Miura. Countach. Diablo. Murciélago. These names are so legendary that even if you don’t know a thing about high-performance sports cars, you probably recognize a few of those. You hear the name Lamborghini, and you think of some of the most epic cars the world has ever seen. The name practically means “supercar”.

That’s what Lamborghini has done so well for so many decades. They have defined what a supercar is: the fastest, the coolest, and the most expensive. It’s the core of their brand, and it defines them as a company. That’s why their most recent unveiling is so puzzling.

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So there’s this really snazzy restaurant in town called Maranges*. It’s attractive, the food is awesome, and the service is great. They’ve never really had to rely on marketing because most of their new customers came to them via word-of-mouth. Things were great for awhile. It seemed like they’d always have plenty of customers and their restaurant would always be full.

Along Comes the Great Recession.

2 months later and word-of-mouth is no longer bringing in enough business for Maranges to stay afloat. The restaurant goes from consistently full to consistently empty. People aren’t buying and the owners are getting nervous.

So what do they do? They start marketing.

They’re not entirely sure who they’re marketing to, but they’re gonna put themselves out there.

They start by shelling out a few hundred dollars to join a local networking group. They even offer to host the weekly meetings in hopes that members in their group will try the restaurant out for themselves. Unfortunately for Maranges, the members in their group weren’t interested.

Rick, one of the owners panics.

“We’ve gotta get our brand out there. If people try our food and they taste the quality, they’ll like it. If they like it they’ll come back. We have to get our name out there.”

So that’s what they did. They poured thousands of dollars in to TV, billboards, flyers, and radio ads as they worked to get their name “out there”.

Did getting their name out bring in customers?

Nope. All that hard work and their push to get their name out there failed to bring in a single customer. Their restaurant was still empty and they had nothing to show for their marketing efforts.

Maranges was in serious trouble.

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It’s Christmas 1992. I’m really excited. So excited I’m dancing on air. I’m going to get a Super Nintendo.

6 months earlier I told my dad I wanted a Super Nintendo for Christmas. I knew what I wanted and I was direct. My dad chuckled and gave me a sly grin.“okay” he said.

I wasn’t sure if I’d get it but I hoped that I would. About a month later Dad started dropping hints. Then I noticed both my Dad and my Aunt were dropping hints. As Christmas drew closer the hints became more obvious. “We think you’re gonna like your Christmas present” they said with a wink in their eye or “its gonna be big”.

Sweet sassy molassy! I was getting the video game console of my dreams! Man was I keyed up.

So it’s Christmas morning. The box is huge, the proportions look right. “I wonder if they got me a couple of games to go along with it”.

I opened all of my smaller presents first. “Gotta get the opening acts out of the way” I thought. “No way are socks gonna be able to beat an SNES!”.

Finally. The moment of truth. My heart was beating fast. I slowly started to open “the box”. I carefully peeled off the wrapping paper, making sure that the box would remain intact.

And then I saw it.

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Not too long ago Tian Yu Gao opened a toy store in the South China Mall. He was told the location he had his eye on was “prime real estate”. “This Mall will attract 70,000 shoppers a day. Your toy store will be one of the shops in our Mall that stands to make a lot of money”.

“70,000 shoppers, wow that’s a lot of people.” He thought.

So he went for it. He signed the lease, ordered all of his inventory, and opened for business.

Then he waited.
and waited.
and waited.
and waited some more.

One week and he hadn’t even seen a single customer, much less made a sale.

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I was doing some shopping on my kindle fire for some out-of-print books. If you’ve shopped for an out-of-print book before, you know that sellers jack up the price; they know there aren’t a lot of copies left so they do their best to bleed you dry. So when I found the book I wanted for $20 bucks instead of $173, I was preeeetty excited. I headed to the website wallet in hand. “Let the bloodletting begin” I thought happily.

And then the problems started.

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