Chevron "Strollers" from Darren Moran on Vimeo.

Revamp, relaunch

I've been busy for a few months, setting up my own company. The blog has taken a bit of a back seat whilst I have been doing this. Now I have a website up and I am linking my blog to it, it is time to start up again, and perhaps in a more focused way at that. Probably also a good time to disengage the family and friends element of the blog from the 'work' orientated blog. 

So that will keep me busy for a few days more. 

Names

I provided some thinking for Alex to write an article about names. I don't know what happened to the article, and I can't claim authorship anyway, but so I don't forget, here are my four suggestions for when a company or brand may need a new name.

1. Legal requirement. Andersen Consulting to Accenture. 6 weeks warning.

2. Change of strategy or positioning. Eg. Lucky Goldstar to LG (arguably BP too). I guess change of CEO would come under this bucket too.

3. Business efficiencies. Having one name around the world may be cheaper for producers. Marathon bars are now Snickers (I can't see any other reason that cost savings), Opal Fruits now Starbust, etc.

4. Brand equity. Toyota didn't think its name had enough premium cues to enter the luxury car market, hence Lexus. Often local brands carry more equity then intruder brands hence Chevron keep Clatex and Texaco where they have equity. Vodafone, if buying locally, rebrands Vodafone. You would if you wanted to position yourself as an international communications company.

MacLash

Martin Thomas come by CPB a month or two ago. Originally it was for a catch up and a cup of coffee, but Alex and I were just having a chat about this . It seemed opportune to get Martin in on the conversation, especially as he was thinking of ways to get his new book publicised. So we got planning. One of the offshoots of this was Alex's post on the CPB blog about Apple being 'oppressive', here. This in turn got picked up by a journalist from The Independent and became this.

It's pretty interesting and we all got a mention. This thought has been knocking around in my brain since I worked on Dell a couple of years ago. I must admit, I thought it was going to come around a little quicker than it has; again testament to Apple's brilliance. And I don't think it will come just yet either. But given the state of Job's health, the fact that people don't tend to like the big boy for too long and that Apple is now the big boy, and that the world seems to exist so much in beta nowadays, unless Apple are just head and shoulders above anyone else, they will being to suffer, perhaps rather more slowly, but nevertheless, still suffer the fate of other tech companies and plateau to decline. And that was a long sentence.

Ambassador Gil

Really excited for - and a tad envious of - my ex-colleagues at BrandBuzz for the world's first interactive wrap around digital out of home billboard for LG in Times Square.

Buzz worked with North Kingdom on it and this link is to the North Kingdom blog which does a very nice explanation. Which means I get let off the hook.

Design Week Article

Here is an article I had published in Design Week. It came about after CPB's PR guy, and myself, wrote a letter about testing pack designs. There was, for Design Week, quite a flood of responses, one of them quite virulent. The initial letter was about bad research on some bread packaging, but the response was about not embracing consumer input! Anyway, I was sufficiently worked up to write a considered response, which was too much for the letters page but became an article instead.

The strange thing was that the sub-editor, or whoever writes the synposis (or 'standfirst' as it is correctly called), wrote a very misrepresentative couple of sentences.

They titled the piece "It's new, it's exciting, but it's not clever" and the standfirst was "crowdsourcing and co-creation are the buzz words of the day but Christian Barnett argues for more traditional methods of idea generation".

Anyway, here is the article:

"In recent weeks there has been the start of a useful discussion about the role of research and other consumer ‘input’ into the design process. Though the subject of research in of itself may be a bit of a hoary old chestnut, the impact of ‘new media’, co-creation, and the ability to crowd-source have meant that consumer input has taken on a much broader meaning over the last few years. As such there may be some value in opening up the debate for 2010.

Of course it is a good idea to have consumers involved in the development of work. The best strategies and creative work have some genuine consumer insight baked in. But the best ‘input’ or research is not generally done to decide between different creative expressions of a strategy.

That is a beauty parade and is riddled with problems.

i. It is not possible to make a realistic test of effectiveness in a ‘laboratory’ situation in advance of real-life exposure. We need to be very wary of how we treat results from this type of ‘input’. This is not to say that ‘pre-testing’ is always a bad thing; it isn’t. But it isn’t always a good thing either, and if done, we ought be careful about how we do it, and what agency and client folk take from it.

ii. We need to remind ourselves that consumers are not party to the brief or what we are trying to achieve with any particular piece of creative work. Consumers may not be using the same criteria to judge creative work as the agency/clients are.

iii. Consumers generally like things they familiar with. They tend to stick with what they know. This is ok for some briefs. But for more innovative, break-through or radical briefs that demand that consumers see a particular brand in a new light, you can see how, very quickly, ’ ‘beauty parade’ ‘input’ can get quite tricky. Consumers readily back away from change.

And we also need to remember that assessing creative work on-line means that we are not capturing a whole stack of data points, and arguably the more emotional ones that are crucial when assessing creative work that is intended to elicit some kind of emotional response. Data such as body language, tone of voice, ‘how’ people speak about the stimulus material are all important when looking at creative work. They provide tell tales clues to how people are feeling about the creative work. On-line research may work terrifically well when all that is required is rational recording of data but it is less reliable when addressing creative work that probably merits a more sensitive form of inquiry, and analysis.

The best research is used to inform the brief, to work out what the task is, and give illumination and clues as to how to move forward. This ‘early’ or exploratory research can give us insight into the market and our brand’s position in it, why people are attracted, or not, to our brand. It takes place at a strategic level, has a greater impact on the creative process than the ‘beauty parade’ research, and often helps with how we set the criteria for success when we are in market. It is the most overlooked type of research, in part because the output is some kind of brief which most people are typically less interested in than the tangible creative deliverable.

‘Testing to Destruction’ by Alan Hedges is the classic text on this subject, and though written 40 years ago and primarily about advertising research its lessons still hold good. It should be read by anyone who has a stake or interest in the subject. It is out of print but an updated version is available on the APG website.

Under the heading of consumer ‘input’ comes research, which I have addressed above, and also ‘co-creation’ or ‘crowd-sourcing’. Although inevitably, there is some overlap between the two, for this letter, ‘research’ is more about understanding our consumer better and getting feedback from them whilst ‘co-creation’ invites the consumer to be an active participant in the generation of creative ideas. With co-creation, we are not looking for ‘consumer truths’ or ‘insight’. We are looking for ideas, solutions. It is a very different type of ‘input’. Our increasing familiarity with social networking and digital media allows this type of idea generation to be done quickly, imaginatively and cheaply. The Moving Brands pitch for the London identity was a great example of co-opting consumers – in this case Londoners – to participate in idea generation.

However, though this type of input is exciting, new, and seductive my suspicion is that the best ideas still consistently come out of the best agencies with the best talent that give most of their waking hours to the generation and execution of ideas. And to my mind it would be a tragedy (not to say a serious indictment of our industry) if it was any other way. "

Blogs

Probably about time to do a couple of "likes" for blogs. Easy one, Dave Trott's at CST here. Like the man himself. Clear, opinionated. Often very insightful.

Here is Tim Jones's blog. He is busy applying the principles of gaming to brand building.

Gareth Kay, I think he is head of planning at GSP&Partners does Brand New.

And the last one for today, that I have just stumbled across, and may be useful in the future is Ben Terrett's blog, here.

Bach

At the office, late, doing work on brand architectures. This is nice music to have on, and from time to time, actively listen to. I like the calming rhythms of Bach. This is the Concerto for Two Violins in D Minor

Advertising Works Article

I was honoured to be invited to write an introductory chapter for Volume 19 of Advertising Works, here. The title isn't one I would have chosen and I thought I should really play it a little safe with it. The resulting article is steady if unspectacular. Good enough to print but hardly the stuff to cause a tidal wave in advertising thinking. Though if a couple of people in the next recession look it up and have a read, then I'll be pleased.

It's a shame I can't lift the article directly from the book, as it looks way more impressive in a £130 500+ page hard cover book, especially with a photo of me in!


Chapter 2

Learnings for the next recession

By Christian Barnett

Planning Director, Coley Porter Bell

It’s a bit tough being asked to think about learnings for the next recession, in part because we’re not completely clear of this one yet – double dip and all that – but also because no two recessions are quite the same. They have different causes, different effects and different remedies. My current favourite fact is that, on average, people had more disposable income in 2009 than 2008, which seems at first sight, a little counter-intuitive.

However, it is fair to assume in the next economic downturn marketing budgets will be put under more pressure, that demonstrating return on investment will be even more important, and that creativity, channel selection and mix, and targeting –be it demographic, attitudinal or behavioural – will all be under increased scrutiny.

And, in a rather perverse way, perhaps the brand and communications industries should look forward to it. Recessions put us on our mettle, force us to look at, and justify, the value of what we do all the more keenly and force us to be more innovative. Tough economic conditions should, in theory, expose the lazy and wasteful and reward the skilful and brave.

There is already some excellent literature around about advertising during a downturn.* The main theme is that of the crucial important of the relationship between share of voice and share of market. In practical terms this meant bolstering advertising expenditure in times where the natural inclination is to cut it and realizing that recessions are great times to buy share of voice, and thus market share, because competitors retreat and media rates fall.

However, there doesn’t seem to be much in the way of reviewing creative strategies, so I thought it might be useful to look at the different approaches taken in this recession to draw some generalised rules for the future, and use some of this year’s winning papers to provide examples.

*‘Advertising during a recession’ Alex Biel and Stephen King, Chapter 9 in Advalue, IPA, 2003, and Advertising in a Downturn, IPA, 2008, ‘How share of voice builds market share’, IPA 2009 and ‘The link between creativity and effectiveness’ IPA 2010 for example.


The big emotional idea

When brands are under pricing pressure, reinforcing the emotional bond with the consumer is a time-honoured way of maintaining value in the brand. It sounds easy, but requires a real appreciation of how the brand fits into the emotional landscape of its audience.

The Heinz paper, ‘Maintaining leadership in uncertain times’ does just this, showing a deft understanding of the brand and its role in British life to rejuvenate emotional affinity and purchase. The ‘It has to be Heinz’ campaign drove a strong emotional response that helped rebuild core equity, and due to the renewed loyalty rebuilt the sales and share that had been in decline due to Heinz loyalists drifting away from the brand.

In contrast, the Cadbury Dairy Milk paper doesn’t seek to show how the brand is integrated deftly into our lives. Instead it carves out confidently a whopping big emotional territory, a far cry from the previous ‘persuasive’ Dairy Milk advertising model. The big leap was to make people feel the same joy as they might get from a bar of Dairy Milk rather than tell people. In essence Cadbury Dairy Milk stopped being a ‘manufacturer of chocolate and became a producer of joy’. Though not a recession-specific paper it certainly gives us lessons in one way to respond to an economic downturn. The campaign has increased key measures of ‘love’ (involvement) and ‘fame’ (salience) and improved price elasticity, with less reliance on price promotions, and a greater return on investment.

Leveraging brand heritage

In tough times we look to brands we trust. Drawing upon a brand’s heritage is one way to remind us of the brand as a rock. Indeed, there was a spate of ‘heritage’ campaigns that aired in late 2008/early 2009. Guinness, Colgate, Milky Bar, Persil and Lego all rebroadcast old ads, Walker’s relaunched Monster Munch, Mars repackaged Starburst as Opal Fruits and, in an act that combined the old and the new, Cadbury reintroduced the defunct Wispa brand after a campaign on Facebook calling for its return. A limited edition turned into a permanent relaunch which in its first week was the best-selling chocolate bar in the UK, and managed to sustain its success as online engagement grew. The paper shows a glorious mash-up of a heritage brand reborn and sustained by the power of today’s social media.

Two other award winners stand out in this area. Firstly, Virgin Atlantic, that celebrated its 25th anniversary in style by going back to the 1980s with a big TV ad. In an industry that took a significant hit due to the recession, Virgin Atlantic, not for the first time, zigged whilst other zagged, and instead of slugging it out in the gutter on price took to the skies with a big brand piece which drove top-line revenue.

Secondly, Hovis, with its epic TV ad ‘As good today as it’s ever been’ depicting a young lad running home with a loaf of Hovis through various scenes from the last 122 years, is perhaps the most obvious example of a brand drawing upon its heritage. Not only did the film take us on a journey through the times that brand has been with us, but did so with the atmosphere, style and equities that evoked the brand’s most famous past moments. Though not created directly in response to the recession, its timing couldn’t have been better – it launched just as the downturn hit – so much so, that it didn’t just tap into the prevailing zeitgeist but helped define it.


Innovative thinking and value

Recessions put significant pressure on premium brands andit takes skill and dexterity to walk the tightrope of demonstrating value without compromising hard- earned brand values. The retail sector provides us with two excellent examples of how smart innovative thinking can relieve the pressure from mid-market and discount predators looking to lure the more value-driven shoppers away from the premium stores.

Waitrose took the opportunity to create a coherent own label range, ‘Essential Waitrose’ by bringing its disparate offering together under one new sub-brand. The range itself was simple and elegant, in keeping with the Waitrose style, and the communications effort was underpinned by the line: ‘Quality you’d expect at prices you wouldn’t.’ The ‘Essentials’ rebrand helped prevent shoppers from switching out of the brand, built loyalty amongst Waitrose shoppers and delivered a considerable return on investment.

Sainsbury’s was fearful that the good work done in 2007 with the ‘Try something new today’ campaign, would be undone in 2008 as the credit crunch took hold, food inflation gathered pace and Sainsbury’s could be perceived as too expensive. ‘Feed your family for a fiver’ was an idea that offered Sainsbury’s quality for great value in difficult times. The price point was delivered by standard prices and not special offers or discounts. It produced the best recognition score for any Jamie Oliver TV ad tracked to date, was recalled as well as Tesco’s longer-standing ‘Every little helps’, and delivered over £500m in sales in two years.

The ‘baddies’ do their bit

This is a tricky area, and probably worth a more detailed analysis elsewhere, but it seems to me that brands, like celebrities, who bury their head in the sand on difficult matters that directly concern them generally don’t enhance their reputations. Some sort of communication (ideally with corrective action) is necessary and it seems to be the only way to try to find some redemption. Whether it succeeds is another matter. So it is interesting to find a number of financial papers in this year’s awards. The two most pertinent are the Lloyds TSB’s ‘For the journey’ and the Barclays’s ‘Take one small step’ as they directly address the recession. Both take the line of offering a helping hand. Lloyds TSB, which had to face considerable public anger over pay and bonuses after the government bail-out and saw an accompanying dip in consideration, avoided any temptation to change campaign and saw the value of sticking with the ‘For the journey’ theme.A new ‘How we’re helping’ message reminded customers that the heart of the business was in the High Streets of the country and not the Square Mile. Consideration started to rise again.

Barclays too, offered some practical help, with their ‘Take one small step’ campaign. In a climate where customers were feeling powerless, the intent was to help them manage their money better and feel in control of their finances again. This was done by encouraging people to adopt relatively small but achievable behaviours. The campaign took a series of needs and matched it with a Barclays product or service. It successfully shifted attributes like ‘offers helpful products and services’ and ‘helps me manage my money better’ and delivered a hefty return on investment.


Behavioural economics

Perhaps the most interesting of the approaches, as it is a relatively new area of thought, is that of the application of behavioural economics. It seems to be ideally suited to how brands and communications respond to recessions. The notion of many ‘small’ choices and decisions having a bearing upon eventual outcomes seems well-adapted to a marketing environment – with huge permutations of touchpoints; consumer journeys that are no longer predictable nor sequential; increasing emphasis on targeted digital engagement; and demanding greater accountability.

The Training and Development Agency for Schools (TDA) paper, ‘Best in class: how influencing behaviour with a new media strategy helped nudge teacher recruitment to record levels’ is a superb exposition of this new type of thinking.

The issue was the shrinking pool of quality applicants entering teacher training and in particular, the number of ‘career switchers’ was declining faster than applications in general. For someone already in a career, switching to become a teacher is a big decision. In addition, progress towards becoming a teacher for career switchers wasn’t linear or mechanical. Instead their behaviour was full of stops and starts, emotional and logical, decisive and uncertain. The communications strategy is best described as a pinball machine, keeping the applicant ‘in play’, and nudging them towards an application.

It may not be that all decision processes are this complex or long-winded. For example, deciding on which brand of bread to pick off the shelf may not require the same thought process as changing careers. Yet, there will be broad lessons and principles of thinking that apply to any scenario where communication is trying to overcome a behaviour barrier, or set of them. Understanding the interplay between triggers, barriers, decisions (and non-decisions), message and media helps us construct communications in a way that should lead to better and more effective outcomes.

The one thing I found disappointing was that there wasn’t more thinking like the Teacher Recruitment paper. There were other submissions that borrowed some of the language of behavioural economics, and certainly demonstrated how they have used communications to shift behaviour. But this paper really got under the skin of how messaging and media could help nudge people. Given that some of the big discussions in the industry over the last decade – fragmentation of media, digital communication and now behavioural economics – all seem to intersect at a point that would have proved very useful in recessionary times, I am surprised that this type of approach was not used more. Perhaps by the next recession we will have learnt how to better apply all this good stuff we have been talking about for a while.

I don’t pretend these themes are exhaustive, or that they are exclusively for recessions. But judging by what has worked over the last couple of years, the papers and themes outlined above might be a reasonable place to start some thinking the next time around.

We are fortunate that we have fantastic resources such as the IPA Databank, www.ipa.idol.co.uk and other specific IPA papers, to draw upon in difficult times. Recessions are tough for many industries, including ours, and the wealth of data we have available helps us to strengthen and prove our case for investment in harder times, and in so helping our own business through helping our clients.

Brand Spirit

I had breakfast with Russell Davies today, which was very nice. Good guy. And head of planning EMEA for Ogilvy nowadays. The most interesting part of the conversation, of which many parts were interesting, was the idea about how the best brands convey a feeling or spirit or essence which almost defys definition. How many times have you heard people talk about the idea behind Nike or Apple and yet they seldom use the same words, the exact words, to describe the idea. Yet, somehow, we all recognise it. We recognise it almost inspite of the different, and often inexact descriptions of the idea because we have a quite refined and shared sense of what 'Nike-ness' is all about.

This conversation reminded me of a meeting a few years ago with a client who had the issue of how to brief local offices on how to generate creative work. Merely generating ads that LOOKED correct ie had the right visual equities, wasn't right as it didn't communicate the IDEA. If would be better to get the idea right even if the visual equities weren't quite the same, though it would be better if they were. Or at least FELT as if they were.

I came to this conclusion about a brand's spirit back then. It was as though you need to live with the campaign or the brand for long enough to 'know it when you see it'. To do this amongst the client/agency team takes a while in itself. To do it amongst a target audience, a country, a region, the world, takes a long time. Yet it works. No wonder great, lasting brands, take time to put together and build up a head of steam. And incidentally, it might also explain, certainly with Nike and Apple why their agencies have been with them for so long, because, they FEEL it too.

There are many implications of this, but the one to mention now is that the getting the exact exact word, phrase, nuance may matter a little less than getting the feeling right. Words, imagery, film, humour, tone of voice, use of language, personality, all matter.

Changing Logos

Following on from the weekend conference where LifePlus's new identity was revealed, I wrote very briefly about the GAP new logo being ditched in favour of the old one, in this post. I thought it would be a good idea to post the two GAP logos, below, so I have them somewhere. I like the old one more. Not only is it familiar, but it is more distinctive. The blue square also looks more meaningful, or more intrinsic to the old one.

I also found a nice article on bbc.co.uk. It has a few cases in. May be useful for work one day. Here is a link to the article.

Disco

Part of my birthday present from Ollie was a disco. He created a tailored CD for the occasion, and the strobe lighting was provided by Poundworld.

Alva Noto

I haven't posted any music for a while now, and I have been enjoying this tonight, slowly working my way through emails and some personal admin. Every so often a delicate crescendo slowly takes hold of my attention, without me really noticing, and I am pleasantly lulled away for a few seconds.

I really like Alva Noto. Here is his website, and here, is his wikipedia entry.

Now, I think the music should be left to speak for itself.

Leadership Is All About Change

I don't know where I have heard that before, but I have, somewhere. And it struck me as very true when I saw the CEO of LifePlus present the new brand identity. He presented it to 3000+ people who were very familiar with the previous identity. The leadership team of the company were very tense. We all knew it would be ok as soundings had been taken at various points in the process, but it was still nerve racking. In this particular case the CEO has a calm authority that won the day. At the end of his introductory presentation the conference audience was clapping. By the end of the day, they were starting to love it. But it was one of those moments that in the wrong hands and done in the wrong way could result in a very different outcome, like the introduction of the new GAP logo recently, though I am not sure why GAP needed to change their logo. There didn't seem to be as compelling a case for change as LifePlus have.

Life Plus launch

Taking a lunch break from the LifePlus conference I am a guest at. They are re-launching brand identity. I wrote the introductory speech to the reveal of the identity. It is the first time I have had written a speak for a CEO that gets presented to 3000+ people, and I learnt a fair amount. I thought it was short, it needed to be shorter. I thought it hung together pretty well, it needed to hang together better (ie even simpler logic). I thought it was simple, it needed to be simpler. All in all, it went pretty well, but I am a critical. If I have time, I may go back to my draft and re-write it, just for the practice.

I rather like the immediacy of 'real time' blog posts. I can capture feelings quickly and not dawdle on posting. It is less of a chore. But it means I can't get photos up quickly as they are in my camera and I have no lead to download.

Also, I am on a hotel mac, and I have a time limit. And it is rapidly approaching.

Judging the Jay Chiat Awards

Top man and top strategist, Russ Meyer, the CSO of Landor, invited me to be a judge on the 'Innovative Design' category of the AAAA Jay Chiat Awards for strategic excellence.

It was fun, though it would have been more fun if the judges had been able to convene in person rather than on conference calls.

It was interesting comparing this judging experience to the IPA and Effies. Overall, these awards were focused on the creation of good strategy and the resulting creative, whereas the IPA Effectiveness Awards, are, not surprisingly, focused more on effectiveness.

You might have thought, intuitively, that the Jay Chiat awards would have more variance of opinion because the focus was on creative strategy which on the surface is more subjective than judging the hard data of effectiveness, but it wasn't the case. Although there were far fewer papers to judge and far fewer judges to agree there was a lot of agreement on what was a good strategy and why.

In contrast, judging the Effectiveness Awards, provoked more variance in discussion, especially around the subject of effectiveness which one intuitively would think would be more cut and dry. The discussion was often good, but often vague and off point. With so many entries having econometrics in them it put people in an uncomfortable place. Unsurprisingly, a good few judges were not  prepared to say "I don't know how to judge this paper" (which would have been a good thing to do but would have made people appear rather dim in front of their peers - they are prestigious awards) and we found ourselves having to look to the specialist econometricians a little too often.

The day spent judging the IPA awards was, overall, fantastic. The sheer rigour of the IPA award submissions were fantastic. Huge amounts of work had gone into at least 40 of the 60 odd papers. In the end the best papers did go forward; it wasn't as though we were totally incompetent as judges, but it did leave me more sceptical about effectiveness whilst the AAAA judging did leave me feeling better about the power of the creative end of the strategic process.

I think this subject may deserve a little go around another time.

Writing Books

This reminds me that it can't be too hard to write a book. I don't know why. But it suddenly feels like it can't be too hard to write something coffee table like, with nice illustrations or photographs, get it designed and get a few copies printed up. I must be able to find something to write about planning and strategy for instance.

Giles has done it. Here is his book. It looks real pro.   

An Old Fridge in Minnesota

A few weeks ago I was in Minnesota, staying at the Wildwood Lodge, Oakdale and came across this. I didn't know initially what it was. Some kind of oven? Another guest noticed me looking at it quizzically and told me it was a 100 year old fridge. It worked by putting ice in the TOP of the fridge and food in the FRONT and onto circular metal shelves. The cold air from the ice would go down and cool the food.  Very smart indeed. Though it does poses the question, where did the ice come from?

Pitch Magazine (2)

I managed to get the article, mentioned here, fowarded to me. And here it is, in its entirety.

Chocolate Weetabix: A brand extension too far?


3 September 2010
By David Benady

Some of the UK’s biggest grocery brands are launching line extensions that seem to contradict the values of their parent brands. As the economic downturn hits sales and shoppers turn to own labels, brand marketers are under pressure to meet tough sales targets. But launching opportunist off-shoots risks undermining the long-term equity of their brands.

Weetabix, Britain’s top-selling breakfast cereal, contains just 4.4% sugar and is much-loved by parents concerned about shovelling sugar into their children’s mouths at breakfast time. Now the £113m brand with excellent kiddie health credentials is launching Chocolate Weetabix.

The chocolate-laced version will appear in a new TV ad campaign breaking this week through agency WCRS. The blogosphere is awash with positive commentary about the product which boasts that its sugar content - 15.9% - is less than half that of other chocolate cereals such as Coco-Pops (35% sugar). But the brand extension contains three and a half times as much sugar as its parent brand. Nutritionalists warn that once children taste the delights of chocolate at breakfast, it is hard to ever return them to a healthy cereal.

The Chocolate version risks damaging the association between Weetabix and a healthy breakfast for kids. It may well be successful in the short-term. But the values of the main brand could be undermined in the long-run. For some, the Chocolate Weetabix launch is a logical response to parents’ health concerns and carries the health credentials of Weetabix into a new arena - enabling consumers of chocolate cereals to find a much lower sugar alternative. Weetabix marketing director Sally Abbott was unavailable and no-one else at the company was prepared to comment.

Meanwhile, in the personal care category, Unilever has extended its female-orientated Dove brand into the male grooming market with the launch of Dove Men+Care. Here, a brand built through a critique of women’s consumption psychology and the “Real Beauty” campaign seems to be dropping those values as it seeks to target men. Unilever claims the launch has been a phenomenal success, with 1.5 million products sold in the UK so far this year and the brand is on course to hit 5 million in its launch year. With each unit selling at about £2.50 each, that could be some £12.5m. On this estimate, sales at retail would just cover the cost of the £12m launch marketing budget.

According to Christian Barnett, planning director at branding agency Coley Porter Bell, Dove Men+Care builds on the basic values of the brand. “Dove stands for inner beauty, real beauty in all sorts of people. Why shouldn’t that extend to men? It just feels right,” he says. However, he is less convinced about Chocolate Weetabix. “Sometimes you can see brand extensions undercutting a brand. Weetabix is a healthy, simple, fortifying breakfast. The addition of chocolate doesn’t build that equity, it detracts from it. The only way to really make it work would be to think again what the overall brand stands for. If Weetabix is about “healthy fortification” the introduction of chocolate starts to push the overall Weetabix brand to a more “fortification can be fun” place. So the extension redefines the parent brand. It is like the kids re-defining the parents.”

Other seemingly self-contradicting product extensions out this autumn include Twix Fino, where the biscuit base that has helped Mars-owned Twix become a UK powerbrand is replaced by a lighter wafer filling. This version has long been available in Europe, where wafers are commonly eaten with afternoon coffee. But in the UK, this seriously redefines the product’s identity away from a stomach-filler towards a lighter snack.

Twix will be competing with Kit Kat, whose owner Nestlé is itself the arch extender of brands into unexpected areas - it rocked the confectionery market when it relaunched Kit Kat with a Chunky version as it attempted to encroach into the territory of the Mars Bar. Nestlé marketers at the company’s York-based confectionery division have applied the brand extension approach to Milkybar, the quintessential kids’ white chocolate bar. This is being reinvented as an adult treat with a Raisin & Biscuit version. The brand is moving deep into the territory of rival brands and appears to be category vaulting, re-inventing itself as part biscuit, part short-bread. A spokesman says the company is simply broadening the appeal of the brand. “Milkybar is proof that you can take long-standing brand and advertising heritage and bring it up to date. We haven’t changed the recipe, we’ve added a product for adult tastes, we’ve held on to the Milkybar kid, the line, the song, but made them fun and relevant and interactive for an adult audience.”

The whole sweets and treats category is awash with cross-over products seeking to cash in on the brand values of competitors. Kraft-owned Cadbury has teamed up with Burton’s Foods to launch biscuit versions of Turkish Delight, Crunchie and Caramel. Sales are reported to be booming, with some £7.6m of the biscuits sold since their launch in March. One wonders how long this boom in countline branded biscuits will continue, what will be the effects on the mother brands and whether the sector is driven by people trialling the products out of interest.

Some observers are sceptical about the drive to launch sub-brands. As one says: “Brand managers and marketers are typically only in their jobs for 18 months and in that time might have about eight reporting cycles, where they need to show growing sales. It doesn’t matter what the long-term impact on the brand is of launching an extension, even if it dilutes the equity and confuses the positioning of the main brand, they have got to make a difference.”

Such marketers have been dubbed “galloping midgets,” who are more interested in personal advancement than in the health of their brands in the long-run. Then again, as Keynes said, in the long-run, we are all dead.

Striking the right balance when launching a brand extension is crucial, but all too often extensions have to be reined in after swamping the master brand with conflicting brand values. Unilever has spent the past ten years pruning back its portfolio to a handful of power brands. Now the portfolio is growing again with continual brand extensions. Meanwhile, Procter & Gamble has been reducing the number of brand extensions around its Pringles Crisps brand, phasing out Minis and Select.

The economic downturn has sent marketers scurrying to look for short-term hits from brand extensions which play on the values of the parent brand as they struggle to hit their numbers. But they should beware of destroying brand equity that has been steadily built up over decades.

Strangest brand extensions of all time

- Sex Pistols scent
- Snoop Dogg’s range of pet accessories
- Budweiser Barbecue Sauce
- Cheetos Lip Balm
- Burger King fragrance BK@Flame which “captures the essence of Whopper love in the form of a body spray.”

Pitch Magazine

I was interviewed recently for 'Pitch' an online marketing magazine (which ironically, I don't think I get a subscription to). It was about brand extensions. I don't know the whole thrust of the piece, but if I manage to get access to it, I can post it. Anyway, as there is little chance of me finding it, let alone saving it, here is my little section. I was talking about having no problem with Dove extending to a male audience, if it was done correctly, but having more issues with Weetabix, a staple British breakfast cereal, doing a chocolate version.

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“Dove stands for inner and real beauty in all sorts of people. Why shouldn’t that extend to certain segments of a male target?” he (ie me) says."How Dove express that thought may need some thinking about, but the thought itself is valid and seems to build out the brand equity"


In contrast, he is far less convinced about Chocolate Weetabix. “Sometimes you can see brand extensions undercutting a brand. Weetabix is a healthy, simple, fortifying breakfast. The addition of chocolate doesn’t build that equity, it detracts from it.

The only way to really make it work would be to think again what the overall brand stands for. For example, if Weetabix was about 'healthy fortification' the introduction of chocolate starts to push the overall Weetabix brand to a more 'fortification can be fun' place. So the extension re-defines the parent brand."

"It's like the kids redefining the parents!"