2018 has begun with a lively debate around the latest moves in the carbonated soft drinks arena by the the folks from Atlanta ( or should they be called Atlanteans?) as they seek to ride current market trends including reducing the intake of empty calories, sparkling flavoured waters and ,um ,Millenials, whatever that means...
This has raised questions about their strategy for managing brand equity on what is without doubt one of the most successful and well managed brands in the world, something which has assumed greater significance in the face of structural market changes which pose a real and growing threat to the long term future of the category and potentially this iconic brand itself.
A successful brand must have a compelling core benefit or reason for being , one which is easily and intuitively understood by consumers. I would also suggest that in some cases brands must and can succesfully adapt , abandon or even completely reimagine their brand ,including host product category on which it built it's name ..Lucozade being a great example.
The temptation which marketers face , especially those under pressure in the boardroom , is to try and stretch that core meaning through portfolio extensions beyond the owned sphere of core competence and consumer permission . Self evidently brand extension brings marketing investment synergies and lowers barriers to trial when the core benefit is fully transferable , and brands such as Dove have mangaged this incredibly well. The flipside ,when this is not properly orchestrated is brands which are famous in name only , appear across many loosely related categories but which are in effect Houses of brands, acting as generalist guarantors of quality without clear brand meaning or equity of their own in the minds and hearts of consumers.
People however ( bless them) rarely think the same way about brands as corporate or us marketing types when it comes to shopping across disparate categories, certainly not in my experience of so called umbrella brands in food, and promotional attempts to spur cross category buying never worked for me.
Muddying the water further is of course the retailer private label question. Just because my retailer of choice can and does put their name on items as diverse as underwear as well as fine wine and hand cream doesn't mean manufacturer brands can do the same; it merely confirms amongst other things the transactional nature of much shopper behaviour in everyday purchases like grocery shopping.
The trickier and more costly route for brand equity growth by contrast is to obey the first rule of strategy which is that it implies making choices about what your brand stands and does not stands for, its' Prime Directive if you will...stay true to the core brand truths.
My criticism of the the latest episode of the cola saga is that the previous "one brand to control all" ( sorry ) which aligns for me at least to the theory of the book "How Brands Grow" by Professor Byron Sharp has been replaced by a discordant ,double pivot outside aspects of the brand core ,targetting non cola flavored sparkling water(brand heresy surely, like syrups in coffee), ditching a sizeable amount of core brand design equity thereby weakening impact at point of sale in the process....
at the same time the corporation has seemingly lost potential first mover advantage in the increasingly high profile arena of environmentally friendly packaging to the Evian brand , something held especially dear we are told amongst the millenial audience supposedly being targetted by the newly launched fruit flavoured products.
But ultimately the biggest failing here is in not facing up to the possibility that the brand might need in the not too distant future to pull off a reimagining as epic as the Lucozade one in order to retain the colossal brand equity it enjoys today.
Exciting time to be a brandbuilder!
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