mistakes big brands do

When you have mighty marketing budgets and specialists like the big brands do, their mistakes are more unforgivable than others'. Here are a few examples from my recent experience.

NIVEA. They changed the composition of one of their products, the Fresh Natural stick deodorant, which consequently changed its behavior. The product's differentiators - that it was becoming liquid when applied on the skin and that it had no aluminium in composition - were gone. But they kept the name and packaging identical, misleading me into buying it once more. But only once more. They were selling me a painted crow saying it's still a parrot. My sister and my cousin called me soon to ask me what happened to the product I had once convinced them to buy and which they adopted instantly as their favorite all-time deodorant. I received the same reaction from my cosmetician, one year after the deodorant had changed its composition. We all stopped buying it, of course. I wonder if the move brought Nivea more money, but for me it was a big disappointment and an infringement of the common (marketing) sense.

KLM. I once tried to claim some miles back from a flight they missed recording. I was using Chrome as a browser. The table I had to fill in could only be seen in Explorer, I noticed. But there was no message there saying that I must use Explorer for an optimal view of the page. Quite unexpected from a company that earns so much from its website.

When you invest in the recall rate of your brand, be aware that mistakes will be recalled along with your brand. These two examples happened well in the past, but I will probably always recall them.