Stuart Elliott: An Anniversary for a Fabled Marketing Flop

To be sure there have been scads of other colossal foulups by marketing mavens Examples include New Coke the DeLorean and Premier quotsmokelessquot cigarettes in the 3980s the Apple Newton and Olestra quotfake fatquot in the 3990s the Microsoft Zune and HDDVDs in the 3900s and recently the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 amp160But the Edsel remains the best of the worst you could say because it offers myriad lessons for peddlers of contemporary productsFirst the Edsel is a reminder of the foibles of market research and those paid to interpret the results amp160There was a massive gap between the original concept for Edsel as a new Ford brand for quotthe younger executive or professional family on its way upquot and the actual cars amp160The idea had been to position Edsel to compete against popular midmarket and uppermarket Ford rivals such as Pontiac Oldsmobile and Buick sold by General Motors or Dodge and DeSoto from ChryslerBut shoppers were confused by ads describing Edsel39s 18 models in retrospect too many to introduce at once as priced quotfrom just above the lowest to just below the highestquot amp160Huh amp160And a lot of Edsels wound up costing about as much as cars from another Ford division Mercury amp160Why gamble on an untried Edsel when you could opt for a known marqueExecutives at Ford also paid scant attention to research that suggested potential customers were turned off by the car line39s name a tribute to Edsel Ford son of founder Henry Ford and father of thenCEO Henry Ford II because it sounded like quotpretzelquot or quothard sellquotSpeaking of the hard sell so in vogue during the Fabulous Fifties the Edsel embraced it with as much zeal as a million Mad Men amp160quotThey39ll know you39ve arrived when you drive up in an Edselquot promised the headline of a print ad from the Edsel creative agency Foote Cone ampamp Belding in the statusseeking kind of spiel that soon was to be undercut by breakthrough campaigns from challenger brands such as Volkswagen quotThink SmallquotOther Edsel ads sounded out of breath with lines like quotDramatic Edsel styling leads the way in distinction in beauty in valuequot and quotIt shows them all what new really means outside inside and on the roadquot amp160Alas the features Ford equipped the cars with such as Teletouch Drive pushbutton gearshifting didn39t live up to the hype nor did the styling particularly the odd horse collar grille famously mocked by Time magazine as resembling quotan Oldsmobile sucking a lemonquotThe chasm between the Edsel image and the Edsel reality there were qualitycontrol problems as well proved fatal amp160It wasn39t the first time that consumers figured out the hucksters were trying to sell them a pig in a poke but it happened during a decade when the Big Three US automakers were national heroes amp160The realization that the emperor was wearing no clothes and driving an Edsel was a gamechangerThe Edsel might have survived being overpriced overchromed and overpromoted were it not for two big events over which Ford had no control emblematic of the truism that even the most skillful marketers can39t plan for everything or as Julie Chen would put it quotexpect the unexpectedquotOne the Edsel had been on the drawing board during a mid3950s boom in the American economy but a recession that began in 1957 depressed interest in higherpriced cars amp160A year after quotEDayquot the hottest car around was a valuefriendly compact the Rambler American while the fullsized Edsel languished on dealer lotsTwo a month after quotEDayquot on Oct 4 1957 the country39s mood changed when the Soviet Union sent a satellite named Sputnik into space taking the Cold War into uncharted territory amp160A funnylooking new car with Teletouch Drive suddenly seemed frivolous at best maybe even wasteful critics pointed to the Edsel as a symbol of America39s misplaced prioritiesThrow in the huge sums Ford spent to develop and promote the Edsel 250 million to 400 million in 195759 dollars valued at more than 2 billion today and it39s no wonder the brand continues to be shorthand for quotmarketing debaclequot a case study in What Not to DoSo on September 4 raise a glass maybe not a big glass and maybe fill it with Martinelli39s Sparkling Cider instead of Champagne to quotEDayquot Now quotEquot can stand for quotEducationalquotEditor39s note Look for the next Stuart Elliott Report on Wednesday Sept 6Click the social buttons above or below to share this story with your friends and colleaguesThe opinions and points of view expressed in this content are exclusively the views of the author andor subjects and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecomMyersBizNet Inc management or associated writers

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Stuart Elliott: An Anniversary for a Fabled Marketing Flop

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Stuart Elliott: An Anniversary for a Fabled Marketing Flop

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