What You Need to Know About Marketing by Simon Middleton

Author:Simon Middleton
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2012-04-04T04:00:00+00:00

BRAND EXTENSION AND SUB-BRANDS

When a brand is established and showing signs of either success or distress, many companies start to dream up new brands, sub-brands and brand extensions. The phrase brand extension just describes the phenomenon of a brand being successful in one arena taking its brand name into another. There are real advantages to this move, but also great dangers. Brand success tends to make sense for the company when it makes sense to the customer: when the customer either understands or feels that there is a real connection between the two products which bear the same brand name?

The Polo brand from Ralph Lauren successfully made the jump from clothing to home furnishings. The connections are strong: linen, comfort, New England style. The Arm & Hammer toothpaste brand was a natural extension of the same brand’s baking soda product. Virgin is one of the greatest of brand extenders, as we have already seen. But when connections are tenuous brand extensions are likely to be less successful. Virgin Cola is no longer with us, nor Colgate ready meals. Nor bicycles from Smith & Wesson (yes the gun manufacturer).

Brand extension is used all the time as a method of ‘protecting’ new products in a ruthless marketplace where anonymity can mean quick death. A successful brand extension means one is no longer starting from scratch. But not only is extension a fast-track to launching a new product or service in a new sector, it can also be a very quick way to damage all the good work done to create the original brand.

One of the most famous of all brand extension flops was Coca Cola’s introduction of ‘New Coke’ in 1985. A quarter of a century later this embarrassing failure continues to be recounted and must have done the company untold financial damage in terms of lost sales over the years. Of course the company has successfully introduced other extensions, of several different kinds, but it’s never again tried to ‘replace’ its original product.

BIC Pens tried to produce BIC tights and stockings. The link was disposability. BIC pens are used and thrown away. As are BIC disposable razors. Same for the tights, went the theory. But women didn’t want them. There ‘seemed’ to be a logical connection: but there wasn’t any kind of emotional one. Some recent brand extension successes include pet-food producer Iams launching pet insurance (a clear logical/emotional connection?), Starbucks launching a coffee liqueur, and National Geographic cleverly partnering with Google Earth to give the long established National Geographic brand a whole new lease of life.

Another facet of brand extension is the ‘sub-brand’ which describes a kind of child of the original brand. Again, there are potentially real benefits in giving the new brand a kick-start in the market-place, but there are also dangers. Walkers have had great success with their Sensations sub-brand, but have not done as well with other extensions. Cadbury’s opened hot-chocolate shops and then closed them. PG opened tea-shops and then closed them.

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