in June ‘81. Their revenues grew so quickly and successfully that by February they had sold $100 million worth of computers. Soon after, rivals such as Apple and Compaq began producing their own, more sophisticated and advanced versions of the product. In a battle to stay on top, Osborne announced a future launch of an improved model expecting to hit the market in the next few months.
This resulted in customers no longer buying the product Osborne 1, but holding off and waiting for this ‘new and improved’ version. The backlash of this was the fact that no money was coming in now. How can a new model be created when there is nothing to fund it? The Company became almost instantly insolvent.
Although this resulted badly for the company, a strong lesson has been learned and the announcement of products before they are ready to be launched is now referred to as ‘The Osborne Effect’. Companies such as Apple, as an example, has taken this on board and are very private when it comes to products they are working on, as are many other companies.
Marketing and success is a game of trial and error. The more drastic the risk, the more drastic the consequence. The bigger changes are harder to reverse and have a stronger impact on the overall result.
What mistakes have you made? What advice could you give to start-up companies or any companies in fact?
