oren meets world: worst marketing fails of 2024: coca-cola, nike, and more!

This is the worst marketing of 2024. Nothing up to the Pepsi, Kendall Jenner level, but we still had some L's. I think it's important to identify failure at large and then talk about the conditions that led to it. So marketers, strategists, and consumers can actually understand how these things work. In this video, we are going to talk about the North Face's outlandish rebrand gone wrong with some context from Mammut, Arcteryx, and OBB. We're gonna talk about Nike's brutal product decisions this year and how brand campaigns aren't enough. We're gonna hit the soda wars with Coke's failed spice launch and the rise of Olipop. Honorary fail mentions from Bumble and Toys R Us. We're gonna flip over to car company marketing and then end with the category in companies I feel are fumbling hardest in today's era, and that will be a fun one. And for all these, I'm not just gonna hate, we are also gonna ideate. That rhyme was not on purpose. Let's do it. So first, we're gonna start with North Face and the outdoors space at large. So North Face launched this new campaign entitled We Play Different, a reimagining of the brand, a tagline, and this video with this mirrored effect on it. So a couple things that are at play here. So first, We Play Different as a tagline is something that isn't exactly evocative of the feeling that you may have when you think of the North Face, or a feeling at all related to the outdoors brand. Second, you're having this video with this mirrored effect on it that is very like 2013 GoPro. It's almost like an amateur design feel that isn't relevant for kind of today's era or social media standout at all. It's an aesthetic trick that doesn't resonate on feed. Now, they're actually coming from a very iconic place. So they have this tagline, Never Stop Exploring, which I think is more relevant than ever, especially in a time where people are discovering new destinations through social media. People like TikTok have their big hidden gem campaigns, where I think it actually resonates as a brand tagline. Now, I understand North Face's desire to redo, to say we wanna do something different, because the brand does feel stagnant. It doesn't feel like it's carried the same weight it has in the past. But the way they deployed this with an Apple lookalike font, with a tagline that speaks more to being a kid's brand or some sort of school adjacent thing, actually sounds a little bit like it would be like an Apple gaming selection. Nothing feels quite right. But the crown jewel on top of this that takes it from a campaign that's a bit odd to something that is just bad is this manifesto they launched. So shout out to my boy, Guy Ashwin. He's broken this down in a previous episode of the Brand Brothers Live we do. But he says here, North Face's new brand manifesto is a beautiful example of horrible copywriting. So I would read this out loud, but I don't wanna give you one of the most painful minutes of your life. But you can see here they have a, what is this, a 20 line that says things like, kiss Chase with powder, we play hooky with the status quo, and hard to get with boring. It is as brutal and cringe as it gets. And it's an example of copy that is almost obviously written by ChatGPT. It's now making it into a major brand campaign for a moment in the arguably the least cringe, most aware of eras. So let's talk a bit about how we get somewhere like this. And then look at what other brands are doing that's interesting in this space, in this time period. So first, let's look inward to the, when this decision happens, it comes from a brand not really knowing what it should do or its place. And then also from being too close to the brand itself. So the idea to come up with a new tagline often comes from people trying to feel like we need something new or a new campaign. Now, I encourage a lot of those brands to think, is this tagline done to us or is it done to the consumer? For instance, I would have looked at it as never stop exploring needs to be presented for a new generation of people in a new way. And looked at social media savvy ways that could have revitalized that tagline. Or even put something like, I never stop exploring, we never stop exploring, whatever it looks like to add a little bit of flavor to what exists. Especially in an area that is so inherently nostalgia. In fact, they can even dip into the more nostalgic applications of that tagline and put ads together to have that look and feel that is so popular right now. Even pair that with a vintage or more nostalgic collection. But instead we got this. And this kind of thing where you have just copy that is inherently crazy, that never should have made it to life, is an example of kind of what happens in these brand decision-making rooms if you don't have younger people or more culturally savvy people or people are afraid to speak up. Because what happens here, if you had 10 people on this marketing team or with this agency or involved in putting this together, not one of them had the gumption to say, we cannot put this out, this is horrible. When most people who see that would know it. A few things happen in this scenario. One, they've been doing a rebrand or throwing it around for so long that basically people have given up fighting the fight. It just needs to be done, even if it's bad. I don't think that's what happened, but that's option one. Option two is someone with the stick of authority said, I don't care what anyone else thinks, we are going to run this, this is the right look. Or number three, everyone just didn't check out enough or didn't care, was moving on to the next job to say, we're ready to have this done. A little shout out, there was someone on social media who mentioned that if they did use this mirrored effect and then the campaign was something that was more like you versus you, that could actually be a really interesting application of the same idea and kind of putting it into your own aspirational look at the brand. But while this is happening, it's a big moment for North Face, for the outdoors industry in general, because brands are making major moves. And I want to talk about that for a moment. So Mammut, a Swiss outdoors brand, launched a campaign that says, we are not a streetwear brand. 3.9 million views, 3.8 million views. And you'll see what it pictures here. And basically taking a direct shot at people that wear Arc'teryx and these really heavy-duty Gore-Tex clothing as fashion items is that this is a thing meant for real engagements. And so they actually took this in a very tongue-in-cheek Swiss way, shot these crazy things on the actual streets of London of kind of engaging and putting these things in that environment. I had some really creative take on them positioning against what's happening in the industry. I love the idea of positioning against, of taking something happening and saying, we are the antithesis of this, is a classic marketing campaign strategy, especially for a unknown or traditional brand, or when people in your niche are doing something that intrinsically doesn't feel right. And I especially like this positioning because of what Arc'teryx has become now. So Arc'teryx is an incredible brand with an incredible history. I was first introduced to the brand where it was being actually used by operators, people that I worked with in the outdoors industry who were in the Marine Corps or the military had a high level of respect for the brand, which is about as good of a stamp as you can get for performance gear. But when you actually look at how the brand is approached now and how popular it has become as a more streetwear element and the way that it looks and feels, it just feels wrong. And so I look at their e-commerce photos, like we see here, where people are engaged in outdoor activities, but in a white screen environment, embodies what Mahmood is positioning themselves against by saying, hey, we're doing this for theater. We're doing this inside of a studio. Of course, we're not doing this in the real world. And so I found that campaign to be a really refreshing look at positioning against an industry for a brand that is relatively unknown, at least in the more mainstream circles. And it's a perfect example of how a single idea can put a product-driven brand onto the map with a great campaign. Because if people feel passionate about the Mahmood product, or they resonate with what's being said about it, that's gonna take them somewhere. And the outdoors industry in general is an interesting place because athleisure and performance and tech wear are on the verge of what I feel is gonna be a pretty major change. So On Running is one who I think is doing an excellent job and who has really taken over beyond their, they had their moment where they were basically with everyone older. Any older person running or walking was in On. They also managed to become cool to a more mainstream audience, are working to do that even harder. We're gonna talk through two of those campaigns here. So first, they had actually one of my favorite reels of the year with their collab with Post Archive Faction, which is a Korean fashion brand. This is an incredible piece of standout content that uses an effect like what I believe North Face was going for, but actually does it well. And this is a collaboration between two brands, one that is a avant-garde fashion brand of the highest caliber. And then On itself that actually brings some level of interest and credibility and audience to both in a new way. Then on the other side of that, on things I think that where On could improve is they announced a major ambassador, a super expensive move, which is getting Zendaya onto their team. What you'll notice about a lot of these posts is that she will be featured in the campaign, but not on her feed. It will only be on their feed because that obviously costs a lot more. And recently, they actually had one where she had a carousel with On on her feed. And they kind of bridged that gap finally. This is a super expensive, big celebrity campaign with arguably one of the most impactful people you could get as a campaign now. But where this falls flat to me isn't the desire or the crossover there or even the content and where it looks, but it's the intention behind it. It is obvious that she is not a performance runner or really interested in athletic activity. In fact, she gave an interview where she basically said she doesn't run for fun or enjoy that kind of stuff. So they're basically positioning it almost as a lifestyle product. They're trying to get the brand in front of her audience, but it doesn't truly have that level of fit. And then with the content really only being posted on their feed, they're only getting a fraction of the leverage of that celebrity. Now, there's a million other things this brand is doing excellently, but it's an interesting thing to think about when you do do a partnership or a position is who is gonna post, how much, and do they really embody the lifestyle you're going for or do they just embody the demographic? And I'll end with a little bit of where I think the future of this kind of industry here is going. And we'll talk a little bit more about this kind of thing when we get to Nike and footwear later. But this Margiela sub-label and Salomon collab here is I think we are entering this like Techwear 2.0 era. We're really merging all the high-end athleisure, all the voiries and stuff of the world and the ons with people more like Post Archive Faction, more like Margiela, et cetera, to kind of create this next-level combination of performance and lifestyle that I'm actually really excited to see. But next up, we are going to talk about soda and Coca-Cola Spice, one of the more ill-advised things that was launched this year. They launched a new flavor, a raspberry soda, and then already pulled it from the shelves. I think the general idea behind what they put out is they needed their new version of a cherry Coke. They're going back in their playbook for previous big wins and putting it out, but this was certainly not, and for a number of reasons. This is both a product and a marketing fail. First, there really is no desire amongst the audience for a raspberry-flavored or spiced Coca-Cola. In fact, they are seeing their market share, especially with younger people who this is aimed towards, moving towards healthier products like Olipop, who we'll talk about in a moment. So to kick off, let's look at this video from the actual Coca-Cola event launch. So in this, this creator here, Let's Roll Out NYC, goes to the pop-up with these huge fruit, these big fruit animations, you know, like a DJ, some very lightly known celebrity, this whole kind of weird avant-garde idea that is perfectly representative of what people think the younger generation likes and is into, but what no one actually likes and is into. And you contrast this rollout with what's happening with Olipop, I think is a strong indicator of how much savvier this new generation of marketers are versus someone like Coke. If they were doing this and they wanted to really launch, they would have been launching a healthier version of their existing product, or a knockoff of Diet Coke, Coke Zero, et cetera. They would have been positioning flavors more akin to what people are actually into, and we'll talk about that in a moment, and they would have rolled it out with real celebrity. So by contrast, we can talk about Olipop. This was an amazing year for that brand. They skyrocketed. We actually had one of the first employees, I believe he's the head of growth, was on our Brand Brothers Live a few weeks ago and broke down their strategy, like to a T. We actually got the complete insight on there. I believe that live is on the channel, but I'll break down some of the key points here. One of the big things that they did was their launch, or not necessarily a launch, one of their big marketing campaigns revolved Camila Cabello and involved a truly resident star inside the audience that they're trying to get, inside Coke's audience, that goes far further than anything Coke Spice could do. And if you want to compare the budget that Olipop can come with and with the budget that Coke can come with, I guarantee Coke can come with a larger one and come with a more interesting approach to that if they just had the intention to do it. And so what they're missing that Olipop has is the intention and the strategy. And this is why these smaller brands are chipping away from a marketing standpoint at these huge incumbents that you thought may never have been disrupted. And so let's talk about that industry for a moment. So when you are in the new soda industry, these prebiotic sodas, Poppy, Olipop, all the ones we see, and you're a smaller brand, you start off in niche grocery. You start off in your Whole Foods and your Sprouts, and you may do really great there. When you go to Walmart, you die. People don't buy it off the shelf. It doesn't have that appeal. This is not what happened with Olipop. The Walmart shopper is not the health food shopper. It is not the e-commerce shopper. It's a mainstream shopper. And so is that in all grocery across the US. So to get that, you have to have mainstream marketing. And where is soda traditionally sold? Basically have movie theaters, airlines, fountains inside of restaurants, and sports. And for Olipop, sports was the most approachable angle, and they went after that when they went mainstream in a incredible way. So they were actually recruiting teams that didn't have sponsors. They got a team in Kansas City. There was a stadium being built that didn't have a Coke sponsor yet that they swung into. They immediately went for more sports and more stadiums, but they crossed that over as well. They sponsored things like Shannon Sharpe's podcast, where they're entering all of these dimensions in and around sports to say, hey, this is a place where we believe we can take this on. It used to be fountains. Now we can actually fight that with cans. And at the same time, they know fountain tech is dying because of the plastic and reusable elements and all the things that come from that experience that people are just more conscious of now, straws and lids. And while something like kombucha did really good in specialty, maybe even crossed over a bit, it was never gonna be consumed in the same way as something like Olipop would inside these major cultural moments. So not only are they able to fight against the incumbents below them, but also they can position themselves against the bigger brands above them. And then they really actively went after the younger demographic with their flavor choices and their rollout. So things like the Ridge Rush flavor from Olipop that came out that was really positioned towards the college demographic and Rush Week. It had a whole sorority component of it. Obviously a takeoff of the Mountain Dew flavor and a position there. But they're being able to say, hey, look at this next to these two products. This is so much healthier for you for a more health conscious generation than ever, while also applying marketing directly to them, sponsoring the sorority dances at these colleges during Rush Week and being a part of the cultural conversation. And while Coke is putting on these pop-ups in New York that resonate with nobody. So from there, we're gonna move on to the next category. And in this one, we are going to talk about Nike. So this is less of a marketing conversation and it's a product conversation. And we're gonna start by looking at some shoes. The first one is Devin Booker's shoe that you're gonna see here. We're gonna go through all the major athletes right now. Luka Doncic's shoe. This is the shoe that is being sold under the Jordan brand for him. Jason Tatum's shoe, Giannis' shoe. What all of these have in common is that they are terrible. Is that when you look at them and you compare them to the era of the heyday of what was a Jordan shoe, even the LeBrons and KDs, which were at least decent. These are just not good. They're not aspirational for a newer generation to turn these into a signature silhouette. And these are the top players, the most interesting players in the world, a new generation of people. I'm not even gonna pull up the job or answer that bad. And this is a company that can't find a way to invent something for the most interesting people in the world. While around them, there's footwear innovation everywhere. If you look at, even like the shoes like Heliot Emile did with Puma, at the stuff the surgeon was doing for these athletes, being with with customs and what their direct competition is doing with someone like Anthony Edwards and Adidas who made a shoe that is standout, it is unique and has become a signature statement. It looks good and is available at a very reasonable cost. This is a product issue because Nike continues to have amazing campaigns to celebrate on these moments, to know where all the placements are, to have marketing and the zeitgeist figured out even when they stumble, they'll come right back with it. It's hard to go a week without someone saying Nike has an amazing campaign. But what they don't have is product that gets kids excited and that really makes it into wardrobes and rotation. Instead, they continue to relive the past and relaunch things that grow increasingly rest-relevant every week. If you had told me a year ago that Adidas' core shoe would be the number one, most interesting one inside of basketball and that Anthony Edwards' ads with them would be significantly better than anything, at least it'd be throwing shots at Nike in what they did, I would definitely be surprised. But this ad from Adidas is an absolute masterclass. And with that, the shoes isn't the only thing where there's an issue here. There's also the product that happened in general. Like this Nike Team USA is a great example where they truly like brought out the Kmart bargain bin for what they did. Like if you look at these graphics treatments, it is bad. We have a swoosh at the head of an eagle. We have whatever is going on here. These designs are truly like when you talk about, hey, this is the company that's gonna represent our nation and what they put out. This is not the staple items that I would feel great about having represented and having the athletes and the best people we have in the world, this weird Nike smiley face, like out there being put out. While at the same time, people like Kith are like understanding the assignment and doing something interesting with the licenses they do at the same time. And I'm a noted Kith ambivalent. There's a lot of things that they do that I am not a huge fan of, but what they've done here by just like tapping into the moment of nostalgia that we are having, elevating everything in the materials and applications, making things feel rich and textured and interesting and like iconically American is a great opportunity that any brand with a rich history should be the first ones to know that they can tap into. And they balance that side by side with kind of traditional Kith pattern stuff that still has its own kind of unique feel and even do things like offshoots, like luggage and bags that are noticeably nice and on trend. And I will big shout out the Wallabies that are featured in the styling here. That's how I know I would be friends with whoever put this shoot together. But all of this is interesting and excellent in a way that a brand at that size should not be able to do to compete with a brand at Nike size. And at the same time, even Reebok is understanding the assignment. So I put out this video now, January, beginning of this year, and it was about big brand social. It was really about why Reebok doesn't post enough and what Reebok is doing in general. They didn't seem to have an eye on the ball on silhouettes, but I called out this Premier Road silhouette, which I love, I wear all the time, and I think is actually excellent, but they just weren't showing off or pushing at all. And I was like, hey, this is actually a better silhouette than what most people have out there and they're not posting about it. There's not much happening. And then by the end of this year, it is now a staple in what they're featuring. And again, this year and its cultural relevance, its ability to be posted on Outlander as a silhouette is all the things that Reebok is doing to kind of reclaim their spot in the game. This lack of product innovation from Nike gives room for their competition to come in and do interesting things and take advantage of even just one good silhouette and how far that can take you. So a couple of quick hitters as we get towards the end of this video. Another fail is coming from Toys R Us, who used, they're obviously like a brand who's gone out of business, bankrupt and back again, but they use Sora to generate an AI video. It's part of this rush to AI from ad agencies who will say, rather than make good creative, we're gonna make a creative with AI so we can say that it was made with AI and try to win some awards instead of just making an ad that's actually good. And this ad comes across weird because this kid is AI. He looks almost ghoulish, which is like sad to say, but we wouldn't be saying that about a real kid. So this idea that we're gonna use AI, we're gonna create something with this fringe technology and at the same time, creating something uncomfortable versus just creating something good is an example of what some of the worst of what I feel the advertising industry represents. On a similar vein, we have Bumble putting out a big campaign, not really understanding their demographic, trying to encourage them to leave celibacy behind and not understanding their frustration with the current dating app and landscape. And they quickly retracted that, understood their consumer didn't like it and kind of moved on. And that's one of the ones where I feel that one was a case of bad marketing, but one that may not necessarily have been avoided. They're trying to push the limit. They're trying to do something interesting. If you had a bunch of people looking at the campaign, I don't know how many people would have been like, hey, this isn't gonna resonate versus some of the other ones we saw above that definitely would not. And then we had Apple. I think they took the original one down, but this is the video playing in reverse, which is what filmmakers did. I believe Maximize is the other creator. Shout out to him. Put out the video first where people actually reversed doing this, but they took one of these hydraulic press videos and destroyed all creative things to basically make a Apple thin iPad Pro or whatever. It's much more impactful in reverse to see them all growing out of it. But they were trying to play on a trend. They were trying to say, hey, hydraulic press videos are really popular. Kids love them. Adults love them. People watch them all the time. Let's just do our ads as one of those and then we'll note how thin the iPad is. This isn't the most offensive thing in the world, but it does have that intrinsic feel that you're saying, man, all of these things are being crushed in the name of technology. Just did not feel right. And that backlash did spark enough that they actually retracted it. Another quick hitter, we were going to talk about vehicles. So BMW, they had an ad with Christopher Walken. Talking like Walken. They did an ad basically doing old school celebrity to market BMW. And to me, this isn't like a fail or anything, this ad is totally fine, but it's indicative of where some of these older car companies are and the difference between BMW marketing and Mercedes marketing. Where they're still trying to anchor a big celebrity driven campaign to consider BMW. And when you go to the actual BMW Instagram feed, all you see is the cars. They have not gotten the memo that in today's world, you may see a person or two floating around here. All of these are kind of 2017 era carousels and highlight reels of some of these vehicles. And very rarely do you see a story interlined with any of these. Versus Mercedes Instagram, where everything is a 50-50 of the actual story being told or participation in culture. This here with Nigo, this here with Moncler's, with Brabus, this fashion show, this F1 driver, this crazy collab that was put together, this person's individual story, like this interesting journey, all put together into a series of stories and intention and obvious cool in a way that I think is really resonant. And so I'm gonna end with the industry that I think has the biggest fail going on right now. Not from any one campaign, but just lack of opportunity and what they can do about it. And that is the camera industry. So we're going to Nikon's TikTok here. They have, everything has like 500 views and it's just absolutely terrible. There's no reason any of this should be posted on social media in any way. And you go to Fuji, Fuji doesn't even have a TikTok. And there's two things at play here. The first is for someone like Fuji, that story is being told by creators for them. They have cameras that are relevant enough in the moment to smaller, more niche people like the X100V and a bunch of these even hard to get that they can say that our community is telling our story on social media. We don't necessarily need to, and you might believe them. But the other side of that coin is for someone like Nikon who just had a resonant campaign. I did a video about this that went viral maybe a year ago, where they're doing this anti AI campaign. They're standing up for their target demographic of employee photographers by basically saying, they did this series of amazing images. Then they put the prompt of what it would potentially be if it was generated by AI, but it is a real photos, genius campaign, really set themselves up to actually position to stand for something in a new era. But what is conspicuously not there is any representation of this campaign ongoing on social media or anything useful on social media. So what would we do here? What is the opportunity? For any of these companies, all you need to do is do tutorial content and collab. If they did the most base level, decent TikToks that just showed all the features, how to shoot using aperture, the rule of thirds, whatever that looks like and how to use their gear, how to set it up or now this photo was taken or that before and after. And you could do five of those a day on social media at their scale and probably have them all hit, not have that be an expensive proposition and educate an entire generation on a camera platform. That is the opportunity. It's an opportunity for a generational jump for someone to say, oh, Nikon wants to become bigger than Sony. Sony wants to take down Canon, whatever that looks like. They will be able to own double digit percents of market share by taking content seriously and none of them are. And the second tier of that would be collaboration. When you look at the sheer scale of creators and how many people are photographers and using it, how many people get social media views, you could literally have your pick of the best of the best for probably lower budget because people love gear so much and be able to get real resonance there. I think seeing how someone like Adobe has treated influencer where every designer has some kind of relationship or at least a pending relationship with Adobe if they are engaged in influence that they're saying, hey, we are going to dominate that space. We're going to enable the creative space. We're going to fund interesting projects. We're going to make people love to work with Adobe and understand it and share that and make sharing that a part of being a creative. I think the camera companies have that same opportunity and year after year, they just let it die. So any of them, Fuji in particular, Sony in particular, just call me. It is worth it. These are my worst marketing of 2024. There's plenty of good and bad on all different levels. I'm calling out lots of larger companies here. I feel bad bashing any smaller companies and it's not about how bad it is. It's not to call them out. They all do plenty of good things but it is about understanding what's happening, about being intentional about those decisions you make as a marketer, as a consumer, understanding what influences you and what you can do in the future. So thank you so much for watching. Like and subscribe. I will break down some of these campaigns in the hyper newsletter. Subscription link is below and thank you so much.