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We Don't Suck Anymore: Difference between revisions

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We Don't Suck Anymore (view source)

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* The Coca-Cola/New Coke/Coke Classic saga.
* "Have you driven a Ford, lately?"
** Most Detroit automakers were in heavy damage control mode in the [[The Eighties|early 1980's1980s]], as their product was perceived as [[The Alleged Car|far lower quality]] than its Japanese competitors. [[Every Car Is a Pinto|The low point was the exploding Pinto]] in [[The Seventies|the early 1970's1970s]], although Ralph Nader ("Unsafe at Any Speed") managed to make some big consumer complaints stick against GM. US compact and subcompact vehicles in the [[Every Car Is Rear Wheel Drive]] era were underperforming – which wasn't too notable when imports were going through their own reputational issues in [[The Sixties]] (a time when Americans preferred larger cars in any case). Detroit was caught flat-footed by the Arab oil embargo of 1973 and by oil shortages after the Iranian Revolution in 1978-79. Motorists suddenly wanted small, fuel-efficient vehicles and Toyota (or other non-US manufacturers, particularly Japan) were perceived as more modern factories where robots built better cars.
** Chrysler was infamous for ads where the company's president, Lee Iococca, appeared on-screen personally with a "If you can find a better car, buy it" slogan in an attempt to shake the "K is for Kwality" reputation the cars had built over the years. (Because Ford had sacked Iococca early in the Pinto debacle, he managed to Dodge the worst of the fallout by jumping to crosstown competitor Chrysler before everything hit the fan. This allowed him to credibly adopt the same marketing style as Victor Kiam, the Remington Products boss who peddled then-obsolete electric razor designs with "it lifts and separates" and "made in America, costs much less. I liked it so much, I bought the company". [[Hilarious in Hindsight]] as the boxy "K cars" and the shavers which pull the hairs out were clunky compared to the same-manufacturer products today.)
** Ford was also deeply in damage control mode in [[The Eighties]] with their "Quality is Job 1" slogan, advertised in saturation in prime-time for years. Eventually, the quality of Detroit motorcars did improve, but a turnaround on that scale takes years... and a lot of PR damage control was done in the meantime.
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* Microsoft's campaign with the Office 97 dinosaurs also qualifies.
* Hardee's/Carl's Jr when they invented the Thickburger. It was widely imitated
* [[Cartoon Network]] tried this approach when promoting it'sits CNReal programming block, saying "[[Network Decay|We're not just cartoons anymore]]." The problem was, hardly anybody ''thought'' they sucked before, so it just made people angry and the block failed.
* A [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeGBf5lnhhY commercial] for the Atari 5200 actually lampooned their infamous Atari 2600 Pac-Man. This was because the Colecovision had an expansion module available that could play Atari 2600 games, and Atari was discouraging people from the competition.
* When Hyundai reentered the American market after addressing safety concerns, they aired a slick commercial showing a car driving through the countryside while an announcer described the car without mentioning the company, until the last line of the ad, which ended like with the words "...with the new Scoupe from Hyundai...yes, Hyundai."
* Since 1997, every re-release of the original [[Star Wars]] trilogy featured changes made by [[George Lucas]] to make them closer to his original vision, including enhanced special effects. What he failed to realise is that [[Magnum Opus Dissonance|the fans didn't feel there was much need for improvement]].
* Microsoft's "The Browser You Loved To Hate" [[Internet Explorer]] [https://web.archive.org/web/20140114164915/http://www.browseryoulovedtohate.com/ campaign].
 
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