Know-How Exchange : Branding

What you call it doesn't matter. What matters is what your customers think. If the customers understand the difference(s), you've accomplished the objective.

The key for you is making sure the products or services (or quality levels) are truly meaningful and not just some ruse that differentiates based on something that's unimportant to your customers. How do you know if the differences are meaningful? Ask your customers ... or hoist it up the flagpole and see if anyone salutes.

Hi, Tammy, your question reminds me of a Batman episode (the one with Adam West) where the Riddler sends a message to Batman saying, “Riddle me this: When is a brand NOT a brand?” Robin says, “Holy Marketing, Batman…” Well, it is late Friday and it has been a hard week. Forgive my corny thoughts.

I’d like to start the answer to your question by calibrating terms. Brand is a term that is so generic, that it gets used in many ways and sometimes misused. Really, we have to talk about Brand Strategy first. Brand Strategy is the design of the desired brand image (sometimes called “brand” and sometimes termed “image”) of your product or service over a long period of time. Brand Strategy comprehends anticipated changes in your company, the market environment, and the competition. Brand image is the mental picture consumers have when they are subjected to brand promotions – pictures, words, music, etc. Brand image has a brand personality. The brand personality is a list of descriptors that the image embodies. These descriptors are adjectives or descriptor phrases. For instance, with Ford Trucks, brand personality is rugged, tough, manly, no-nonsense, strong, and so forth. Brand personality brings about brand identity, which is the attributes of the embodiment of the brand image. When you here Ford Truck, you think rugged, manly, reliability, strong, etc. The brand identity includes the big wide wheels (physical appearance), a stiff ride, a long warranty, etc. Brand rules are developed to make sure that all of the marketing and design efforts are all coordinated and compliant with the brand identity. The brand rules apply to all that the customer will experience: brand name, tag lines, logo, colors, packaging, quality and reliability, feature sets, stationery, and so forth. Sometimes a company may have brand extensions. Usually, these are off-shoots of the main brand name to encompass different subsets of features. They may be by design or in reaction to a competitive flanking product. The aim is to take advantage of the brand recognition of the name. If another name was introduced, you start out at zero. Of course, if you have a company name that’s the overall “umbrella” for all brands, then it’s the same as having a brand and brand extensions anyway. Brand extensions work best when the extensions are closely related. However, you never do a brand extension if the extensions “conflict” with each other. Conflict means that each takes away from the other. For instance, if we had a company, McElroy Thoroughbred Racing Stables – dedicated to siring the next Kentucky Derby winners, we would not want to have an extension for McElroy Glue and McElroy Dog Food. While the slogan, “we put horses out to pasture” would fit for each, the combination creates a different brand image than we’d want to create.

In your case, the brand extensions of Classic and Imperial may complement each other and this brand extension may work. Since all strategies change with time, with these extensions, it’s not a big deal to change your strategy to include extensions. The change would be to include both classic and imperial characteristics within your brand identity. And within the “extensions,” you have to develop a brand extension identity and brand rules accordingly. Each of the brand extensions have to have brand rules that define the brand identity. The brand rules would include the attributes of “quality level.” Your brand strategy would include ALL products of all quality levels and each extension would have its own quality level.

Independent of the name, the rationale of repositioning has to be examined, also. The desire to create more separation between brands – you have to ask why? What’s the problem you are trying to solve with this? If it relates to the needs of your consumers and as a reaction to competition, it makes sense. If the effort is “manufacturing driven” – as in we can make things more cheaply if we make these extensions farther apart in terms of quality – That’s probably a bad reason. If you make the quality levels farther apart, it could mean that the segment that needs the Imperial product is too small to warrant a separate product (i.e. they would by the Classic if that’s all they had available). If it’s competition driven – meaning that you need more separation because the competition has this and you are losing sales as a result, than this may be justification for the separation. If there is an unrealized need in the market place with more separation, then the opportunity has to be evaluated versus the cost of developing the differentiation. Bottom line is that it’s your customers’ needs that define if the wider differentiation is desirable or not.

So this covers your question and a bit on either side of your question. I hope this helps.

Wayde

Another example:

XXX Virgin olive oil has an acidity level of less than 2%
XXX Extra-virgin olive oil has an acidity level of no more than 0.8%

XXX is the brand

Virgin grade and Extra-virgin grade are the industry categories common to all competitive brands, and as such they are not brands.

同时,XXX“特级纯”包意ng will have a richer tone than the lesser "Virgin" product ... maybe metallic gold verses metallic silver. But since all the competitors will provide similar packaging solutions for the two categories, it is questionable that these two categories can be considered two brands.

Hope this helps,

Steve

Simply, something is a brand when both you and your customers say it is. As the other responses describe, you need to position the brands and your customers need to be able to tell (and care about) the difference.

Having a high-end brand can only help to build trust of your lower-end brands. This is well described in Dan Ariely's book "Predictably Irrational" (My review of it:https://www.manygoodideas.com/2009/03/01/predictably-irrational/)

We've done a lot of consulting on branding, line extensions, positioning and differentiating. There's no simple answer.

It sounds like you're in a bit of a quagmire when it comes to differentiating your products, and that can really have a deteriorating effect on the basic brand. You need help before it's too late.

Unfortunately, this forum can't possibly get into your issues at the level you need. Better to hire an expert to consult with you and see if you can salvage something of your branding strategy.