Brand Failures

Tired brands 293
99 The Cream nightclub
Last dance saloon
In the 1990s Liverpool nightclub Cream grew from being a small intimate
venue catering for around 400 clubbers every Saturday night, to being one
of the UK’s first ‘super clubs’ regularly attracting thousands of devotees from
all over the country. It quickly capitalized on its success by launching
merchandising material, setting up its own record label in partnership with
Virgin, touring nationally and internationally with a variety of sponsors, and
even embarking on a series of dance music festivals called Creamfields,
catering for around 40,000 clubbers. By the end of the 1990s there were
regular Cream nights in places as far afield as Buenos Aires and Ibiza, as well
as the brand’s native Liverpool.
Yet in September 2002, Cream co-founder and boss James Barton announced
that the Liverpool club was closing. Although Barton said the reason
for the closure was to concentrate on other aspects of the company, he also
admitted to Radio One that ‘if the club was doing the sort of numbers it was
doing four or five years ago we wouldn’t be making this decision.’ The media
responded by saying that the decision not only signified the imminent death
of the Cream brand, but of club culture in general. Whether or not Cream
manages to survive without its spiritual home remains to be seen, but the
closure certainly indicates tough times ahead.
So why exactly did it happen How could a club that became a household
name for a generation suddenly lose its appeal The reasons, as you might
well expect, are numerous.