As the examples in this book illustrate, there are numerous reasons why brands fail. Sometimes it is because the market they are associated with has become obsolete. Other times it is as a result of extending into an unsuitable product category. In some, dramatic cases it is the result of a high-profile scandal which causes the public to boycott the brand. Often though, the reason for failure is more straightforward. Many brands fail because they are simply bad ideas that haven't been properly researched. Occasionally these failures are the result of strong, established brands coming up with a new variation of their product. Understanding that new product categories should be avoided, brands stay within their original category but come up with a bizarre twist on the formula. But why should that matter? After all, branding isn't about products, it is about perception. This is the new marketing mantra. And yet, there is no escaping the fact that at least part of this perception centres around the product itself.
It's not just smaller, lesser-known companies that have launched dud brands. On the contrary, most of the world's global giants have launched new products that have flopped - spectacularly and at great cost. Haig organizes these 100 ""failures"" into ten types which include classic failures (e.g., New Coke), idea failures (e.g., R.J.Reynolds' smokeless cigarettes), extension failures (e.g. Harley Davidson perfume), culture failures (e.g., Kellogs in India), and technology failures (e.g., Pets.com).
If you want your startup to succeed, you need to understand why startups fail. “Whether you’re a first-time founder or looking to bring innovation into a corporate environment, Why Startups Fail is essential reading.”—Eric Ries, founder and CEO, LTSE, and New York Times bestselling author of The Lean Startup and The Startup Way Why do startups fail? That question caught Harvard Business School professor Tom Eisenmann by surprise when he realized he couldn’t answer it. So he launched a multiyear research project to find out. In Why Startups Fail, Eisenmann reveals his findings: six distinct patterns that account for the vast majority of startup failures. • Bad Bedfellows. Startup success is thought to rest largely on the founder’s talents and instincts. But the wrong team, investors, or partners can sink a venture just as quickly. • False Starts. In following the oft-cited advice to “fail fast” and to “launch before you’re ready,” founders risk wasting time and capital on the wrong solutions. • False Promises. Success with early adopters can be misleading and give founders unwarranted confidence to expand. • Speed Traps. Despite the pressure to “get big fast,” hypergrowth can spell disaster for even the most promising ventures. • Help Wanted. Rapidly scaling startups need lots of capital and talent, but they can make mistakes that leave them suddenly in short supply of both. • Cascading Miracles. Silicon Valley exhorts entrepreneurs to dream big. But the bigger the vision, the more things that can go wrong. Drawing on fascinating stories of ventures that failed to fulfill their early promise—from a home-furnishings retailer to a concierge dog-walking service, from a dating app to the inventor of a sophisticated social robot, from a fashion brand to a startup deploying a vast network of charging stations for electric vehicles—Eisenmann offers frameworks for detecting when a venture is vulnerable to these patterns, along with a wealth of strategies and tactics for avoiding them. A must-read for founders at any stage of their entrepreneurial journey, Why Startups Fail is not merely a guide to preventing failure but also a roadmap charting the path to startup success.
From the ill-fated dot-com bubble to unprecedented merger and acquisition activity to scandal, greed, and, ultimately, recession -- we've learned that widespread and difficult change is no longer the exception. By outlining the process organizations have used to achieve transformational goals and by identifying where and how even top performers derail during the change process, Kotter provides a practical resource for leaders and managers charged with making change initiatives work.
Some brand failures have proved so illuminating they have been discussed and dissected by marketing experts since they first happened. These 'classic' failures help to illustrate the fact that a product does not have to be particularly bad in order to flop. Indeed, in the case of New Coke, the first failure we'll cover, the product was actually an enhancement of the formula it replaced. The reason it bombed was down to branding alone. Coca-Cola had forgotten what its core brand was meant to stand for. It naively thought that taste was the only factor consumers cared about. It was wrong. In fact, all the examples in this chapter highlight fundamental marketing errors which many other brands have replicated since. These errors include such basic mistakes as setting the wrong price, choosing the wrong name, and getting too paranoid about the competition. However, these failures also illustrate the general unpredictability of all marketing practices. No matter how strong a brand becomes, the market always remains elusive. The best any brand manager can hope for is to look out for any likely pitfalls which could catch them out. It is in the interest of identifying these pitfalls, rather than for the sake of schadenfreude, that the following classic failures are explored in some depth.
"Great teams are comprised of ordinary people that are empowered and inspired. They are empowered to solve hard problems in ways their customers love yet work for their business. They are inspired with ideas and techniques for quickly evaluating those ideas to discover solutions that work: they are valuable, usable, feasible and viable. This book is about the idea and reality of "achieving extraordinary results from ordinary people". Empowered is the companion to Inspired. It addresses the other half of the problem of building tech products?how to get the absolute best work from your product teams. However, the book's message applies much more broadly than just to product teams. Inspired was aimed at product managers. Empowered is aimed at all levels of technology-powered organizations: founders and CEO's, leaders of product, technology and design, and the countless product managers, product designers and engineers that comprise the teams. This book will not just inspire companies to empower their employees but will teach them how. This book will help readers achieve the benefits of truly empowered teams"--
"Failure Is Obsolete" reveals an easy to use formula for testing high-risk ideas in a low-risk environment, providing likelihood of success *before* you waste a lot of time and money moving in the wrong direction. Be confident in your success for business decisions from creating new products, hiring employees, and launching new marketing campaigns to everyday decisions like dating, and choosing a retirement home. The strategy discussed comes from the author's years of experience in conversion rate optimization where he helps companies improve their websites and marketing funnels so they make more money. "Failure Is Obsolete" also reveals some of Rabhan's best conversion techniques readers can use on their own websites.
The landmark study of how medical errors are managed among surgeons and other hospital staff—now in an updated edition with a new preface and epilogue. When it was first published, Forgive and Remember offered groundbreaking insight into the training and lives of young surgeons. It quickly emerged as the definitive sociological study on the subject. While medical errors are both inevitable and potentially devastating, Bosk found that they could be forgiven—as long as they were remembered and never repeated. In this second edition, Bosk reflects more than twenty years later on how things have changed, both in the medical profession and in sociology. With an extensive new preface, epilogue, and appendix by the author, this updated edition of Forgive and Remember is as timely as ever.
Praise and Reviews `You learn more from failure than you can from success. Matt Haig`s new book is a goldmine of helpful how-not-to advice which you ignore at your own peril.` LAURA RIES, President, Ries & Ries, marketing strategists, and bestselling co-author of The Fall of Advertising and the Rise of PR and The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding `I thought the book was terrific. Brings together the business lessons from all the infamous brand disasters from the Ford Edsel and New Coke to today's Andersen and Enron. A must-buy for marketers.` PETER DOYLE, Professor of Marketing & Strategic Management, Warwick Business School, University of Warwick `If you are responsible for your brand, read this book. It might just be the best investment that you will ever make!` SHAUN SMITH, Senior Vice President of Forum, a division of FT Knowledge, and author of Uncommon Practice `Every marketer will read this with both pleasure and profit. Some of the stories are really enjoyable but the lessons are deadly serious. Read it, enjoy it, learn from it.` PATRICK BARWISE, Professor of Management and Marketing, London Business School `I highly recommend his book to everyone responsible for brand creation, development and management.` DR PAUL TEMPORAL, Brand Strategy Consultant, Singapore (www.brandingasia.com) and author of Advanced Brand Management `makes entertaining reading, but its message is serious and provides a valuable checklist of lessons learned.` MARKETING, April 2003 `Splendid advice` THE DAILY FOCUS (Korea) `Read it` SPORTS TODAY (Korea) What do Coca-Cola, McDonalds, IBM, Microsoft and Virgin have in common? Yes, they are all global giants striding successfully across the world, but what they are less recognized for are all those branded products they've launched that have bombed -spectacularly and at great cost. Brand Failures is a riveting look at how such disasters occur. For the first time we're given the inside story of 100 major brand blunders that make for jaw-dropping reading. Matt Haig approaches his subject in a truly entertaining style - yes, this is a business book that is actually fun to read! But his message is deadly serious. He describes those brands that have set sail with the help of multi-million dollar advertising campaigns only to sink without trace. He also looks at acknowledged brand mistakes made by successful blue-chip companies and some lesser-known but hilarious bombshells. He reveals what went wrong in every case and provides for each a valuable checklist of lessons learnt, categorized as: classic failures; idea failures; extension failures; PR failures; culture failures; people failures; rebranding failures; Internet and new technology failures; tired brands. Companies live or die on the strength of their brand, and failure can be fatal. Don't let yours be consigned to the brand graveyard. A tour of Matt Haig's fascinating hall of failure will alert you to potential dangers and show you how to ensure a long, healthy life for your brand.
Celebrating Failure is the definitive how-to manual for leaders seeking to embrace the power of failure as a learning tool to improve their organizations and achieve ever-greater goals. The business world (and, lately, the political arena) is convinced that the number one topic is change. Heath posits that it might well be failure, because if you do it right, failure can become a launching pad for change.Heath contends that "positive failures" are not only necessary steps on the path to success, but encourage greater freedom to take risks in pursuit of one's life goals. This counter-intuitive but powerful title includes:•Engaging stories of real-life business and personal failure experiences.•Practical steps to apply each chapter's "lessons" and change your approach to risk-taking and failure.•Positive, effective ways to eliminate the "fear of failure" that can hold you back in today's competitive, fast-changing world.Heath's insightful stories lay out his own failures and reveal his human side as a son, father, athlete, and business leader.
