100 Mistakes That Changed History: Backfires and Blunders That Collapsed Empires, Crashed Economies, and Altered the Course of Our World

by Bill Fawcett

  92

  PUT UP WITH THIS MISTAKE

  Sticky Problem

  1968

  In 1968 a scientist at 3M named Spencer Silver decided to work on improving one of the most successful of that company’s products, adhesive tape. What was needed was a better glue that held more firmly, but still allowed the tape to be removed. By 1970, he had instead developed something very different, but of no use to adhesive tape. What Silver had managed to produce was a glue that was easy to remove but had only weak sticking power. Interesting, but seemingly a failure if there were no commercial uses for it. Four years passed, and then a colleague of the scientist commented that he was frustrated that the small sheets of paper he used to mark that day’s songs in his hymnal would fall out. The friend didn’t want to use tape because he was worried about harming the book’s pages. Finally there was a use for the weak glue that had been a mistaken result four years earlier. By 1980, the Post-it note was found in offices all over the world.

  93

  UNNEEDED RISK

  Watergate

  1973

  Mired in a political scandal that threatened to destroy his presidency, Richard Nixon famously declared, “I am not a crook,” in a televised Q and A session with 400 Associated Press managing editors in November 1973; while he never recanted such words, the enormity of evidence suggesting he was a crook left a permanent blemish on Nixon’s presidency. As a result of the Watergate scandal, Nixon became not “the president who ended Vietnam” or “the president who oversaw large-scale racial integration” or even “the president who helped take America to the moon.” Nixon instead became “the president who resigned to avoid being justifiably impeached.”

  The scandal initially looked like a mere robbery. On July 17, 1972, a security guard at the Watergate Office Complex—where the Democratic National Headquarters was located—noticed that tape was covering several doors to keep them unlocked. He removed the tape and continued his shift, but when he noticed that the doors had been retaped, he phoned the police. Five men were arrested and later indicted, along with two others, for conspiracy and burglary. The burglars had on their persons and in their hotel rooms thousands of dollars of cash that could be traced back to the 1972 Committee to Reelect the President, a fund-raising organization for the Nixon administration that was given the pejorative acronym CREEP by his opponents. This connection between the committee and the burglary earned the burglary considerable media attention. The scandal became the subject of an investigative journalism project spearheaded by Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, who relied largely on anonymous sources. Their correspondence with a source referred to as “Deep Throat” (revealed in 2005 to be former FBI Associate Director William Mark Felt) suggested that the burglary and its coverup had ties to the FBI, the Justice Department, and even the White House. This fueled a broader investigation that did not end with the burglars’ convictions. It was not long before Nixon asked for the resignation of some of his closest aides implicated in the scandal, H. R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman. He also fired White House Counsel John Dean, who would later become a witness against Nixon.

  Hearings held by the Senate garnered substantial media coverage; the majority of Americans saw some segment of the hearings between May 17 and August 7. It was learned during the hearings that all conversations held inside the Oval Office were recorded. Archibald Cox, a special counsel in the Justice Department charged with examining the Watergate scandal, subpoenaed the tapes; Nixon refused, citing executive privilege and issues of national security, and ordered Cox to withdraw the subpoena. Nixon offered Cox a rigged compromise: John C. Stennis, a famously hard-of-hearing Senator from Mississippi, would review the tapes and summarize them for the special prosecutors. When Cox refused, Nixon forced the resignation of Attorney General Elliott Richardson. The attorney general had been appointed just two months before, and he refused to comply with Nixon’s demand to fire Cox. Richardson was replaced with Robert Bork. Bork reluctantly dismissed Cox and replaced him with Leon Jaworski, who picked up where Cox left off. It was this incident, dubbed by the press as the “Saturday Night Massacre,” that led Nixon to assert he was not a crook.

  Jaworski did not give up. His efforts caused Nixon to attempt a compromise, releasing transcripts of the tapes with information pertinent to national security redacted. Controversy stemmed from an almost twenty-minute gap in one of the tapes. In July 1974, the Supreme Court mandated that full access to the tapes had to be granted. That same month, the House Judiciary Committee voted to recommend three articles of impeachment against the president: obstruction of justice, abuse of power, and contempt of Congress. In August, a tape was released that was deemed the smoking gun of the affair, an irrefutable piece of evidence that destroyed Nixon politically. It detailed a 1972 conversation between Nixon and Haldeman in which Haldeman described a plan to cover up the burglary by having the CIA obstruct an FBI investigation into the affair; Nixon approved the plan. That conversation, along with charges that Nixon paid blackmail money to hush conspirators, sounded the death knell for Nixon’s presidency. Nixon’s own lawyers abandoned him, and many who had been reluctant to impeach him declared that they had changed their minds.

  Though Nixon never admitted to being involved in Watergate or its coverup, he did declare that he regretted not handling the scandal correctly. After being informed that there were enough votes in Congress to impeach him, he resigned on August 8, 1974. His successor was Vice President Gerald Ford, who a month later fully pardoned Nixon to protect him from criminal prosecution. Such an action drew accusations that a deal had been made between Ford and Nixon in which the latter would be pardoned for handing over the mantle of the presidency, though no evidence of such a deal has ever surfaced. Many attribute Ford’s defeat in the election of 1976 to the Watergate incident.

  The political landscape in the decades following Watergate had been irrevocably altered by the political consequences of Nixon’s actions. Initially, the Democrats gained substantial ground in congressional elections as a result of the subterfuge of a Republican organization devoted to getting Republicans elected. The practice of recording conversations in the White House ended. Many new laws came into existence with the ostensible purpose of encouraging ethics in government.

  Our language now shows just how deeply Nixon’s Watergate mistake affected the nation. Any public scandal is defined with the “-gate” suffix. These are across-the-board issues ranging from sports to pop culture: Spygate (a football controversy involving the New England Patriots spying on the New York Jets); Monica-gate (Monica Lewinsky’s ill-fated relationship with President Bill Clinton); and, more recently, Kanye-Gate (singer Kanye West publicly humiliating another singer during a televised awards ceremony).

  Nixon oversaw many positive political developments during his tenure. He had significant foreign policy successes, such as his historic visit to China in 1972, which opened up diplomatic relations with them. He also initiated the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with the Soviet Union, and he signed a cease-fire with North Korea, effectively ending American involvement in the Vietnam War. He made significant advances on the domestic front, implementing many of the most progressive social reforms of the 1960s. During his presidency, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was created, and Nixon signed the Clean Air Act and supported extensive conservation measures and environmental reforms. He was also the first president to take up the issue of welfare reform. He signed important legislation prohibiting gender discrimination and implemented the first significant Affirmative Action program. Perhaps most notable, he was pivotal in desegregating Southern public schools.

  When the Watergate was broken into, Richard Nixon was up almost twenty points in the polls. He had a lead that was beyond insurmountable and won easily. Watergate was just not necessary on any level. This one mistake meant that his other achievements have been completely overshadowed by scandal. Perhaps the most negative consequence of Watergate was the rise i
n public cynicism toward politicians. So many investigations went on after Watergate—often initiated primarily to destroy political opponents—that the public became jaded. In the decades since Watergate, public apathy for important political issues has risen. Politicians and their political agendas are often looked at with deep skepticism. This mistake changed how we view our leaders. The fallout has reverberated across the decades, ushering in a new era of public cynicism, apathy, and partisanship that continues to this day.

  94

  INCOMPLETE RESEARCH

  Marketing Madness?

  1985

  In 1985, Coca-Cola created what many consider to be one of the biggest marketing fiascos in history by replacing the old Coca-Cola formula with a new version of Coke to compete with a sweeter-tasting Pepsi. Public outrage was so great that Coca-Cola was forced to reintroduce the old version just seventy-nine days later. Six months after New Coke was launched, Coke was back on top, with sales increasing at more than twice the rate of Pepsi’s. So was it really a colossal marketing failure or a stroke of marketing genius?

  Right after World War II, Coca-Cola enjoyed a 52 percent share of the cola market. But in the fifteen years before the introduction of New Coke, sales were slipping, while Pepsi’s continued to grow. By the early 1980s, Coke’s market share had dwindled to 24 percent, primarily because Pepsi was beginning to outsell Coke in supermarkets and other venues. In the 1960s, Pepsi had successfully targeted the youth market, which seemed to prefer its sweeter taste. Executives at Coca-Cola were convinced they had to take drastic action to stay ahead of the competition. So in 1983, Coca-Cola launched Project Kansas (named after a famous photo of a Kansas journalist sipping a Coke) to come up with a sweeter, better-tasting formula. They began conducting top-secret research and taste tests.

  Why would Coca-Cola tinker with the legendary secret formula that had been so successful for almost 100 years? It primarily came down to the perception that Pepsi tasted better than Coke. Taste tests conducted by both cola rivals showed that most people preferred the taste of Pepsi. And later taste-test results went even further to validate the idea that Coca-Cola should reformulate its flagship beverage. Not only did consumers express a preference for Pepsi over Coke in those taste tests, but they also preferred the New Coke formula (dubbed Kansas) over both old Coke and Pepsi.

  However, three serious research and marketing problems emerged, which were not fully understood by the company until after New Coke was launched. The first problem had to do with the taste tests themselves. The tests used small samples the participants were supposed to sip. While many people preferred the sweeter taste of Pepsi in small amounts, they didn’t care for the soda in larger amounts, like those found in a typical can. In fact Coke is often preferred in larger volumes because it is less sweet.

  The second problem is what is called “sensation transference.” First coined in the late 1940s, the phrase is used to describe the phenomenon of tasters unconsciously responding to the drink’s packaging, and that product packaging can change the perceived taste. In the case of Coke, people responded to the red color of the can with its distinctive script when tasting the beverage. Many marketing experts think it may be impossible to separate the taste of the product from its brand name and distinctive package.

  The third problem was that the company underestimated the sentimental value attached to the original Coca-Cola, which many people considered an integral part of American culture and tradition. When the initial taste-test results came back favorable toward New Coke, the executives decided to conduct surveys and focus groups to help decide if they should get rid of old Coke altogether or keep both old and new formulas. However, because of the intense secrecy surrounding the prelaunch marketing research, they never asked a key question: Do you want us to replace the old Coke with a new version of Coke? Instead, they asked people if they would purchase and drink Kansas if it were called Coke instead. Only a small percentage of people completing the survey said they would not purchase the Kansas drink if it were renamed Coke. However, the executives chose to ignore 11 percent of those in focus groups who stated that they would stop drinking Coke altogether if the Kansas choice was called Coke. And this segment of the focus group population was an exceedingly vocal and angry minority, ultimately influencing others in those Kansas test groups indirectly and causing the negatives to jump way up.

  The executives ultimately decided that keeping both the old and new Cokes would divide their own share of the soda market and the result would be that Coke would no longer be the number-one-selling cola in the United States. Pepsi could then claim not only that more people prefer the taste of Pepsi over Coke but that more people drink Pepsi than Coke. The last thing the company wanted was to wage a cola war between two competing versions of Coke. Fearing a marketing nightmare, Coca-Cola replaced old Coke with New Coke, instead of introducing New Coke as another soda option.

  They timed the release of New Coke with much fanfare and to coincide with the company’s hundredth birthday. New Coke was launched on April 23, 1985, and production of the original version was halted that same week. Sweeter and smoother, New Coke tasted much more like Pepsi than an improved version of the original Coke.

  The public backlash was immediate. People began hoarding old Coke. Many likened it to trampling the American flag. Protest groups were formed, such as Old Cola Drinkers of America, which boasted more than 100,000 recruits trying to bring back old Coke. Even Coke bottlers were concerned. They wondered how to promote a drink that had always been marketed as “The Real Thing” now that it had been so dramatically changed. There was noise made that the bottlers themselves might follow consumers and boycott the product. But public protests, boycotts, and the dumping of bottles into city streets were just some of the company’s problems. Company headquarters was bombarded with more than 400,000 calls and letters. Coca-Cola hired a psychiatrist to listen in on phone calls to the hotline. The doctor reported to executives that some of the callers were so distraught over losing their beloved old Coke it was as if they were talking about the death of a family member.

  On July 11, the company announced the return of old Coke to store shelves. The news was so big it made the front page of every major newspaper in the United States, and two major networks interrupted their regular programming to break the news as it occurred. Some likened it to “the second coming.” Phone calls and letters again flooded headquarters, this time expressing profound gratitude. “You would have thought we cured cancer,” one company executive said, describing the joyous response. The company president, Donald Keough, explained the entire fiasco this way: “We did not understand the deep emotions of so many of our customers for Coca-Cola.”

  The crucial failing on Coca-Cola’s part was that they never asked Coke drinkers themselves if they wanted a new version of their beloved soft drink at the expense of losing the old, familiar drink. Their mistake at least changed the soda-drinking habits of millions all over the world. Coca-Cola ended the fiasco having lost several percentage points of the soda market when people, avoiding New Coke, found other flavors from other companies that they liked. That was tens of millions of shoppers putting something else in their carts all over the world.

  As for the theory that Coca-Cola orchestrated a brilliant tactical move by temporarily pulling old Coke to generate overwhelming demand, Donald Keogh may have put it best: “Some critics will say Coca-Cola made a marketing mistake. Some cynics will say that we planned the whole thing. The truth is we are not that dumb, and we are not that smart.”

  95

  OPEN SAYS A ME

  A Real Press Release

  1989

  The man most responsible for the collapse of the East German government and the reunification of Germany was a communist bureaucrat. The mistake, and the change it initiated, came in relation to the Berlin Wall. That wall had been put up to stop a hemorrhage of refugees traveling from East Germany to West Germany. The best and most-trained East Germans also had the most
to gain by crossing to the West where wages were often ten times as much as in the socialist economy. First the border was closed. Most of the border between the two German states was either fenced, hard to reach, or both. So closing it was more a matter of instructing border guards than of engaging in construction. This left the anomaly of West Berlin. Sitting in the center of East Germany, the city was part of West Germany due to the agreement of the Yalta Conference between the Allies during World War II. When the rest of the border was closed, East Germans began to pour across the dividing line down the center of the city. To stop this exodus, the East German government built the notorious Berlin Wall. The wall was actually a series of obstructions and guard towers culminating in a high concrete wall or bricked windows. In the years that followed, almost 300 East Germans were killed and hundreds more wounded attempting to flee across the wall’s barbed wire and other obstructions. It became a visible symbol of Soviet repression.