Powerful brands have distinct personalities: Duracell’s batteries last a long time. Volvos are safe in a crash. But even dominant brands can fade if they fall prey to multiple personality disorder.
As you may know, brand extension is a marketing strategy in which an organization that markets a product with a well-developed image uses the same brand name but in a different product category. Brand managers use this as a strategy to increase and leverage brand equity.
The simple bottom line in marketing is that a brand that’s many things can’t be one thing. No one category has ignored this all but immutable law as religiously as the beer business.
Marketers are a fickle breed. Aside from the usual list of ailments that afflict the general population, we are also vulnerable to a number of conditions unique to us. The most pernicious of these is logos extendos rabidus or, to give it its more colloquial name – brand extension disease.
If you are in the process of building your brand globally, especially if your brand is in its infancy in some regions or countries, here is something else to watch out for with brand extensions.
