How to commit brand suicide (Or why you should know your customers)

[Ascension]

Recently we've heard stories of businesses losing their customers by treating them like garbage.

Now, a brave business has stepped forward to show us how to up the ante and lose customers by the millions with only a couple posts on social media.

The company I'm talking about is Rude Health, known for their various non-dairy milks. Besides the general health-conscious population (and those who simply want to mix it up a little) unsurprisingly vegans make up a large portion of their customers.

They decided to back dairy in their posts, ignoring their audience which is (often times strongly) opposed to dairy due to ethical, environmental or health concerns.

They received a lot of backlash but instead of explaining their position or letting the whole thing rest they decided to double down, trashing recent documentaries (and the scientific literature upon which they rest) as conspiracy theories.

I can only imagine what they were thinking, maybe they tried to appear more accessible to the general market by distancing themselves from veganism?

Either way, the result is that they already got dropped from certain supermarkets and now have a whole lot of ex-customers who became advocates against their brand.

Do you have any examples of companies engaging in similarly self-destructive behavior?

 

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[Bulgano]

Recently we've heard stories of businesses losing their customers by treating them like garbage.

Now, a brave business has stepped forward to show us how to up the ante and lose customers by the millions with only a couple posts on social media.

The company I'm talking about is Rude Health, known for their various non-dairy milks. Besides the general health-conscious population (and those who simply want to mix it up a little) unsurprisingly vegans make up a large portion of their customers.

They decided to back dairy in their posts, ignoring their audience which is (often times strongly) opposed to dairy due to ethical, environmental or health concerns.

They received a lot of backlash but instead of explaining their position or letting the whole thing rest they decided to double down, trashing recent documentaries (and the scientific literature upon which they rest) as conspiracy theories.

I can only imagine what they were thinking, maybe they tried to appear more accessible to the general market by distancing themselves from veganism?

Either way, the result is that they already got dropped from certain supermarkets and now have a whole lot of ex-customers who became advocates against their brand.

Do you have any examples of companies engaging in similarly self-destructive behavior?

There are plenty of examples where companies have committed this behaviour but somehow won their customers over for whatever reason.
Examples:

• Microsoft when it announced Windows 8/8.1/10. It was so "different" that their entire customer base shat itself, to a point where as of this day, some people still run Windows XP or 7 because of how bad the newer metro versions are.
• Apple removing the headphone jack.
• Mercedes removing it's widely loved ornament from the front of its cars and replacing it with a badge.

I could probably think of more, but I think these give a good example of no matter how hard you "screw up", you can always recover it. To this day people still buy products from the above even though they don't agree with their choices.

 

[Veloce Grey]

The NFL going from the sports/entertainment/escapism market to a dogmatic liberal political sideshow.