When Brand Extension Becomes Brand Abuse

Brandweek,  Oct 26, 1998  by Scott Davis

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Scott Davis is a partner at Kuczmarski & Associates, Chicago, an innovation management consulting firm. Davis heads K&A's brand asset management practice and is an adjunct professor at the J. L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University.

Brand abuse is a new and quickly spreading type of disease. You may very well recognize the symptoms of brand abuse, evident in a brand that is taken for granted, stretched and extended beyond its limits by owners who are not very concerned about the future health of the brand itself.

This past weekend I saw four new advertisements. Each told very different stories, both good and bad, about brand extendibility. The bad ones are definitely what I consider brand abuse. The good ones are great examples for companies to learn from as they are extending their brands. Importantly, the lessons that cut across these four extensions could be used as an official set of guidelines for any future line extensions, for any company. Let's start with Starbucks Power Frappuccino.

Since its inception, Starbucks has stayed true to the fact that it wants to be a company about an experience, not a product. The idea, borrowed from European coffeehouses by Howard Schultz, is simple and already legendary. Schultz's assumption was that Americans needed to slow down, "smell the coffee" and enjoy life. Maximizing the enjoyment of drinking coffee fits right in with this mindset. Whether it is sitting on comfortable couches, listening to soothing music, talking about world politics, reading a newspaper or just day dreaming, Starbucks started the trend of enjoying coffee to its fullest, and has since successfully extended full enjoyment philosophy into everything from ice cream to compact discs.

Power Frappuccino follows that trend. It is part of the American experience, getting healthy but still enjoying the little extras that life has to offer. What are the criteria for extending the Starbucks brand? We can easily guess that the extension has to be consistent with the Starbucks "experience," priced at a premium, the highest quality product, most often considered an indulgence and has some connection to coffee. If you agree with these criteria then you could imagine Starbucks getting into premium juices and teas, offering sandwiches and desserts that borrow from old French Bistros, expanding its candy offerings and even selling the furniture in its stores. And Power Frappuccino follows this formula to a tee. It's advertised as a delicious, low fat indulgence with protein and 12 essential vitamins. Oh, and by the way, its priced at a $.50 premium over a normal Frappuccino (which is already marked up significantly at $3.25 for a Grande Frappuccino). My local Starbucks reports it is selling extremely well under the tagline "Get Powered."

Kraft's Jell-O Cheesecake Snacks may be the ultimate success story in brand-family extension. It all started with plain, traditional Jell-O. From there, Kraft introduced Jello in a cup to take advantage of the convenience trend. Jell-O then expanded to pudding and pudding in a cup. Finally, leveraging the entire portable Jell-O snack category, Kraft introduced cheesecake snacks in a cup, sub-extending its own Philadelphia Cream Cheese in the process. Incredibly, this new product does not even include Jell-O anymore. Kraft line extension guidelines appear to be very straightforward. Capitalize on a trend (i.e. convenience), build upon and stay consistent with the overall equity of the Jell-O franchise, recognize where the consumer is heading (indulgence is back), and stay within the price points you have already established for the Jell-O franchise, with price "upgrades" taken where appropriate.

Now let's look at the other side of the spectrum: brand abuse. The introduction of Arm & Hammer Dental Care Baking Soda Gum follows several baking soda-based launches over the last five years, including laundry detergent, dishwashing detergent, toothpaste, deodorant and bleach. Although I don't know Church & Dwight's line extension criteria, here is a guess: Leverage the hell out of baking soda and its recognized benefit of "clean and freshening," take that benefit and figure out every possible category where it might fit, slap baking soda on each product extension, and hope for the best. There are three problems here: 1) baking soda is a commodity; 2) there are successful leaders in each category in which Arm & Hammer competes; and 3) any one of these leaders can, and have, quickly followed Arm & Hammer's lead, even if the benefit is not consumer driven or really that beneficial.

Witness Crest and Colgate immediately coming out with a baking soda benefit and, in effect, taking Arm & Hammer out of the picture. Tide did not waste much time and neither did Dial or Sure. I would even lay money on Trident, Care-Free, Dentyne or others coming out with a baking soda-based benefit very quickly just to knock Arm & Hammer out of the game as quickly as they got into it. Bottomline, Arm & Hammer has a sustainable advantage in baking soda as an ingredient, as a freshener in the refrigerator, and through a few other extensions, but gum and toothpaste? I don't think so.