New Strategies in Building Profitable Brand Extensions

Summary
The report identifies and categorizes different brand extension possibilities, and highlights key examples of success and failure in each area. The content matches up brand extensions with consumer trends with a view to identifying the most important factors, both overall and within specific categories, that determine the success or failure of a brand extension.


Synopsis
- Understand how to manage the balance between cannibalizing existing sales, versus stretching the brand too far.

- Identify occasions to extend your brand to target a new audience, and those when is it more beneficial to target existing customers.

- Learn how to extend a brand into different price points without damaging consumer perceptions of its value.

- Learn from multiple brand extension examples, both successes and failures. Understand the determining factors.

- Identify undeveloped/undifferentiated categories where your brand could be at a significant advantage.

Reasons To Buy
- What is the difference between brand extensions and line extensions, and which strategy is appropriate for which products and audiences?

- What are the most important consumer-level trends to bear in mind when considering how to create effective brand extensions?

- Is co-branding with another player an effective way to gain equity when a brand is being launched in a different category?

- How can the use of brand extensions give companies an advantage when moving into a new or emerging category?

- How can marketers avoid “delusions of brandeur” and ensure that they only extend into products which are appropriate for their range?

Key Highlights
The priority when creating brand extensions is to ensure both that existing bonds between consumers and a brand drive extra revenue or at least margin, and that a brand's emotional bonds with consumers are deepened.

Consumers no longer solely want a product, they want an experience - whether this relates to their experience in everyday shopping, or to a confectionery or alcohol product enjoyed as a treat. Brands can and should take advantage of this demand.

While cannibalization is generally seen as a bad thing, it is sometimes inherent to launching a brand extension that takes share from competitors - and in any case, if you can cannibalize your old product with a more profitable one, that is an improvement on the status quo.