Brand Failures

Culture failures 179
advertising campaigns. ‘Quaker discontinued its quirky campaign featuring
a Snapple employee named Wendy Kaufman, and replaced it with one in
which Snapple boasted that it would be happy to be third behind Coca-Cola
and Pepsi in the beverage market.’ The ‘real life’ US advertising featuring
Wendy Kaufman, a receptionist reading fan letters from consumers, had been
a real hit, but Quaker decided to come up with a new advertising campaign
using the same company which produced its Gatorade campaigns. The end
result was a counterproductive advertising campaign which succeeded in
‘normalizing’ Snapple’s previously quirky identity.
As sales started to slide, Quaker believed it held the solution – send sales
reps out on to the streets to ask people to try the product for free. Then the
company back-tracked on the new Snapple advertising strategy with artier
ads more in tune with the brand’s original identity. But it didn’t work.
Snapple was fast losing its innovative image, along with its customer base.
When Quaker sold Snapple to Michael Weinstein and his colleagues, the
brand was in trouble:
We inherited a brand in a deep sales slide, losing 20 percent annually,
and a demoralized organization. At the time Snapple was six times the
size of our company, but only two Snapple headquarters personnel
from Chicago chose to join the new team in New York. Few outside
observers believed a small beverage company competing with Coke and
Pepsi and with a new team could turn Snapple around, but we outlined
a strategy and vision of success that the entire organisation could rally
around.
In an interview with Fast Company in 2001, Michael explained how his
company, called Triarc, managed to undo the marketing and advertising
failures which occurred under Quaker’s ownership of the brand. ‘We tried
to create an atmosphere that was fun and timely,’ he said. ‘We introduced
our first new product two weeks after we bought the company. That’s fast.’
Another part of the strategy was to bring back the adverts featuring Wendy
the receptionist.
Gradually, Snapple’s original customer returned and the brand again
increased in value. In 2000, Cadbury Schweppes bought Snapple for US $1
billion and Michael Weinstein moved with the brand. He is currently the
president of ‘global innovation’ at Cadbury, and Snapple is now fully restored
after its rather rocky ride.