Famous Strategic Flops
In 1985, this beverage giant made one of the worst strategic blunders in history by changing its core formula, only to change it back 79 days later due to public outrage.
What is Coca-Cola (New Coke)?
When a company is launches an entirely new product into a completely new market it sits in this which quadrant of the Ansoff Matrix.
What is Diversification?
"Think Different"
What is Apple?
This is known as segmenting a market based on consumer lifestyle, values, personality traits, or social class.
What is psychographic segmentation?
The pricing strategy of a luxury watchmaker who intentionally prices its new watch at $15,000 to signal extreme prestige and high quality.
What is Prestige Pricing / Premium Pricing?
This iconic rental chain had the opportunity to buy Netflix for $50 million in the year 2000 but turned it down because they thought it was a "small niche business."
What is Blockbuster?
According to the BCG Matrix, this is a business unit with a high market share in a slow-growing industry with an affectionately known, farm-themed term.
What is a cash cow?
"Because You're Worth It"
What is L'Oréal?
This marketing term describes the unique space a brand occupies in the mind of the customer relative to its competitors.
What is positioning?
When Apple launches a brand-new iPhone at a very high price point to capture the most profitable consumers first, then lowers the price over time.
What is price skimming?
Colgate once tried to leverage its high brand equity to stretch into this completely unrelated supermarket category in the 1980s, resulting in a legendary failure.
What is Frozen dinners / Food (Colgate Kitchen Entrees)?
Made famous by Professor Byron Sharp in his book How Brands Grow, this marketing theory argues that sustainable brand growth doesn't come from hyper-targeting a niche or building intense brand loyalty, but rather by continuously expanding mental availability and physical availability among a massive base of these of buyers.
What are Light buyers / Non-users / Occasional buyers? (Sharp's research proves that brands grow by increasing penetration among the entire market—especially light buyers—rather than trying to get heavy buyers to buy more).
"The Quicker Picker Upper"
What is Bounty?
A segment whose size, purchasing power, and profile can be quantified with available data meets this criterion.
What is measurable?
When brand decides to sell its product exclusively through its own website and flagship stores rather than third-party retailers like Amazon or Walmart they are altering this P of marketing.
What is place/distribution?
In 2017, this brand pulled a high-budget commercial featuring Kendall Jenner just 24 hours after launch due to immediate backlash for trivializing social justice movements.
What is Pepsi?
In their foundational research published by the IPA titled The Long and the Short of It, researchers Les Binet and Peter Field analyzed decades of data to prove that companies maximize their financial growth when they strike a balance between short-term sales activation and long-term brand building. For a standard mass-market consumer brand, this is the famous, optimal percentage split they recommend for your marketing budget.
What is the 60% Brand Building to 40% Sales Activation (Accept 60/40 Rule)?
"Melts in Your Mouth, Not in Your Hand"
What is M&M's?
When Netflix tracks how many hours you watch per week to categorize you as a "heavy user" or "light user,".
What is behavioral segmentation?
Red Bull sponsoring an extreme space-jump stunt rather than buying traditional TV commercials is a strategic shift in this element of the 4 Ps.
What is promotion?
Coors once launched a product called "Coors Rocky Mountain Spring Water." This is the reason it was a strategic failure.
What is Brand dilution/confusion (consumers assumed it contained alcohol because of the Coors branding)?
When a company focuses all its marketing efforts on aggressively gaining market share with its existing products in its existing market, they are using this Ansoff strategy.
What is market penetration?
"Imagination at Work"
What is General Electric (GE)
The specific marketing term for a visual tool that graphs consumer perceptions of competing brands across two distinct axes (like Price vs. Quality).
What is Perceptual Map / Positioning Map?
When a company buys its own suppliers to control the raw materials and distribution of its product, they are executing this type of integration strategy.
What is vertical integration?