5 – Beatles,
- 1962, a time before the Beatles were celebrities – they auditioned at Decca Records in London and the executive of talent rejected their performance
- He said to his manager, groups are out and four-piece groups with guitars are finished
- Unfortunately for him, over 2 billion Beatles albums sold all over the world in Beatlemania
4 – New Coke,
- It’s hard to imagine that Coke has been around for over a hundred years, and it was hard to foresee that when the producers of Coca-Cola introduced a new formula under the brand of New Coke, the backlash would be intense
- But that’s exactly what happened – despite New Coke tasting fine, the emotional attachment built over a hundred years from a consistent brand was too deep, and customers exploded with fury
- Within 3 months, New Coke was gone and Coke Classic returned to enormously high sales numbers thanks to all that controversy
3 – Blockbuster,
- A more recent one, the year 2000 when video rental stores were booming, Netflix offered itself to help Blockbuster sell their brand online
- Blockbuster did NOT accept their offer and instead had a terrible 10 years while internet movies and tv shows became a thing, eventually filing for bankruptcy in 2010
- They could’ve bought Netflix for $50 million and instead, their stubbornness made them crumble into nothing
2 – M*A*S*H,
- 1972, M*A*S*H became a surprise hit for 20th Century Fox, but then a couple of big stars dropped out after a few seasons and Fox panicked
- Foreseeing the show wouldn’t have long to live, they decided to sell rights for old seasons to various local TV stations, earning $25 million dollars
- But then 4 years later, a thing Fox thought extremely unlikely happened – the show was still massively popular, each TV station grossed over a million dollars per aired episode out of 168 and Fox got nothing
1 – Wal-Mart
- A story about one of the few times when marketing fails and customer support wins – a war between K-Mart and Wal-Mart in the 1980s
- When both companies decided to duke it out, K-Mart launched an all-out publicity campaign to raise public awareness of their store and Wal-Mart, without the funds to beat them, decided to focus on improving stocked shelf efficiency and immediate checkouts
- Wal-Mart obliterated K-Marts sales in the U.S simply from good customer service and K-Mart had been struggling to keep up ever since
lol