"Marketing is 100% science, not art." - Check out what you can learn from this marketer's long and colorful career!
from the world’s “Marketing Marvels.” Every Monday, we feature these people and highlight their work, insights, and experiences. Today, we’ll talk about someone who became famous in the marketing industry after turning his biggest blunder into a cash cow. Continue reading to know more about today’s Marvel and gain useful business and marketing insights from this person’s experiences.
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"Marketing is 100% science, not art." - Check out what you can learn from this marketer's long and colorful career! Sergio Zyman: Coca-Cola’s Former CMO who Became Famous for the “New Coke” Blunder Sergio Zyman, Coca-Cola’s former Chief Marketing Officer and a former Pepsi Marketer, has painted himself a long and colorful career. He is well-known for his tenure at Coca-Cola, and how he was responsible for some of the beverage company’s hits and misses. In case you’re not aware, Zyman was responsible for successfully introducing Diet Coke to the market. Because of that, he thought his idea of the “New Coke” would receive an equal amount of favor―if not more… The Launch of the “New Coke” When he was Coca-Cola’s Chief Marketing Officer, Zyman argued that the best strategy to compete against Pepsi was to replace the 98-year old Coke recipe with a “better tasting” one. He called it the “New Coke.”
Unfortunately, the outcome didn’t go as he imagined it would. Why? People were NOT happy about the new product! Moreover, the marketing campaign became the “biggest blunder in 1995.” So… how did Zyman deal with this? 11 days after the “New Coke” was introduced, he and his team started working on bringing the old Coke back in its place and named it the Classic Coke. As it was in the past, the return of the Classic Coke was a success. The Coca-Cola Company recovered pretty well after the “New Coke” debacle. When asked to comment about that controversy, Zyman said: “… the totality of the action ended up being positive.” Positive?! How could he say that when the new product caused some losses for the firm? Well, what he meant by that was the fiasco and the return of the Classic Coke made the company stronger. According to Tom Pirko, President of Bevmark Drinks Consultancy in New York, the “New Coke” blunder was a painful lesson that became a wake-up call “to do things differently and take risks in a way it had not done before.” Meanwhile, Roberto Goizueta, the late Chairman and Chief Executive of Coca-Cola, commented: “Judge the results. We get paid to produce results. We don’t get paid to be right.” That’s how Zyman’s missteps paved the way for better results for the Coke drink and the company in general. Lessons from Coke’s Most Memorable Marketer According to Zyman, successful marketing should be measured by whether or not it “sells stuff.” He says company executives should take back the strategic reins from advertising agencies. Simply said, he wants business executives―NOT external agencies―to define their marketing strategy then identify how to give it a voice! Let’s apply this principle in the context of the “New Coke”… Zyman’s marketing blunder was an example of how a large corporation fell asleep at the marketing switch. Sure, the company had research data to support claims that consumers would embrace the “New Coke.” However, that data wasn’t founded on the right questions. Instead of asking consumers if they liked the taste of the “New Coke,” Zyman said he and his team should have asked how customers would respond if the company replaced the Classic Coke. That would have resulted in a different scenario. Despite that, he didn’t regret experiencing the huge blunder. Why? The Coca-Cola Company’s marketing tactics leveled up! It was also then that Zyman’s team came up with 35 attributes to convince consumers to buy Coke. Rather than concentrate solely on taste or price, his Coke ads highlighted various qualities such as:
… and all sorts of other things. Because of that, the beverage company came back stronger than before. “The End of Marketing as We Know It” As an experienced marketer, Zyman has seen changes in the business world over the years. He said that over time, marketing has degenerated into something too abstract. That’s why people should stop thinking about marketing as simply advertising and start thinking about this field as something that includes brand positioning, competitive sets of skills, sources of revenue, and brand relevance. His main point? Marketing is 100% science―not art. He said, “There’s nothing artistic about marketing. There is art in the execution of a tactic, to be able to connect to the consumer in an imaginative way, but marketing in itself is a science. It’s like accounting. It’s understanding your competition, it’s about understanding who you’re going to grow business from. It’s understanding trends, it’s research, it’s science. It’s thinking it through and reinventing it all the time. The only way to do it is you do it with facts. It’s not a gut-based discipline―it’s a science; it’s a fact-based discipline.” We hope you got a lot of useful insights from Zyman’s long and colorful marketing career! Remember: Destination thinking and strategy are important elements in marketing. It’s all right if you don't get things right the first time and make a few mistakes along the way. Similar to Zyman’s response to the “New Coke” fiasco, what matters is how you bounce back from your missteps and contribute to building a stronger and better company. “The biggest lesson is that preference is perishable. You could be blowing and going today and you’re in trouble tomorrow, and you can’t assume―you can’t believe in preference in perpetuity. You have to believe that preference is perishable, and therefore you have to rekindle the name and the desire of consumers to use and buy your brand. It’s my biggest lesson.” Hope you’ve found this week’s insights interesting and helpful. Follow us on LinkedIn. Stay tuned for next Monday’s Marketing Marvels! “In the modern world of business, it is useless to be a creative, original thinker unless you can also sell what you create.” Learn more about David Ogilvy on next week’s Marketing Marvels! |
