Level2wo

Don’t Dilute Your Brand

Building your brand is a lot of work and not something you really want to damage–so when you’re thinking of extending or stretching your brand, think hard.

Brand extension, simply put, means taking a product’s image and using the brand to extend or move into a different product category–with the hope obviously being that the product will be accepted by the consumer or target market because of the strong name and brand behind it.

A brand’s ability to successfully extend their brand depends heavily on whether or not the consumer appropriately associates the brand with the values and goals being exemplified in the new product. A very basic way of hypothesizing if a brand will be able to extend is by stepping back and analyzing what currently makes the brand a success–that is, what are the brand’s key attributes? If a brand speaks of quality, exemplifies a certain lifestyle, and whose products are, say, gourmet foods from France, it may not be such a stretch for the company to extend to higher-end wines from France. But if a brand is currently associated with cleaning products from Germany, it would be a bit of a stretch for the brand to extend to high-performance automobiles.

The problem with brand extension is that consumer’s are a fickle group in general, and extending a brand is a costly, and often ineffective and unsuccessful, way of generating addition revenue. What happens in this case is known as brand dilution–which basically means diluting the good brand you already have by extending it. Extending a brand is often a bad idea, and one which should be thought upon heavily–because it will affect the brand in general, not just the new product being associated with it.

What often can happen with extending a brand is cannibalization of the brand’s own products. If you’re a soft drink maker, and you put out 2 or 3 different soft drinks that compete with your original product, you could be shooting yourself in the foot. While sales for the new product may go up, it comes at a cost, and often that cost is lower sales for your original product.

Some bad brand extensions:

1. Sylvestor Stallone’s high protein pudding
2. Budweiser Energy beer
3. Diesel Jeans Wine
4. Smackers Starburst Bath and Body Collection
5. Chicken Soup for the Soul Pet Food

Some good brand extensions:

1. Arm and Hammer toothpaste
2. Petsmart Petshotel
3. Curves Cereal
4. Better Homes and Garden Real Estate Network
5. Guinness Whole Grain Bread

Trackback URI | Comments RSS