![\"\"](\"http:\/\/senseslost.com\/third-rail-content\/uploads\/coke-can-exploding.jpg\")
<\/a>Coca-Cola was, and still is, one of the most valuable brands in the world. They’re experts at what they do. So what went wrong?<\/p>\n
To simplify the explanation, consumers simply did not want the familiar “Coke” product that they knew and loved, to change into something new and unfamiliar. Even if blind taste tests indicated a preference for a sweeter beverage (New Coke), consumers would still prefer old coke simply because of the nostalgic feelings it brought back.<\/p>\n
Sometimes, science can be wrong! Why? Because humans are irrational beings. I would highly recommend that you read Dan Ariely’s “Predictably Irrational<\/a>” for some more insight into this, but the key takeaway I want to bring from this is that “people can do strange things, but in the eyes of the marketer, they are always<\/em> correct.”<\/p>\n It seems that new-age marketers have not only learned from the\u00a0Coke<\/em> case, but are taking advantage of now-more-vocal consumer. Instead of instigating the research themselves, savvy marketers are now directly taking input from consumers themselves. I mentioned this in my previous article<\/a> about sourcing ideas from social media sites, but the concept of “crowdsourcing” is just so relevant in today’s digital age.<\/p>\n Why waste so much effort moving around and testing an idea, when your customers can simply move it for you?<\/p>\n Granted, you’ll need a large enough representation of the market to prove any point. However, when enough users are speaking, it’s as if the crowds are crowdsurfing your new campaign ideas. Take H&M for example. Just recently, they’ve launched a new campaign to allow customers to vote on their philanthropic activities<\/a>. This move is, in my opinion, quite brilliant. Not only does H&M gain the\u00a0most<\/em>\u00a0effective use of their philanthropic money, but they also gain a lot of free attention from local buzz.<\/p>\n I’m interested to see just how far crowdsourcing can get us as a civilization. The digital age is upon us-why not join the revolution?<\/p>\n Until next time, signing off.<\/p>\n -Chris<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sometimes, Marketers try too hard. We’re taught all these cool approaches to analyze data and extract insights. However, I’ve always been a backer of listening to the end consumer before making any business decision. I can cite the famous “New Coke” case in which Coca-Cola spent loads of money on market research to launch “New […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3072,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[134213,5109,137764],"class_list":["post-226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-coke","tag-crowdsourcing","tag-hm"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/christopherlam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/christopherlam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/christopherlam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/christopherlam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3072"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/christopherlam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=226"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/christopherlam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":228,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/christopherlam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226\/revisions\/228"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/christopherlam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/christopherlam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/christopherlam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/4\/48\/Crowd_Surfer_at_Music_Midtown_-_1997.jpg\")
<\/a>