10 spectacularly bad NZ launches

Jetstar came to NZ with deep pockets and cheap tickets, but it still had a bumpy take-off. Photo / Simon Baker

The Titanic's owners proudly boasted it was the biggest passenger steamship in the world.

When it set sail for the first time from Southampton on April 10, 1912, it was packed to the gunwales with excited millionaires, nobility, the celebrity sportsmen and actors of the day, and immigrants to the New World.

So large was the ship that as it left its Southampton berth, its wake caused the liner City of New York, docked nearby, to break away from its moorings.

The Titanic's promise was great; so too the dismay when it sank on that first voyage.

Never, ever, over-promise. If there's one thing that unites almost all the troubled or failed ventures that litter the commercial landscape like shipwrecks on the ocean floor, it is that they let us down.

Brand specialist Brian Richards says brands generally fail because they are "overhyped from the beginning. The follow-through from the company, with regard to the product and service, never seems to deliver the experience which is being promised."

Great brands are like great lovers. "They're about delivering the experience faithfully and with integrity time and time again," Richards says.

They are not necessarily sexy and flashy. We love the AA for its solidness: "There's that hidden assurance they'll honour their promise."

Harald Van Heerd, marketing professor at Waikato University, says in these super-connected times, hype can backfire extraordinarily as a sense of being let down or duped rapidly snowballs.

"There can be this momentum that may be with you or against you, and this can really drive down a brand," he says. "By pumping so much money into advertising you put yourself under a magnifying glass that makes any failure, like the Jetstar passengers who couldn't board, all the more salient."

Some brands fail because they lack a clear point of difference to catch our eye in a cluttered landscape.

From rolling out of your (brand x) bed in the morning to slipping into your (brand y) pyjamas again at night Richards says you encounter about 58 brands. But you only notice a couple.

Major global brands may fail in a new country because they don't tweak their "story" or product to make it relevant to locals - something Richards calls "glocalisation".

Last year, Starbucks closed most of its Australian cafes after almost eight years in the country.

Richards blames the chain's failure on a mismatch between its lollified, Americana "soft drink mentality" and the strong Aussie coffee culture. (A definition for "Starbucks Australia" in slang online dictionary urbandictionary.com: "A place you pass on your way to a gourmet coffee house.")

Millionaire jeweller Michael Hill, who made missteps with his failed shoes sideline and rocky start in Australia, says the most important thing is to keep it "crazily simple".

"People can't concentrate on more than one thing at a time, and they don't like to be told too many things. If you really want to drive something through it needs to be really clear, and you need to keep repeating the same thing."

It's not just products and services that launch with much hoopla yet fail to win us over. The hero-to-zero blight strikes television series, performers, sports teams alike.

The following is a list of 10 panned brands, flopped shops and showbiz misses - and where they went wrong.

1 - Jetstar New Zealand: not delivering the difference

Jetstar's entry into the domestic airline market has been bedevilled by bad press, with complaints about baggage costs, delays and cancellations and rigid adherence to check-in times.

Chief executive Bruce Buchanan has alleged to the Herald on Sunday that the malcontent was fanned by Air New Zealand in a deliberate act of sabotage - denied by the national carrier. However, he also agreed the company failed to meet the expectations of Kiwi travellers (more than 100,000 Kiwis have flown Jetstar domestically since the June launch).

Waikato University's Harald Van Heerd said the airline's intensive marketing raised expectations, magnifying disappointment.

The recession primed us for a cut-price airline, "but Jetstar blew it by their strict policies and not communicating them well enough".

Van Heerd's prescription: "The best thing is to be completely up front, admit it was your mistake, and run a big, humorous ad saying that, rather than blaming customers."

Beyond failure to meet expectations, brand expert Brian Richards believes Jetstar never had a sufficient point of difference.

"I don't think you can launch a brand based on price. What's the point of difference? Is it the convenience, the friendliness, the inflight experience? Look at how [budget airline] Virgin was launched in Britain: they said they were more on to it, more out there, less formal than their competitors."

2 - Michael Hill Shoes: not sticking to knitting

In his new motivational autobiography, millionaire jeweller Michael Hill analyses what went wrong with his ill-fated foray into shoe retailing. Despite initial reservations, Hill launched Michael Hill Shoes in 1992. "[It] turned out to be a series of colossal mistakes," he writes. He bought out a small Christchurch chain of high-end, Italian footwear and launched the previous owner, who stayed on, into the quite different world of mid-range, fast-turnover footwear. He put the jewellery chain manager in charge of the shoe operation, meaning he couldn't focus fully on either job.

He opened nine shops across the country in quick succession instead of concentrating on getting one region right first. And he confused his customers by naming the stores Michael Hill Shoes and putting them next to the jewellery stores. Hill pulled the plug on the faltering sideline early in 1994.

Richards says Hill underestimated how different the shoe business was from jewellery, and he stretched his customers' goodwill too far. "It's like L'Oreal going into socks; Michael Hill Shoes just didn't fit."

3 - Chrysler Dodge: not going local

Dodge was launched here in 2007, debuting with the Dodge Nitro, a big, muscular 4WD aimed at families; the Avenger, a mid-sized sedan; and the Caliber, a Corolla-sized hatch.

Motoring writer Jacqui Madelin says, "They were hoping to sell at mainstream prices to mainstream buyers they'd attract on the strength of their brash American good looks. But poor standards of build quality were apparent with the early cars. The performance didn't live up to the muscular image.

"And, ironically, that muscular image didn't suit a time when people were increasingly aware of fuel costs, so the image cost them both ways. People expected more power and were disappointed; or people expected big thirst so didn't take a test drive."

Sales figures for the six months to June show Dodge Nitro sold 35, only 10 more than the pricier Hummer. Avenger sold 10, a third of the total for Citroen's quirky and pricier C5, while Caliber was outsold 10 times by the equally quirky Kia Soul.

4 - Planet Hollywood: passe?

It was a caricature of Americana: Jaws in the bathroom; spaceship interior; a cryogenically-frozen Sylvester Stallone suspended overhead. Sky City Leisure brought Planet Hollywood to Auckland in 1999, and closed it less than four years later because of what it called "changing consumer trends". Says Richards, "I don't think we buy into that American culture perhaps the same way we didn't in the 60s. It's a little passe."

5 - Clayton's: not in good taste

It was that brand name that rebelled against its makers: it entered the Kiwi vernacular, but not because we loved the product. Clayton's was a non-alcoholic, non-carbonated drink coloured and packaged to resemble bottled whisky. Heavily marketed in Australia and New Zealand in the 1970s and 1980s, its slogan was "the drink you have when you're not having a drink". It never took hold - apparently not many people liked the taste. But the word "Clayton's" became shorthand for a compromise that satisfies no one, or something that's the same in everything but name.

6 - Russell Crowe's singing career: not playing to your strengths

Before he was the Gladiator, Russell Crowe was Russ le Roq, a stroppy teenage rocker and then under-age cabaret venue owner. He had modest success with the song I Want To Be Like Marlon Brando. But he would never make his name as a rockstar. Instead, he got his wish. A succession of roles in Aussie TV shows and musicals - notably, Dr Frank-N-Furter in The Rocky Horror Show - eventually led to Hollywood, and that Oscar for Gladiator.

It is widely agreed that Crowe's acting talent surpasses his music ability, but Crowe won't give up. His pub rock band 30 Odd Foot Of Grunts, formed in 1992, fell flat and dissolved after a decade or so. Next came a collaboration with Alan Doyle, and new band The Ordinary Fear of God, whose fame peaked with a 2006 performance on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.

Observes media commentator Irene Gardiner, "He's an incredibly talented actor and he's a so-so singer. Acting was always going to dominate."

7- The Football Kingz/New Zealand Knights: no-win situation

Formed in 1999 by the Australian Football League, the Football Kingz were meant to professionalise and popularise football in the land of union and league. After a promising first season, fan support and credibility nose-dived, with poor results and off-field ownership wranglings.

The club's image was so shoddy that when it was sold in 2004 the new owners decided to rebrand as New Zealand Knights. But mud stuck.

In a 2007 journal paper, Massey University senior lecturers Trish Bradbury and Bevan Catley analysed the failed rebranding. Not only was the new name too similar to the original, they argued, no amount of focus group-informed wordplay could make up for the fact that the club's squad was dominated by low-profile foreign players few Kiwis could identify with, or that it lacked a star, or indeed any strong players. The owners struggled to pay the players' wages as the crowds stayed away, prompting the Football Federation of Australia to finally revoke the club's licence in January 2007, and hand it to the next incarnation, the Wellington Phoenix.

8 - NZ Idol stars: not taken seriously

Ben Lummis, Michael Murphy, Rosita Vai - in their moment of NZ Idol glory all were pegged for great things. Season-one winner Lummis came the closest. His 2004 single They Can't Take That Away spent seven weeks at number one on the charts, and his album sold more than 30,000 copies.

But label Sony BMG dumped him after three months. At the time, Lummis' manager Paul Ellis said the singer was despondent about making what Ellis called "the worst-sounding album of my entire career" with a company that didn't care.

Irene Gardiner says Kiwi Idol winners seemed doomed to not have pop success. "It's a weird quirk of New Zealand that I don't understand. All the Australian and American ones have done well," she says. Her theory is the Idol brush erases musicians' credibility, and our music industry is set up well for bands and singer-songwriters, but not for mainstream, middle-of-the-road pop artists. "I don't think the talent level was necessarily the issue. It was a combination of the nature of the entertainment industry and something about the public perception of what being an Idol winner meant."

9 - Warehouse Australia: not Ocker enough

The Warehouse was a household name in New Zealand when it expanded across the Tasman. But that was irrelevant in Australia. The Warehouse acquired the Australian Clint's Crazy Bargains and Silly Solly's retail chains in 2000, stamping their mark and building new stores. But the Aussies didn't take to the Red Shed in nearly the same numbers as Kiwis had, and Warehouse Australia struggled to break even. The Warehouse Group sold its Australian operation in 2005 to Australian Discount Retailers (ADR), which renamed the stores Sam's Warehouse. (In a twist, the Kiwi connection returned in March, when Kathmandu co-founder Jan Cameron bought ADR.)

10 - City Life: ahead of its time?

It was written by James Griffin, the co-writer of juggernaut hit Outrageous Fortune. It launched the TV careers of actors such as Sunrise presenter and theatre star Oliver Driver. It was pitched as New Zealand's answer to Melrose Place and This Life. But TVNZ urban soap opera City Life, which debuted in 1996, was taken off air part-way through its first season. (The series has since been screened in full, but in the late night or mid-morning hinterland.)

A homosexual kiss in the first episode has been fingered as a turn-off for some viewers. But Irene Gardiner says the show was good, and may have been the whipping boy for media and public resentment of TVNZ, perceived at the time as glitzy and arrogant. "People just wanted to kick TVNZ so they kicked the show."

Says Griffin: "It did well overseas but was vilified here. I think it was the wrong sort of show for the wrong sort of time."