What Were They Thinking? [Illustrated] [Hardcover]

Robert M. McMath and Thom Forbes (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 17, 1998

The book that does for marketing what "Up the Organization" did for management, this book includes pithy, short, funny lessons in an A to Z format. This is a treasure trove of new-product sizzlers and fizzlers with enough information to make industry giants like Kraft and Gillette pay attention. 26 photos .

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

What Were They Thinking?, by 30-year marketing industry veteran Robert McMath and journalist Thom Forbes, clearly spells out its cautionary contents in its subtitle: Marketing Lessons I've Learned from over 80,000 New-Product Innovations and Idiocies. The insightful suggestions for avoiding the extraordinarily damaging (or at least extremely embarrassing) commercial misstep, illustrated perfectly by tales of formidable foul-ups from days of yore, ensure that this trip down memory lane can be more than just a pleasure cruise. Nonetheless, it's simply fun to relive such agonies as Ben-Gay Aspirin, Rabbit Jerky, and of course, New Coke. --Howard Rothman

From School Library Journal

YA-McMath has packed such a terrific amount of information into this small, easily read book that it could serve as a marketing text, although it is not organized or written as such. In fact, it is arranged alphabetically by subject headings, such as, for the letter G, "Go with the Flow," "Greasy, Gloppy and Glorious," and "Gulp!" (Sound like an adman's vocabulary?) The goofy arrangement is useless to researchers; its apparent intent is to organize somehow the broad array of business savvy the author has accumulated over the years. However, if every company with a new product to market had welcomed the honest advice McMath offers, some of the many failures he discusses might not have happened. He does note that the cost of bringing products to market makes it difficult for entrepreneurs to compete with large companies. Just the few pages on the inner workings of supermarket product "positioning" is invaluable in explaining what reaches the shelf and why. A good index saves the day for report writers. Useful not only for marketing and psychology students, but also for those studying market manipulation by advertisers.
Judy McAloon, Potomac Library, Prince William County, VA
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Crown Business; 1st edition (February 17, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0812929500
• ISBN-13: 978-0812929508
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.9 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,259,373 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Born in New Jersey, I have lived in a number of areas in the North Eastern U.S where we left our collection of once new consumer products (85,000) in Ann Arbor, Michigan. As a result of authoring the Book: "What Were They Thinking?" my wife Jean and I have been priviledged to travel to many countries including China, Russia, Japan, Canada, UK, Australia Spain, Denmark, Mexico, Taiwan, Egypt and others where I have spoken on the lessons I learned from our collection of 85,000 once new consumer products. We left the collection in Ann Arbor, and retired to Southern California in 2001. I still write a monthly column on new products and marketing in the U.S. for a publication in Taiwan, which I have done for over 20 years

With all the traveling around this country and the world, I can testify first hand there are some interesting places elsewhere, and there are executives around the world that I helped focus on what not to do in new product introductions. But I can testify first hand "There is no place like the U.S and I am proud to be an American."

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars While we were sleeping..., September 15, 2000

By 

Andrew C. LaValle (Irvington, NY USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: What Were They Thinking? (Paperback)

Ever wonder while wandering the aisles at your local supermarket, how in the world all those products make it to the shelf? There is no doubt about it, from your favorite kind of cereal to your regular brand of toothpaste; the packaged goods we choose to buy are the end result of a long, arduous and costly process. These products have been researched, re-formulated, re-designed, tested, re-tested, perhaps altered innumerable times before given the final approval to appear at your local shopping center. Not to mention the millions of dollars committed to ensure that we know about them through television, newspapers, magazines and other forms of media. It is a process that can take years, often beginning as an idea in someone¹s head, and ending with a tangible, three-dimensional package or container that ultimately holds the item we have chosen to give our allegiance, our loyalty. We form relationships with these products. We go far and wide, and to great lengths to find them, and are unhappy if we can't get them.

Marketers everywhere are missing dinner with their kids, pulling all-nighters, steeped in market research and ad agency pitches, just so we could enjoy the most tasty cereal or the most whitening brand of toothpaste with baking soda. And these are only the products we know about; the ones that actually make it out the door! Ever wonder about the ones that never make it, or the ones that you saw today but are gone tomorrow, never to be seen again? Just ask Mr. Whipple. He's seen them come and seen them go. Charmin may still be "squeezably soft", but where is the Crystal Pepsi? Seemed like a good idea at the time. How about "smokeless" tobacco? Rabbit Jerky, anyone? Executives had countless meetings over these products, committed large amounts of resources to them, and spent millions of dollars to perfect and bring them to market. Unfortunately, most of them failed in the marketplace.

How each of these came to market, as the brainchild of one or more marketers at nearly every consumer products manufacturer in the country, is quite a story. Steve Backer, the advertising executive best known for the "I'd Like to Teach the World To Sing" Coca-Cola jingle puts it in familial terms. Executives "parent" these ideas, like they would children, and they grow and are nurtured by "uncles" and "cousins" and even "grandfathers" and "godfathers". They develop benefactors, and are protected and defended. Sometimes defended too well. It is the process of how an idea ultimately becomes a reality, and the generic term we apply to this process is marketing.

This is a subject of great interest to Robert McMath, a Marketing guru, i.e. consultant, who spent many years with the Colgate-Palmolive company, and Thom Forbes, an advertising journalist who, among other things, spent time as the editor of Adweek. In fact, they wrote a book about it, and the book is appropriately titled "What Were They Thinking? Marketing Lessons I¹ve Learned from over 80,000 New-Product Innovations and Idiocies".

This is a great book. And very valuable if you are a marketer. It could very well steer your career in the right direction. Written with wit and insight, McMath and Forbes take us through the last several decades of new-product launches, and are quick to point out that most of them have been duds. In fact, statistically, the chance of any new product really succeeding with a bang is plainly slim. If you don¹t believe me, go and visit the New Products Showcase and Learning Center in Ithaca, New York that McMath runs. It is the repository of more than 80,000 of these household consumable items that he speaks about in the title that at one time or another were considered "new and innovative" or "new and improved". And although the emphasis of this book is clearly what went wrong, rather than what went right, the facts bear out the conclusion. But don't get McMath and Forbes wrong. They both have a keen understanding of the dynamics of consumer products marketing, and are writing from a position of admiration and love of the business. This is not a treatise on the death of marketing, but rather a somewhat wistful and sweeping assessment of the results of some of the most ambitious and colossal undertakings by consumer products companies over the years. Certainly, the successes are included here, and are given their just kudos. What is striking, however, is the lesson in marketing we take away in hindsight from examining why these products and launches never caught on, and why some of them should never have been allowed make it to market.

McMath and Forbes cleverly assesses the highlights, er, lowlights, of some disastrous and costly marketing, along with some spectacular and flawless successes, and the approach is to take an altruism or marketing aphorism, and demonstrate the appropriate success or catastrophe. "Fooling With Your Cash Cow" was meant for Crystal Pepsi. They admonish PepsiCo for wantonly fooling with its flagship brand. There are also chapters on "Me-Too Madness" and "Thou Shalt Not Deceive", which extol the pitfalls of joining the bandwagon way too late, and not being totally above board on your advertising. My personal favorite is "Buy-This-If-You-Are-A-Loser" School of Marketing. The lesson here was Gillette¹s FOR OILY HAIR ONLY shampoo. What seems very much a matter of common sense now did not seem so back then. Of course, some of us have oily hair, but who wants to announce it in their shopping cart?

Throughout all the poignant examples, however, is a real desire to analyze de-facto, what contributed to these failures, and how they might be avoided in the future. Every lesson is sincere, and makes an attempt to intelligently and honestly assess the results in useful terms. Albeit entertaining, a deeper understanding of the vagaries and whimsy of consumers and marketing make for a great read and some very funny scenarios. From killer clerks to obstinate CEO¹s, not all the blame lies with the marketers. Some products are just destined to bomb due to an overwhelming negative force quite beyond the control any one individual, except perhaps the one having the power to say Yes or No. McMath, having been an "eager beaver young marketer who is going places" himself, tells the story of his first product

assignment with Colgate-Palmolive. He was to redesign and re-launch Palmolive Aftershave Lotion. Back then, it was in a molded plastic bottle and was a rich dark green in color. It sold for a buck, and had enjoyed some popularity in the late forties and early 50¹s, and by the time McMath got a hold of it, was lagging in sales of under $1M. That was an unacceptable figure for Colgate, and management wanted it fixed. Truth be told, on the shelf, the rich dark green liquid looked more like dirty water compared to the brilliant blues and sapphires of some of the competition. After a new bright blue formulation and some updated packaging, the prototype made it all the way up to the top, a VP of the Division, who promptly canned it because he hated the color blue. Marketing Lesson 101.

Throughout the book, McMath and Forbes keep the criticism fairly topical, yet accurate. As accurate as one can be in retrospect. The scenario¹s are plenty, and cover everything from Futurist marketers pronouncing products for the millennial zeitgeist, to simple dumber than dumb mistakes that should have never made it past pencil and paper. The tone is always even, but hardly dispassionate. And the issues are certainly relevant to today's marketplace, including some philosophical commentary on brand extensions, category development, new products and advertising.

All in all, the book leaves you with a distinct flavor; one part caution, one part common sense, mixed with the knowledge that ultimately, no matter how much planning, preparation, foresight and wisdom, no one can predict with certainty the success with which any new product will be met. McMath and Forbes give us just enough to think about the next time we go shopping.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Model of good writing, May 8, 2001

By 

Benjamin Rossen "Benjamin" (Netherlands) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: What Were They Thinking? (Paperback)

This book could be used by an English teacher as a model of good writing; it is clear, direct and easy to read. McMath's experience scripting concise and informative advertisements and labels shows. The emphasis on food products dominates, which limits the scope of this book somewhat. Nevertheless, the principles which are illustrated by these examples are sufficiently general to be of interest to most readers working in other areas. The book not only deals with failed products, but also presents examples of the right way to do things. It is nicely balanced and informative.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Must Reading for Marketeers, January 8, 2001

By 

Timothy R V Foster (London, United Kingdom) - See all my reviews

This review is from: What Were They Thinking? (Paperback)

This is an excellent book that tells all about the vagaries of new product development in the fast-moving consumer goods area. It is written with wit and humor, making it an easy read. It names names and is overflowing with case histories. If you're an entrepreneur, marketing person, PR/ad-agency creative or suit, you must read this book. It will save you time, money and embarrassment. It is absolutely true.