Brand Failures

254 Brand failures
As other, less flamboyant companies also began to fail, it became clear
that boo’s problem was one of timing. Its vision of online retailing had
won the support of investors, but neither the consumers nor the
suppliers were yet ready to adopt it in significant numbers. When the
investors lost faith in that vision, plenty of companies founded on the
promise of the revolution were bound to fail. Boo simply got there first
because it spent its money more quickly.
The medium was therefore becoming the message, and that message was
increasingly one of failure. But boo’s downfall cannot simply be attributed
to the delusional late-1990s attitude towards the Internet which only
hindsight has amended. Even if boo had been an offline company many of
its mistakes would have been near-fatal. For instance, blowing millions of
dollars on a risky launch campaign two months before the actual launch
would always be a bad move.
Another mistake, ironically enough, could be put down to the company’s
obsession with the brand identity itself. The marketing people were often able
to overrule the technical team, particularly with regard to crucial decisions
regarding the Web site. As a result, the company created one of the most
fabulous-looking sites on the Web, with the poorest functionality.
On the surface, boo was a great brand. But branding is about more than
looking good. It is about fulfilling promises. The promises boo made – both
to its investors and its customers – were ultimately undeliverable. And now
boo’s significance is not, as was intended, that of a global brand. Rather,
through its negative example, it has helped us to learn the true value of the
Internet for branding. It has highlighted the fact that whereas customers may
require information and interaction, they want to access these benefits
quickly and with minimal hassle.
That boo failed to realize that substance comes before style means that
somebody, somewhere is probably still sitting at his or her computer waiting
for the site’s homepage to download.
Lessons from boo.com
Hire the right people. ‘The wrong people were hired – too many fresh faced
consultants, too few wrinkled old retailers, and far too many warring
factions,’ says the BBC’s Rory Cellan-Jones.