Mike Carruthers:
Big profitable brand name companies
sometimes make big un-profitable mistakes. Like Crest Toothpaste…
Jack
Trout:
They never evolved. Cavity
prevention is fine. Plaque: ok, got that one. Gingivitis: missed
it. Colgate got there ahead of them, and now has become the
number one brand which is an embarrassment for Crest.
Jack
Trout, author of the book, Big
Brands Big Trouble, says Xerox is struggling because of
a fundamental error.
The
mistake they made is trying to predict the future. You really
can’t predict the future. Xerox initially felt that the world
was going into an office automation system, and they made that
call and spent a jillion dollars getting into computers and
everything. And guess what, that future never happened.
Jack
says, AT&T is struggling because they were forced to become
competitive.
You
go from being a monopoly to a mess. They thought they could
do whatever they wanted to do because that’s what they did for
years. They also thought they could do the computer thing, of
course that cost them a jillion dollars and that didn’t work
and they’re on the brink of going away.
And
then there’s Burger King.
Burger
King is always under new management. Burger King is a brand
going nowhere because they never really learned a number two
brand always has to deal with the leader, and you can’t be what
they are. They shouldn’t go for little kids - McDonalds owns
little kids,. Forget it. You have to find, go for older people
- slightly older kids, maybe. It’s like what Pepsi did to Coke.
Coke had the older folks, and they went for the new generation
with great success.
At somethingyoushouldknow.net,
I’m Mike Carruthers, and that’s Something You Should Know. |
