If you are the `LAST PERSON ON THIS EARTH'....what would you do????

If you are the `LAST PERSON ON THIS EARTH'....what would you do????

Adam was the first person ....

Imagine a situation , a very hypothetical one , all the people in the world have vanished and you are the sole survivor on this planet, The last person!!!

What comes to your mind in such a situation, what would you do???

let your thoughts flow.... :))

I guess that would be an excuse to finally watch some movies such as - "Castaway", and finally pay attention when watching "Terminator 3 - Rise of the Machines" .

Then grab all the books of the "Rama" series by Arthur C Clarke & Gentry Lee and read them at leisure. Diligently flip through "Contact" by Carl Sagan, etc.

However, on more serious note after reading all the previous posts I was intrigued by the lack of companionship that people would feel in such a situation. Hardly, anyone mentions family or friends or displays any empathy on whatever may have happened to them. Everyone seems to be thankful that they finally get to be alone... Quite an interesting though very subtle and implicit comment on our global society, since this is a global forum.

"Mercy killing of Brands... Pros & Cons"

A really thought provoking issue. Secondly, what a question... probably good enough for a Phd dissertation in marketing.

Anyway, to keep it simple and see other viewpoints also. My take is fairly simple - business is there to provide a return on capital employed, when there is no significant return on the capital employed either in the short or long term the business should be liquidated. Obviously, this is a very simplified scenario, hopefully all due diligence is done and all tangible and intangible cost benefit scenarios have been objectively evaluated.

If after doing all the above there is a negative trend for future ROI yes by all means the brand should be killed, otherwise it will negatively impact the overall business, giving a perception that not just one brand is doing poorly, but the entire business is also subject to the same malaise.

To touch upon GM, in my opinion they were too slow and too late in pulling the plug on - Oldsmobile, and even to some extent are doing the same with Buick now. GM makes some of the best vehicles around technology wise, but their perception is that of a stodgy car manufacturer.

The reason you think of "mercy killing" or using the proper term in my opinion "euthanasia", for a brand at-least, would be mainly because the product, service, and it's communication is no longer relevant to the market audience the - consumer. So removing any support would not really have a backlash from the customer. If enough consumers really wanted to use the product or service you wouldn't be thinking about "mercy killing" a brand.

If you look through the marketing history of the major FMCG organizations worldwide there are numerous instances of killing off various brands and not all of them mercifully! In 1993 Phillip Morris Companies, killed off their corporate name when they renamed themselves Altria.

Sometimes there are perfectly good reasons to initiate the killing of established brands, this may sound quite shocking, but look at the marketing from Microsoft which has a history of such behaviour. BTW, I do not want to get into discussing the merits of the product itself.

In 1995 they purposely killed "Windows X.1" OS to introduce "Windows 95". Then in 1998 they killed "Windows 95" to introduce "Windows 98". In 2000 they killed "Windows 98" to introduce "Windows ME". In 2001 they killed "Windows ME" to bring out "Windows XP", and this year they officially killed "Windows XP" to introduce "Windows Vista".

In each cycle of killing off a major brand MS had a perfectly good product at the stage and an established revenue stream that generated billions of dollars, yet they chose to start completely afresh rather than create a line extension.

The above was done as part of a planned strategy known as phased obsolescence, which is based on the theory that if one rests on their laurels too long someone will come and eat their cake, so rather than have that happen one eats their own cake and goes out searching for more. Again another simplistic viewpoint, but it should get the message across.

Hopefully, that provides some fodder for thought. There will never be a right or wrong answer to a query like this, only hindsight will make us comment more on the merits and demerits of each.

"What Consumers Want... As a Marketer if you had the power to know..."

As a professional in the "Product Development" business I get to hear and know all the time, directly from consumers, middle men, sales reps, etc.; what kind of products and services the consumers want and desire.

However, as a person with operational and fiscal responsibility towards my company I have to evaluate objectively whether I 'can' and more importantly 'want' to respond to those demands by putting out a product/service that is financially viable for us, and meets the needs to the consumer also.

In my opinion the reason the marketing landscape is littered with stories of failed products and services is because marketers put too much faith in listening to what the consumer wants. Most marketer's also forget way to often and conveniently how fickle the consumer is and what they want and need is a puzzling dynamic to the consumer themselves.

If you see the most common and basic service almost all consumers want across the globe is 'good supportive customer service', however almost every major global organization fails to deliver on that one service repeatedly. Even the ones that have failed or are failing on this count were once evangelical about the merits of deploying good supportive customer service, yet have in the long term determined that 'not' offering good supportive customer service does not alienate customers once a significant user base has been built up. Is there a certain loss of dissatisfied users - absolutely, however the gain from new customers more than offsets the potential losses due to consolidation and lack of competition that is now becoming rampant in various industries.

What all consumers want is choice, but due to market dynamics and governmental regulations we keep limiting that option. So in the end do we really want to listen to the consumer or just use that as an excuse to gain false empathy with the consumer, similar to the way Mel Gibson used his powers in the movie? Point to ponder....