When it comes to last year’s least successful new product launch, my vote goes to Stoli Group’s (yes, that Stoli!) $150 million bourbon and rye whiskey rollout.
After a massive investment in a state-of-the-art distillery that reached full production, the initiative lost its kick and was a significant contributor to the American subsidiary’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Kind of ironic since results like that are generally enough to drive anyone to drink!
Introducing a new product without real brand consonance (better still, a predictive brand consonance metric) for 21st-century consumers in a 21st-century marketplace is like setting sail across the Atlantic in a tub – bold, exciting, and almost guaranteed to sink.
Yes, many companies have entire divisions devoted to innovation and new products that purport to plan just like that. But lately, it feels less like planning is more like reckoning. Despite decades of process improvements, innovation frameworks, ISO upgrades, and marketing sophistication, new product failure remains brutally consistent:
- 70–90% of new product launches fail within the first year, especially in CPG and retail.
- 32% of new FMCG launches become inactive within a year.
- Across industries, only 28% of new products survive more than two years.
According to Booz Allen (and echoed by Harvard Business Review), roughly $260 billion is spent globally each year on new product development. A conservative estimate suggests $100–$150 billion of that is wasted on products that never succeed commercially. 58%. Zowie! At that level, failed launches don’t look like mistakes – they look like a business model.
And these aren’t just statistics; they’re warning signs. Many “introductions” today are just glorified limited time offers or horizontal product extensions (like Coke Blāk. Yeah, look it up). Even as marketing has grown more technologically advanced, the industry has largely accepted these failure rates as inevitable. An immutable law of business. As the joke goes: In CPG planning, they always know exactly what the consumer wants – right after the product fails. But failures are no joke!
So how do you increase the success rate of new products?
First, accept that failure isn’t fate. It’s the result of outdated thinking and misaligned planning. Or in some cases, no planning. The real surprise isn’t the failure rate – it’s that strategic models haven’t evolved to address it. Some blame today’s hyper-savvy, choice-saturated consumer.
Others argue that meaningful differentiation is harder than ever, or that viable market niches have vanished, or innovation cycles are too short to matter. All fair points. But they’re not the root cause.
The deeper truth is this: most brands still plan launches around how they wish consumers made looked at the category and made decisions, not how they actually look at the category and make decisions.
That’s because success today isn’t about awareness. It’s not about “me-too” features or NPS scores. It’s about emotional engagement. New products must feel immediate, instinctive, and personally relevant. They must feel like they belong in consumers’ lives – before they’re even tried. They must meet (or exceed) category expectations. And yes, they should actually feel new. Oh, and some reasonable degree of brand consonance doesn’t hurt!
This isn’t a new idea. A seminal Advertising Research Foundation study back in 1990 found “Commercials that are liked sell better than those that are not liked.” That should have changed everything. “Liking” signals emotional relevance. And engagement. A “This is for me” moment. Alas, the industry largely ignored it, redefining engagement more as “time spent” rather than emotional connection. Worse, liking was often measured after creative development, when it was too late to influence strategy. Add in the more-recent shift from emotional engagement to pure entertainment – the “That was funny. What was it for?” ads – and you get new product launches that entertain but don’t sell.
Emotional engagement means a product connects with consumers in a meaningful, brand-relevant, brand-consonant, expectation-exceeding way. It builds trust, attachment, motivation, and ultimately loyalty. Oh, and profits quickly follow. The emotions evoked aren’t random; they’re strategically aligned with what the brand stands for (or what a new product could stand for) and what it wants consumers to think, feel, and do. It should build engagement, trial, loyalty, and sales.
Entertainment, by contrast, amuses, even surprises, without motivating. People remember the joke, the visuals, the puppies – but forget the brand. Worse, don’t buy the new product the ad was “hired” to sell. Even if it goes viral, it may get acknowledgment, even applause. It just doesn’t get sales. Emotional engagement, on the other hand, gets action.
In 2026 – and frankly, for the past two decades – launch success isn’t driven by a better product, although that doesn’t hurt. Mostly it’s driven by better placement. Not shelf space, in life. Not media weight. Emotional and psychological heft. The real question isn’t “Did people notice?” or “Were they entertained?” It’s “Did they immediately feel this was for them? And traditional research won’t answer that.
Why? Do you remember the definition of “insanity?”
OK, more than that, because it’s built on what consumers say they think – not what they really think and truly expect, believe, or are ready to accept. That’s why Brand Keys was originally developed. To move beyond traditional testing into predictive modeling of emotional engagement. Fusing marketing strategy, psychology, and behavioral and econometrics reveals:
- What consumers really expect
- What they’re willing to believe
- How emotionally bonded they’ll be before launch
- Where the product fits in their lives – and hearts
- Which positioning, messaging, and attributes will make them care
Look, this isn’t a post-mortem. It’s a forward-looking strategic tool that anticipates real behavior and real emotional drivers – before you go to market. And it matters (or should) because a failed launch isn’t just lost revenue. It weakens the brand, wastes R&D, slows time-to-loyalty, and hands competitors an advantage. Oh, and generally annoys consumers. Just saying.
The old metrics – awareness, recall, rationalized preference, satisfaction, all the Net Promoter scores in the world, and gut-guessing – can’t deliver the future. They barely explain the past.
And just because a brand can, doesn’t mean they should. (Think Colgate Kitchen Entrees or Levis Tailored Classic Suits!)
What matters now is predictive emotional insight. Whether consumers feel your new product is authentic, belongs in their lives, and how well it meets their expectations for their category Ideal. Which is what we do at Brand Keys. You can see this year’s brands that did it best in our most recent, predictive Customer Loyalty Engagement Index here. With the right tools, expectations and emotional engagement, brand consonance and success, is measurable, predictable, and actionable.
Because a new product launch shouldn’t be an expensive way to learn what customers wanted in the first place.
Photo by Andy Hermawan on Unsplash
