When a company decides to begin a marketing campaign, they always have high expectations going into things. They expect the campaign to boost sales, increase brand awareness and overall leave the consumers targeted by the campaign with a positive view of the company or brand. However, there are times where this is not the case, where expectations are just expectations with the actual results being far more dire. If you read my post last month, The Top 5 Worst Marketing Campaigns in the Food and Beverage Industry, you would have learned about a few cases where marketing campaigns went wrong and what happened as a result. However something that I felt was lacking in the list was in depth analysis, which makes sense. Afterall it was a top 5 list, I shouldn’t get in the weeds for a subject I’m only covering in a paragraph. That’s why I felt as though it would be appropriate to make a follow up blog post, using one of my picks in my previous blog as a case study, and really look at the effects a disastrous marketing campaign would have on a company. With all that being said, this blog will specifically be about the New Coke Campaign run by Coca Cola and the effects it had on the company as a whole.
So as one can tell from this infographic, there was really some disconnect between expectations and reality. When Coca Cola did its marketing research, they found that most places preferred the taste of New Coke, even in the south where original Coca Cola was most enjoyed. However, consumer behavior is not that easy to predict nor quantify. While they could tell that people enjoyed the taste of New Coke, what they could not see was that people want a product they are familiar with. No matter how good New Coke tasted, having the old formula that people enjoyed and grew up with would leave a sour taste in people’s mouth.
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