Archive for January, 2009
The Hunt for Osama bin Laden
Posted on 18. Jan, 2009 by admin.
America is attacked on 9/11. The World Trade Centre twin towers in New York are hit by two hijacked planes and collapse. Americans are thunderstruck. After Pearl Harbour this is the second attack to take place in America. Bush announces that Al-Qa’ida is the masterminds behind the attack and they are holed out in the Tora Bora Mountains of Afghanistan. America will launch an attack against this terrorist outfit in mid November. In effect this told the terrorists, ‘hey guys you have attacked and killed thousands of Americans, we know where you are, but we are giving you two months to disappear’. That is exactly what has happened; when American and allied forces reached Tora Bora after the mountains had been attacked by tons of bombs being thrown at them by high flying bombers, what did they find? Nothing, the terrorists had departed. Any outfit that has planned an operation for years, do you really think they would sit around and wait for the American forces to come and overrun them, that too after two months! Till today the allied forces are stuck in Afghanistan. The terrorist outfits continue to flourish and are going from strength to strength. If this is not an epic failure I don’t know what is!
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Epic Fails in Marketing
Posted on 01. Jan, 2009 by admin.
In order for an epic fail to occur, it is not always necessary that something goes terribly wrong. Sometimes, it can be the other way around and one can suffer because of things turning out to be terribly right and the response to something being so great that it becomes impossible to handle. This is exactly what happened in the case of Starbucks and it caused an epic fail, when Starbucks started its Iced Coffee. This was a special offer for the employees and their families that they could come and get free iced coffee in the South-eastern US.
This campaign by Starbucks became an epic fail for them because when the people started coming in for their Iced coffee, it was impossible to handle and was actually causing a loss to the famous coffee house. This was a result of the marketing for the campaign becoming too successful and instead of the limited audience that was actually meant to be, the promotion coupon got distributed too well.
Another such case of epic fail in marketing can be seen in case of Chevy when it made an offer that the people should make the advertisement for their Tahoe and they should be the ones to market it. It was actually an unwise decision by Chevy because there are various aspects to be kept in view while doing the promotion of a product. The result of their decision turned out badly when the people started including the problems and shortcomings of the car in the ads and the sales were badly affected.