Marketing Mistake - Microsoft

Spending millions of pounds on a television advert allows you too promote your product too millions of viewers, but when your advert is taken of the air and scrapped because of complaints, then it leads to a massive loss for companies... surely the biggest mistake of all is too invest in making of an advert that can't be publicised, or removed because of complaints.

Not only do these mistakes happen in televised advertisements, but the likes of billboards can be also banned.

ASA (Advertising Standard agency)

The organisation that would usually decide whether an advert would be publicised or not would be the ASA. Below is a brief summary of who they are taken directly from their website:

"The Advertising Standards Authority is the UK’s independent regulator of advertising across all media. We apply the Advertising Codes, which are written by the Committees of Advertising Practice. Our work includes acting on complaints and pro actively checking the media to take action against misleading, harmful or offensive advertisements. " www.asa.org.uk

Microsoft

Microsoft creating this advertisement several years back advertising the Xbox 360. It involves a whole subway station shooting each other with pretend guns - their fingers. Although this may look really fun, the advert causes a lot of controversy, especially that fact that it involved people shooting each other in subway stations, a place where there has always been a lot of security risks!

Never the less, I can imagine the cost of producing the advert wasn't cheap, especially using a whole section of a subway (probably a set), and a lot of actors, it just goes to show that even the funny adverts can be banned, so be careful what is said/shown!

Home office - Go home

Not only do large public limited corporations get it wrong, but so do government corporations, an example of this is the UK Home Office. For many reasons this advert was banned, these include

• Misleading information: the threat to put the immigrants to jail is absurd, since the law states that they will just be deported.
• It is near impossible for members of the public to tell whether someone is an "illegal immigrant" or not, this advertisement could have lead to a lot of controversy, and people could have been labelled for racism as a result of this.

Paddy Power -Blind people booting cats

Insulting blind people and kicking cats, what's that got to do with betting?  Paddy Power received 1,313 complaints following this ridiculous marketing mistake. The advert involves a blind football match, where a cat runs onto the football pitch and is booted by one of the footballers, yes some may find this funny, but too air this live on television, surely the knew they would become one of the most complained about adverts in the UK at that time.

Marketing Mistakes - International marketing

One of the biggest problems that develops a marketing mistake, especially in international marketing, is translations.

So many big organisations have had these problems when entering new markets, where campaign slogans or names of products have been translated into offensive messages. Here are just a few of the marketing blunders caused by the translation issue:

Pepsi - "Pepsi brings your ancestors back to life"

Pepsi are one of the big brands that suffered this marketing flaw, when trying to expand into China. Pepsi marketing campaign to penetrate the far east focused on the motto "Come alive with the Pepsi Generation" , which translated into "Pepsi Brings your ancestors back to life" . Although this may seem funny, expanding internationally is very costly, and a campaign which offers such a "bold statement" and absurd message from the view of the Chinese population could have cost Pepsi millions of pounds. This mistake is worse compared to many other campaigns that are translated internationally because of  the opportunities  of China's dramatically rising economy.

Coors Light - "Suffer from Diarrhoea"

Coors Light, the American beer company, decided to use the slogan "Turn it loose" when advertising its product in Spain. Unfortunately for Coors, the translation of their popular slogan in Spanish meant "Suffer from Diarrhoea". Slightly more hilarious than the Pepsi mishap, the Coors Light slogan could have potentially damaged their reputation in Spain, especially when comparing a consumable good as something that will potentially make you "Suffer from Diarrhoea"

KFC- Finger licking good, or eat your fingers off?

The final brand that will be covered in this marketing mistakes post will be Kentucky Fried Chicken. KFC decided to branch out into the Asian markets like many other companies have done before, and like many other companies, they did not do their research into how their slogan would be translated. In 1985, KFC hit mainland China, bringing their slogan  with them which is just as famous as the brand itself  -"Finger licking good". Little did they know that when translated into Chinese lettering, their slogan would state "Eating your fingers off". Now this marketing mistake could have cost KFC millions of pounds just like Pepsi, but because of their brands strength, they succeeded in china after changing their slogan and proceeed to have over 900 outlets in China.

Conclusion

Whether a business large or small (but most likely large) when moving into international waters, make sure that you pull our your new dictionary and get translating! Although the said companies managed to get away with their marketing mistakes, others may not be so lucky!

Marketing Mistakes - New Coke

Marketing is used by all companies, from large Plc.'s too small sole traders, so occasionally, things are can wrong.

This series of blog posts will highlight various marketing mistakes, large and small, and how the companies that made these mistakes dealt with the situation they put themselves in.

New Coke

One of the biggest marketing mistakes from all time happens to come from one of the largest companies in the world, The Coca-Cola Company. This marketing disaster occurred in one of the most important times in Coca-Cola's history, when the "coke wars" between themselves and Pepsi Cola was bigger than ever before.

Coca-Cola, the worlds no.1 drink, was to be re-released as "New Coke". New branding, new taste and serious faces to promote the brand was to be put into the member of the publics eyes, little did Coke know that they were going to be making one of the biggest marketing mistakes known to man!

New coke, source: www.coca-colacompany.com

New coke was introduced in 1985 to try and increase Coke's market share, which had been slipping over the past 15 years closer and closer to Pepsi, their nearest rivals. (http://www.coca-colacompany.com/stories/coke-lore-new-coke, 2013). Celebrities such as Bill Cosby were brought in to promote what was meant to be the "new tasting phenomenon"... although this was not the case. By June 1985, The Coca-Cola Company was receiving on average 1,500 calls a day on the consumer hotline, this being compared to the 400 a day before the taste change, showed that Coca-Cola had made a big mistake, some would even say the worse marketing blunder of the century.

By July, Coca-Cola announced that the original Coca-Cola would be put back into store's, meaning those who had been rationing their Coca-Cola bottles would be free to start drinking that taste they ever so loved.

BUT.... the question by many people is, was this actually a marketing mistake?

Since this "marketing epidemic" Coca-Cola have been the leading soft drink in almost every country in the world, as well as "Coke" being the second most used word, second to "OK".

New Coke happened to not tingle those Coca-Cola lovers taste buds, but when they decided to bring back the original Coca-Cola, those who loved the product before fell in love right away, and this is the reason why they have continued to be the leading soft drink.

Although Coca-Cola got away with this mishap, it does not mean any other company can.

The strength of The Coca-Cola Company's brand, and the acquired taste of the original Coca-Cola just goes to show that a highly reputable brand with one of the best products in a market can get away with the stupidest of marketing ploys ... But I wouldn't advise it for any other company

Quick update : Intergrated Marketing Communications

Part of one of my modules, Integrated Marketing Communications, is to produce a blog and complete 3 articles focusing on these topics. Luckily, starting this blog several months ago I'm already slightly ahead of my peers, and sort of have the hang of this "Blogging" malarkey!

My task is to produce three blog posts covering certain topics, which are:

• Marketing Mistakes
• Guerrilla Marketing
• Advertising to Children
• Digital Media

Although I am only required too complete three post on said topics, I will aim to cover all of the topics is several different blog posts, so keep your eyes peeled!

Cheers,

Kyle.

Well played microsoft, But did you do this on purpose?

The massive computer giants seriously messed up again, yes can you believe it? Just like Sony did with the release of their PS3, their main competitors, Microsoft, messed up big time with the initial announcement of their new 8th generation console the Xbox One.

Being a massive Xbox fan boy myself, I couldn't wait to see/hear about the next Xbox console, about how they were going to improve my gaming experience and "take my money" in a sense... but I don't think many predicted what Xbox had in store for us!

What they did to mess up

First of all, one of the most simplest most popular things people do with games cut out of the picture, borrowing games.  Yes, borrowing games, no pre-owned Xbox One games, no borrowing to friends and family, SERIOUSLY MICROSOFT? Personally I'm not a massive fan of the "selling your old games" malarkey because of the simple fact that when at uni, with a lot of time on my hands, I'll pick out an old Xbox game to spend hours of time on, whether it be a game released last month or last year, but Microsoft's "In-genius" plan to take trading games out of the equation is just stupid!

Now some witty employees at Sony saw this opportunity after the announcement of the  ridiculous feature from Microsoft and create a humorous mockery of their rivals at Microsoft, which became a very successful viral ad (13,246,760 views as off 23/06/2013) this can be seen below, so check it out!

The second mistake that Microsoft made with their next gen console was the online checking function, meaning that you would have to be connected to Xbox live on your new Xbox One console every 24  hours...  so what your saying Microsoft is that if I don't fancy playing my Xbox everyday something might happen to my live, seriously Microsoft what are you playing at?

My theory - A really devious PR Ploy

But really...were you playing at that? Did you actually plan to make these features set, or was it a marketing ploy? Microsoft decided not too include these features that were a talking point on twitter as well as across the rest of the world wide web.

Looking through the internet I see lots and lots of people blogging and writing about how "Microsoft have listened to their users" and how they've "came to their senses" ... but I really don't think that, not at all.

Xbox twitter announcement

Personally, and this is a very personal opinion which could just be some sort of delusionally piece of rubbish poster on just another blog, but I think the whole thing was a clever marketing and PR ploy put together by the guys at Microsoft.

Who was talking about the PS4 for the few weeks after the announcement of the Xbox One and its features? Apart from the odd few saying " oh I'm getting a PS4 now" because of how obserd Microsoft had been with their new console, not many, not many people at all. But when Microsoft decided to say on twitter and on their site "We've listened to your opinions and acted" they've created them selves a lot of publicity, an image of "listening to what their loyal customers want" and "creating what's best for the customer".

So, if my theory is correct, Microsoft announced on their twitter and their website showing their acknowledgement for their customers wants of "removing" the features of the new console, but didn't plan too even include those features. BUT don't take this as a fact, just my opinion, and I guess a strong opinion at that.

So if im right, did they pull it off?

It's hard to tell really, a lot of my close friends decided then and their that they were to get a PS4 because of the outragous plans from Microsoft, but when the changes were anounced, it got them thinking. Yes the pricing of the Xbox One is still a lot more than the Sony Playstation ( I think around £100 more), but from my personal experiences, Xbox live as a feature, the gaming community, the controller (its seriously so much better) and every other part of the Xbox are just so much better than the PS4!

Just going to end this blogpost how I started it.... Well played Microsoft, Well played

Xbox Website, showing how "Your Feedback Matters"

Details of how the features have changed