An examination of failure in any walk of life would make a great read, I suspect, so I was delighted to be asked to review Matt Haig's book.
Haig has provided an interesting and extensive catalogue of case studies into why a brand can fail and grouped them into different categories including classic failures, idea failures, extension failures, public relations failures and culture failures.
Haig demonstrates in Brand Failures - The Truth About the 100 Biggest Branding Mistakes of All Time how easy it is for a brand to make a mistake or overlook consumer insight and fail in the market.
While there are more than 100 examples of brand "balls ups", some of the case studies lack sufficient detail and information to be useful.
Having said that, when Haig does takes time to go into depth on a failure such as Crest, Kellogg's Cereal Mates or Sony Betamax, I think there are important lessons to be learnt.
I was slightly disappointed that Haig (a marketing consultant, advising organisations on creating integrated marketing and branding solutions) provided very little original brand thinking of his own instead preferring to doff his cap to the likes of Ries & Trout and Kevin Roberts and their published marketing and brand principles and I was left really wanting to hear his own views and opinions much more.
I take heart from the fact that like people, brands on the ropes can bounce back and in most of the examples Haig quotes in Brand Failures - The Truth About the 100 Biggest Branding Mistakes of All Time, the brands are now even stronger and better than ever.
For me the book brought home the need for brands to continue to learn and experiment and while there are failures, we need to continually keep striving to innovate in the quest to build strong brands.
Yes, mistakes and failures can and will happen but as someone famously once said, "a man who never made a mistake never made anything".
Brand Failures - The Truth About the 100 Biggest Branding Mistakes of All Time is a complete walk through branding mistakes from Coke Classic to Enron and O2.
The book by Haig (who also wrote Mobile Marketing: The Message Revolution and If You're So Brilliant...How Come you Don't Have an E-Strategy?) is an easy, enjoyable read and has insightful learnings for all us of in the business.
I only wish it had been more subjective analysis and less objective reporting.
- This book review on Brand Failures - The Truth About the 100 Biggest Branding Mistakes of All Time - was first published on Haymarket's Brand Republic website at brandrepublic.com.