In the 1930’s and 1940’s, the Carlay Company in Chicago, Illinois developed a candy coated dietary suppressant called Ayds. It sold the business to Campana Corporation. Campana was then sold to Dow Chemical. In the 1960’s, Dow sold the business to Purex and hired legendary Hollywood stars and other celebrities to endorse the product. In 1981, Purex exited the business by selling it to a firm called Jeffrey Martin, Inc.
[mainbodyad]Throughout the 1970’s and early 1980’s, Ayds was very successful, generating a lot of cash for Campana. Things were still fine when the business was sold to Jeffrey Martin, Inc. However, between 1982 and 1987, a virus named HIV reached critical mass and resulted in a condition scientists dubbed AIDs, an acronym for Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome . It was pronounced exactly the same way as Ayds. Overnight, television newscasts and newspapers showed pictures of healthy young people suddenly dying in a matter of weeks or months after becoming sick and wasting away to skeletons, with headlines screaming “AIDs”. Blood transfusions caused children get infected and pass away. Mothers infected infants. The entire African continent began to be gripped by the virus, destroying generations.
Sales of Ayds maintained their steady pace for awhile, and in 1987 the Dep Corporation bought Jeffrey Martin, Inc.
One year later, in 1988, Ayds revenue had collapsed by 50%. The brand equity was utterly destroyed, beyond the hope of any redemption. For a moment, there was a glimmer of a turnaround when management announced it was going to rebrand and relaunch the product. The new name was chosen. The executives announced the new, reintroduced product would be called – get ready for this – “Diet Ayds”.
I’m not kidding. I wish I were. Apparently, the brilliant folks in the corporate wing thought that was sufficiently different to get people to overcome their now-conditioned response to hearing the word “AIDs” and seeing people waste away to death almost instantaneously. Who, after all, wouldn’t want to go on the “Ayds diet plan”? Doesn’t it sound appetizing to you? It is hard to believe, but the marketing team behind Ayds seemingly didn’t understand what they were up against: That people were trying to avoid AIDs at all cost, which meant they were not going to pick up Ayds in the grocery store.
The advertising was clueless and the owners too paralyzed by fear of change to take decisive action. The original claims, which had long since been refuted, were that you could, “Lose 10 pounds in 5 days with Ayds”, taking on an irony that is only clear in retrospect. Look at this commercial that aired the year I was born.
Here is one more marketing example … get back into a size six with Ayds. Question: Why take diet pills when you can enjoy Ayds?
When a situation like this arises, and there is no way the brand name can be salvaged, you move quickly. You don’t sit around and hope it’s going to work out for the best. A perfectly good business was wiped off the face of the planet because the people who owned it didn’t understand the mere association mental model.
This is why mental models matter. If you had studied them and were a controlling shareholder or manager, you would have had a much better chance at seeing what a nightmare this was long before the company realized it. It could have saved millions of dollars and a lot of jobs.
Reader Comments (11)
Comments are presented chronologically, with replies indented beneath the comments to which they respond.
Arnav
August 6, 2013
Hahah I'm sorry but I find this story really hilarious. Man, you write well.
Arnav
August 6, 2013
Replying to Arnav
I know its a sensitive subject and I don't mean to be a d**k or anything, but the “Lose 10 pounds in 5 days with Ayds” just cracked me up
Jeff
August 6, 2013
Replying to Arnav
With lines like that, I have half a mind to believe people didn't buy because they thought it was some joke product. Seriously, I'm no business guru, but how does a committee of otherwise intelligent people make a series of decisions that leads to this kind of branding and advertising?
Arnav
August 7, 2013
Replying to Jeff
On a serious note, like Joshua said the owners were probably too paralyzed by fear of changing the branding. Now when i think about it, its easy to laugh at something like that, its actually easy to laugh at any mishap until you have the same experiences.
If i had to guess, probably two things went through their minds:
1) No one speculated at that time i guess, that HIV affected patients would be incurable. In a time where man had already set foot on the moon, with scientific advancement accelerating at such a rapid pace, their emotional brain should have led them to believe that "this virus is a temporary phase, our brand is much bigger than this, we shall prevail"
Just because there is chickenpox you don't stop eating chicken.
2) There is a certain kind of emotional attachment to your company's brand name that sometimes words cannot explain. They must have had that sort of attachment to 'Ayds'. Now this might sound ridiculously hilarious but keep in mind that they came up with 'Ayds' way before 'AIDS' ever existed. To uproot your brand name over a virus they must have thought is temporary, would not have made sense to them at that time.
But Joshua is right, when your brand name cannot be salvaged, you must move quickly. You must be detached. You love your brand like your baby, yet be ruthless about it in the face of calamity. What a paradox. This is the nature of business I guess.
But what does it take to have the right judgement that you can make decisions based on? That's the question we should all be asking after this story.
Jeff
August 7, 2013
Replying to Arnav
I can only speculate, but I imagine they didn't think that the AIDS epidemic would become so ingrained in the public mind when it first started to get publicity. If the internet has taught me one thing, it is that it can be difficult to tell when something is going to become wildly popular or fall by the wayside.
Von
August 7, 2013
Replying to Arnav
I thought it was hilarious too. Especially when I realized that "Diet Ayds" sounds remarkably like "Die of Aids".
Angel
August 7, 2013
AIDS beats AYDS in weight loss
Anon
August 7, 2013
Mandatory.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jared_Has_Aides
H-Segment
August 10, 2013
There's a story I tell about my childhood that relates to this Ayds story. It was 1982ish and the family was staying with Grandma and Grandpa in Az. I spotted these "candies" on my grandma's dresser and you know, I stole a couple and ate them because they were caramels, called AYDS... Right?
Later that afternoon I was goofing around and listening to the radio when I heard of the horrible new "AIDS" outbreak which was killing so many people! I freaked out! No telling how much of that reaction was due to the fact that I was surely jacked up on Ayds caffeine, but I was suddenly really scared!
It became funny after confessing my crime to grandma, her reassuring me that I didn't just get AIDS, and my losing 10 pounds in 5 days as a fifth grader... Just kidding.
I'll never forget the "Oh S$#T!" feeling I had, sitting there with the aftertaste of delicious diet candy, the insectoid buzz of caffeine and the fear that I had just killed myself...
Zaphod
January 6, 2015
Replying to H-Segment
omg, thats quality material.
archont
August 15, 2013
Although now you can't help but laugh, it wasn't as obvious back then. However a pharma company really should know better than that. Management was asleep at the wheel.