Readers around in the 1980s might recall one of the biggest flubs of a new product launch in the history of marketing: Coca-Cola’s release of “New Coke” back in 1985.
The history is that in the early 1980s, Coca-Cola was losing market share to Pepsi, and one remedy to this was to rejig the product formula and relaunch Coke with a frank acknowledgement that the recipe, with origins in the late 19th century, had been changed. Thus, New Coke was born in April 1985 at a product launch in Manhattan.
Apparently in pre-release market tests, New Coke did well and was seen by the company as a helpful competitor in its war with Pepsi.
But the replacement product hit the skids. There was a difference in taste and enough people disliked it to inundate the company. Coca Cola’s Atlanta headquarters received 1,500 phone calls a day compared with 400 before the new launch, and 400,000 letters over a few months.
After three months, the company reintroduced the “old” Coke but rechristened it as “Coca-Cola Classic.” New Coke stayed around for a while but was eventually dropped from more markets and finally discontinued in 2002.
I thought of New Coke recently when another company decided to overhaul a successful previous product in pursuit of new customers: Seattle-based Microsoft and its Windows 8 operating system, launched and released one year ago – also in Manhattan, as it happens.
I confess to not paying attention to the details of computer technology. As with most people, all I care to do is turn the computer on and hope it works.
Alas, as has been the experience of many desktop and laptop users, I had a distinctly negative reaction to Windows 8, in my case, after the purchase of a new desktop several months back.
And that’s where the fun started.
After starting up the new desktop, I had no idea what to do next. I’ve had the computer and Microsoft’s “New Coke” operating system for a few months now so I am retrieving frustrations mostly from memory, but my first conundrum was to figure out where was my desktop.
My “desktop” looked like a tablet. That was apparently the point of Windows 8 – except someone in Seattle forgot to tell those with keyboards and who need to write in Word and calculate in Excel about that nifty new detour.
Eventually, after swiping the mouse around I somehow managed to hit the desktop icon but not before several detours into all the other junk available in the tablet view.
Once on the desktop, I then looked for the “start” button. No luck there of course, as Microsoft removed that previously helpful and efficient device from Windows 8.
Eventually, after much searching and rejigging, I moved what I could to the now-found desktop, but additional pains ensued.
I had to uninstall the bundled version of Skype and reinstall an older version on my desktop, this to ensure those on the other side of my Skype program could see me –another common problem in Windows 8 apparently.
Microsoft promises to fix Windows 8 (though that’s not how the company puts it) with some version of a start button and to allow users to get their desktop directly (great, thanks for that).
In developing Windows 8, Microsoft was obviously responding to the part of the market that uses tablets. But plenty of people still use desktops and laptops for personal and business use, and that requires more than surfing the Internet with one’s finger, and that reality makes one wonder what Microsoft was thinking.
I’m no tech expert or a marketing whiz, but when dealing with one’s customers, I’d guess there is one simple rule: when introducing a new version of your product, make it broadly similar enough to the previous one so moving from the old to new is a relatively seamless and painless experience and don’t make your customers jump through additional hoops just to do what they previously did with one step.
Nothing – and I mean nothing – in Windows 8 follows that basic rule.
For example, the PDF attachment in emails can no longer be opened and printed; users now have to save it, open it in Adobe, find the document and then print it.
If Microsoft were an automotive company, it would have designed a new car with three or four extra steps to unlock your car door or turn your engine on or hit the brakes.
My experience with Windows 8 is not unique.
So here’s my advice the next time a company wants to “improve” a product: have it read case studies on the New Coke product launch – and now on the Windows 8 mess-up. My guess is product designers will learn much about how to avoid annoying existing customers.
