Limits and opportunities in brand innovation and brand extension exercises

Illustration photo, www.trendwatching.com

Recently I had the chance to work on several new product/brand extension launches which taught me quite a few lessons which I'd like to share with you over the next few days.

Lesson 1: Never extend the brand if its identity isn't well defined

Successful brand extension doesn't come in family packs. There's nothing wrong with intuitive marketing but if you plan to spend some time and money on the brand extension exercise you'd better minimize the uncertainty of the outcome (to a feasible level). The key question to ask here is how does your brand generate value - and I mean not only value for the customer but also for you as a company. You can capture the whole picture of your brands consumer value through strategy canvas - a useful and simple tool suggested and developed by W. Chan Kim and Rene Mauborgne. You should also be able to boil it down to no more than a few words (ideally ONE). This will give you focus and direction in brand extension/innovation process which very often drags on for months, so it is quite easy to loose the sense of purpose. Also, brand archetyping can come handy. In principle you should try at least two or three alternative planning approaches to make sure your brand's DNA is clearly and simply set out.

As far as the value for the company is concerned, you should be able to assess your company assets and verify that a) these assets can and will support the new extension, b) the new brand extension integrates well with your successful business model (distribution-wise, price-wise, etc.)

Next time, Lesson 2: How to develop product concepts.