New Coke, 20 years later, and other marketing fiascoes
AP file
What are they laughing about? Roberto C. Goizueta, chairman and CEO of Coca-Cola, left, toasts New Coke with Donald R. Keough, the company’s president, in 1985. Celebration would turn to defeat within months as Americans rejected the tweak on the classic drink.
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This 2005 MSNBC article takes a look at some historic, seemingly good, ideas that just didn’t work out. The most famous, of course, being New Coke.
Others that make the list include:
– rabbit jerky
– clear beer
– the eight track tape
and so on.
So why am I publishing this two year old article. Well, because I have one more to add to the list – this blog.
Gary and I clearly misread how the rest of the family would embrace it. We thought it would be an excellent vehicle for all of us to keep up on what the rest of the family was doing. Quite apparently now, that wasn’t a vision shared by the rest of you.
I’ve pretty much refrained from posting over the last couple of months just to see if the lack of content might prime someone to try to fill the void with something. It didn’t. Obviously, the value just isn’t there for most. I see that now.
The renewal date for the WeAreTheFalls.com domain name comes up for renewal in a couple of weeks. There seems to be little reason for continuing this experiment so I’m going to let the domain expire and pull the plug on the blog.
Hope you at least enjoyed it some while it lasted.
Ohmygosh! Please don’t do that! Let me contact everyone and bug them. I know Ronnie and Steve read it. On Thanksgiving evening, Steve F. actually made Mary’s family take a look at it. Your “dance” from Gary’s birthday was the talk of the evening! I’ve been lax in posting because our computer crashed. Steve just recently bought a new one and got the photo software loaded up and our pictures transferred back (thank goodness most were saved on a disk). We took pictures on Thanksgiving, but unfortunately we left the camera in the car and they didn’t turn out…so I had nothing to post.
I do have some pictures of Blake’s 1st birthday party, although they’ll be out of date order (his birthday was October 12th). I have to run out right now but I’ll post them later.
At any rate, please, please don’t discontinue the blog…I love the it!!
Don’t let them sway you with their idle promises, Lar! Stick to your guns! Lip-service, that’s all it is!!
Besides, I already started working on an alternate blog. It would be all mine! (You guys could comment, but that’s all.) Me, myself and I, for all posterity!! (And some of the kids, too… I guess.)
What are you trying to start?
Hi Mar, I changed my previous comment to be more clear.
This is from Lex:
Larry, can you please not cancel the blog. We really like it. I really like the picture of Blake and stuff like that. I would miss it a lot.
Thank you,
Lex Fall
So what’s the verdict? Are you gonna keep the blog alive?
About a month ago, I transferred one of my other domains to the hosting provider that I use for wearethefalls. I run it as an add-on domain to wearethefalls – which really means nothing to any external users – it’s transparent to user of either domains, they can’t see the other. My intent was to eliminate wearethefalls and transfer control of my account, if possible, to my other domain. I wasn’t really sure that I could do that too easily (there was a potential for my sql databases to get messed up).
I hadn’t yet determined how easily that might have been when all of a sudden last weekend the wearethefalls domain got automatically extended. I don’t remember signing up for the automatic extension (or maybe I triggered something with my transfer of the other domain last month) but it’s now in place for another year so I’m just not going to worry about it.
So the answer is – I’m not canceling it but that’s purely by accident.