“Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.”
- Benjamin Franklin, Founding Father of the United States
Learning from mistakes is not just acknowledging where you did wrong, it’s all about actively engaging with other people to achieve growth and progress. When you’re into marketing, where innovation and creativity reign supreme, your ability to uncover key insights is a crucial factor that determines failure or success.
At Swarna, we always encourage a mindset that focuses on continuous improvement and lifelong learning for everyone in our team. After all, we can only be as strong as our weakest member. We think about mistakes as opportunities to refine and improve where we open ourselves to valuable lessons that offer us chances to reassess, adapt, and emerge stronger than before.
“The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.”
- Henry Ford, American industrialist and business magnate
For brands, the journey of learning from mistakes is not just a process - it’s a whole new mindset. It’s about cultivating a culture that fosters innovation, experimentation, and resilience. Start thinking about failures as stepping stones and not stumbling blocks so you can use adversity as motivation to propel you forward.
More importantly, it’s not just about avoiding potential problems and future pitfalls. It’s all about embracing your brand’s potential for growth and transformation every step of the way regardless if you stumble or fall. It’s not the end of the road when you hit rock bottom, you just have to find a new detour.
“A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.”
- Albert Einstein, Nobel Prize-winning physicist
We make marketing fail all the time. Now the question is, will you correct your mistakes or double down on them? It all depends but one thing is for sure, try not to make the same mistakes.
Big brands have all the resources and expertise to do either way. However, the repercussions of a major marketing failure would be magnified and snowballed to something even bigger - from underperforming ads to costly product recalls. These things are a nightmare waiting to happen.
Unlike big brands where there is something to fall back on, small businesses don’t have the luxury of doing costly damage control. With a limited budget and a slimmer margin for error, a single mistake will have far-reaching consequences, jeopardizing not only profitability but also the very survival of the business.
If you come to think about it, why not do something new and out of the box? As much as you prepare for things that could go wrong, why not think about things that could go right?
By learning how household brands fail and the biggest marketing blunders unfold, we’re sharing these interesting insights and helpful tips so you don’t have to suffer from a costly fallout.
Who is still yearning for the blue Twitter bird? Well, not tech mogul Elon Musk, he can do whatever he wants.
When the big X logo showed up on their San Francisco headquarters, it was taken down almost immediately after a barrage of neighbor complaints. The dream of transforming it into a super app, like WeChat, involved killing off its most recognizable icon. It’s just a bunch of a series of branding failures that are still going on. With these changes being made, soon a sharp increase in hate speech and bots followed while many long-time advertisers pulled out.
While it remains a microblogging platform, it’s trying to be something that it is not. Its identity is as confused as the man himself. Recently, it has been gearing towards launching a peer-to-peer payment component while also busy planning to take on the likes of YouTube and Netflix in the video-sharing and streaming space.
When you suddenly make drastic changes that often involve your very own brand identity, it will open up a Pandora’s box of problems. That doesn’t mean that you’re not allowed to do it, you probably have to make sure that people are on board with the changes. Users don’t get to support such drastic changes overnight. When there are differences in opinions, you can’t please everyone.
Before embracing a new identity, always conduct thorough market research to understand your audience’s preferences, needs, and behaviors before making significant changes. Once you start the ball rolling, they can’t slow down and take back what you did.
Here are some timely tips:
🐦 Respect Brand Identity: Leverage your brand identity’s strengths to deliver exceptional user experiences.
📢 Community Feedback Matters: Consider the impact of their decisions on stakeholders to maintain goodwill and avoid backlash.
🌠 Don’t Be Too Overambitious: Focus on enhancing existing features rather than attempting radical transformations that deviate from their main goal.
💯 Consistency Builds Trust: Maintain consistency in messaging, values, and offerings to foster trust and loyalty among users.
Many brands have started to adopt artificial intelligence platforms these days and one of the most promising customer engagement tools is AI chatbots. So it’s not a surprise that Air Canada decided to take their customer service one step further by letting a chatbot engage with customers looking to book and manage their flights. Or so they thought.
Its chatbot provided inaccurate information regarding bereavement fares, resulting in a customer booking a flight expecting a discount that was not available. Air Canada attempted to deflect responsibility claiming that the chatbot is a different legal entity accountable for its action. In the end, the court ruled in favor of the customer.
The case of Air Canada's chatbot mishap serves as a cautionary tale for brands venturing into AI-driven customer service. Brands can learn from this incident and avoid similar mistakes.
Here are some of the things you could do:
🌟 Ensure Accuracy and Consistency: Take responsibility for any errors ensuring the accuracy of the information being provided by chatbots and other customer service channels.
🤖 Implement Robust Monitoring: Establish processes for monitoring chatbot interactions and addressing inaccuracies or discrepancies promptly.
🥸 Invest in Employee Training: Human oversight is crucial for addressing complex customer queries and resolving disputes.
🪅 Prioritize Customer Experience: The customer’s needs and experience should be at the forefront of any chatbot implementation to ensure customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Whether you're using X or Instagram, hashtags have been useful digital marketing tools to aggregate different social media posts. Brands have 'created' their hashtags for certain marketing campaigns so that every branded and user-generated content will be curated under it.
We’re living in a world where cancel culture and political correctness can hijack what’s supposed to be good brand hashtags. Some users end up sharing unintended, oftentimes negative, social media that put your brand in a very bad light. Once it picks up, it’s beyond your control.
One classic case of a hijacked hashtag is #myNYPD by the New York Police Department. It was supposed to be a strategy to celebrate the police force in the hopes of generating user-generated content showing cops engaging with the community. Instead, police abuse and violence were shared indiscriminately. Another one is #McDStories, a disastrous use of a vague hashtag as users end up sharing horrible stories and experiences with the brand.
Hashtags can be powerful tools but they also come with risks. Brands must carefully consider their use to avoid unintended consequences and negative associations. More importantly, transparency and authenticity are the key to building trust with your audience.
Take note of the following:
🎉 Stay with the Trends: Before creating a new hashtag campaign, do your due diligence by researching current social media trends and conversations.
✍️ Plan Strategically: Develop a clear strategy, including goals, target audience, and messaging, while also preparing alternative plans for worst-case scenarios.
🖱️ Test Your Hashtag: Before your audience gets to see it, take time to test it internally or with a small group of trusted users to gauge reactions and identify potential problems.
🚦 Monitor and Moderate: Keep a close eye on the hashtag on every social media channel to ensure the right kind of engagement is achieved
Most people would appreciate it when a company embraces a more business casual work culture. But at what point?
AirAsia CEO Tony Fernandes visited their Indonesia office and held a business meeting while having a shirtless massage. To celebrate the flexibility and hospitable nature of their office, he posted about the company culture on LinkedIn. And then the backlash came.
Days later, the post was taken down after users were outraged at the CEO’s unprofessional behavior.
It may sound corny but we hear this all the time - “Think before you click.” The key learning here is the importance of maintaining professionalism and appropriateness in all communications, especially on public platforms.
Avoid similar mistakes by following these tips:
🤫 Exercise Discretion: As a business owner, think about your social media as an extension of your brand’s online presence so make sure you avoid controversial, offensive, or unprofessional content.
🙋 Understand the Audience: Take note of your target audience’s preferences, values, and expectations so you can build trust and loyalty.
📜 Establish a Social Media Policy: It’s a good practice to have rules of engagement when it comes to appropriate behavior and content creation.
🚨 Respond to Feedback: If any issue arises, address it immediately, apologize if necessary, and take appropriate action to resolve the situation.
Most brands team up with influencers to give their marketing campaign a big boost. But what if the brand throws the influencer under the bus when the collaboration has gone south? All hell breaks loose.
Budweiser worked with transgender TikTok star Dylan Mulvaney on a campaign wherein she posted an online video drinking Bud Light and thanking the company for "possibly the best gift ever." Sounds as straightforward as it gets, right?
Well, things went wrong when there was tremendous negative pushback towards the brand, with a male-driven consumer product, for choosing someone who’s transgender. And the fallout? Budweiser tried to stay away as Mulvaney got a ton of online abuse and hate.
As a result, Bud Light's sales plunged by 20-30% and Anheuser-Busch InBev (the parent company) Chief Marketing Officer Benoit Garbe stepped down.
As much as brands want loyalty from their customers and influencers, it has to go both ways. Throwing people under the bus to avoid the backlash will not only damage the brand's reputation even further but also alienate more customers as they lose trust and confidence in the handling of such bad publicity.
Here are some important lessons you can learn from:
❤️ Be Authentic: Stay true to your principles and beliefs, even if it means facing temporary backlash. Authenticity resonates with consumers and builds long-term loyalty.
💪 Show Your Support: Support the people you collaborate with influencers representing your brand. Publicly standing by them demonstrates integrity and strengthens trust with your audience.
😇 Be Open and Honest: Transparency fosters trust and allows for meaningful dialogue with your audience.
🧑🏫 Learn from Mistakes: Continuous improvement is key to building successful influencer partnerships.
Whether you’re an established brand or just starting up, it is important to keep on learning from all the mistakes and shortcomings. For many small businesses and startups, it’s all part of the growing pains. Trust the process and never take anything for granted in whatever marketing strategy you implement.
In our case, learning lessons is especially important as we encourage a culture of improvement and lifelong learning. We view mistakes as growth opportunities by recognizing our team’s capabilities to adapt and evolve in an ever-changing digital marketing landscape. You should probably do the same thing.
To sum it up, let this famous quote from former US President Franklin Roosevelt sink in - “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”
We don’t keep secrets, we’re happy to share our knowledge and expertise to bring your brand to the next level!
Let’s apply the lessons learned from here and change your digital footprint for the better. Our dedicated team will drive traffic and engagement, elevate your online presence, and help you stand out from the competition.
Let’s get things started with Swarna today!
Experience the enchantment of data-driven creativity, where every project is a spell waiting to be cast. We have a team of sorcerers ready to weave digital narratives that captivate, inspire, and elevate your brand to new heights.
Let the magic unfold at Swarna and redefine the possibilities of digital marketing. Together, we create brilliance that transcends the ordinary.
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