Reasons for turning
As the reasons for doing a U-turn are more complex than the reasons for not doing one, I’ll use three cases by way of illustration.
New Coke
If you were to ask ‘What was the greatest branding disaster ever?’ you’d really find it hard to beat the New Coke story. We’re not just talking about any brand here, but the strongest brand in the world at the time, not to mention the fact that the Coca Cola Corporation was, and still is, one of the biggest and best known corporations in the world.
On April 23, 1985, the company under the generally impressive leadership of CEO Roberto Goizueta changed the formula of its flagship brand. It was not a decision that was taken lightly. There was a great deal of market research involved, not to mention numerous focus groups and taste-testing sessions. As far as standard marketing analysis was concerned, the new formula was a winner. Not only that, the Coca Cola Corporation was feeling the pressure because, by 1983, Coke’s market share had fallen to 24%. In the late 1940s that figure had been 60%.
But there was one factor that Coca Cola missed: the degree of the emotional outrage from conservative Coke drinkers who didn’t want change. The interesting thing was that these conservative drinkers were a minority. Overall, the market share of New Coke grew by 8% because of the new formula. But as ever, a good marketing and branding rule is: when there is a battle between emotion and logic, emotion generally wins.
To a very large degree, numbers (whether from market share, prices or anything else) drive marketing. But angry scenes of people shouting on the evening news do have habit of making the biggest impression of all. Consequently, after much internal debating and soul-searching, Coca Cola did a U-turn and withdrew New Coke. They then reinstalled the original Coke formula on July 11. In other words, the whole episode lasted less than three months.
The interesting part was that the Coke brand went on to new strengths very soon after things settled down. Part of this had to do with the old adage that ‘there’s no such thing as bad publicity’. Coca Cola’s mess-up was in the news almost every day. On top of that was the fact that Coke responded to its customers. The Coca Cola Corporation, as a brand in itself, become stronger because it was perceived as more ‘caring and responsive’ and listening to its customers, which people generally like more than a corporation that is perceived as arrogant.
ICI Ltd
The former ICI Chairman, Sir John Harvey-Jones, wrote a few good books on business but I particularly liked his first one, Making it Happen. He talked quite a bit about the judgments required in running a business. ICI had on many occasions to make the tough strategic decision of when to make a change versus when to carry on as before.
The way Sir John described it was the “stick with it” brigade versus the “cut your losses” folks. His general advice was to side with the “cut your losses” folks – namely do a U-turn and get out of the business. His reasoning was neatly summed up with the phrase that one of the hardest things in life is to: “admit you made a mistake in the first place”.
Psychologists call this ‘consistency bias’ and it is a very important principle in life in general as well as branding. It looks at the fact that we, as humans, are very quick to adopt an idea or a position, but once we are hooked in to that idea or position, we are very reluctant to change. This remains true even when the logical evidence to change one’s mind would otherwise regards as overwhelming.
Bay of Pigs Invasion
In 1961, the US in general and President John F Kennedy in particular were worried about the rise of communism in Cuba under Fidel Castro. In fact, they were so worried that the US backed an invasion attempt on April 17 by Cuban exiles, with some considerable help from the US military and the CIA.
It turned out to be a disaster, with most of the invasion force being captured or killed. Worse was to come in terms of political fallout – public image was such that Castro gained in popularity from it in Cuba, and worldwide, the US came across as being both nasty and incompetent.
All in all it was the kind of mess that would normally end a presidency. But the opposite happened to JFK himself. Why? Because he did a U-turn, and more to the point he expressed it very frankly; about as frankly as going from ‘invading Cuba is a good idea’ to ‘invading Cuba is a terrible idea’. Actually, U-turns are not much more extreme than that!
Some useful background was offered by David Greenberg in a New York Times article on Jan 14, 2007, in which he talks about the art of admitting a failure, but without looking a failure yourself. JFK did what media commentators refer to as a ‘mea culpa manoeuvre’ (mea culpa being Latin for ‘through my fault’). The key point is that a mea culpa admission makes someone seem more human, less boastful, and all in all more appealing.
We all make mistakes. And the general view of the public is that they are okay with people who are so smart that on the rare occasions that they do make mistakes, they cover them up rather well. A messed up cover-up, like Watergate, can antagonise a public. But a frank admission of failure can win them over. That’s just what JFK did, and it made him one of the most popular presidents the US ever had.
There are few general rules with marketing, but one good one is to be consistent. Consistency builds brands more than most things do, ranging from logo design to use of colours in marketing materials, keeping the name the same, and which celebrities to use for endorsements. People like consistency. It gives them a sense of comfort and reassurance in a world full of uncertainty and change.
But there is another side to this: people get bored really easily. So, if you don’t keep doing things to keep your brand interesting (anything from a new TV ad to a major product launch), you will fade fast.
So the trick is to get the balance right: enough ‘old’ to reassure folks that the brand is still there, and enough ‘new’ to keep the brand fresh.
