You are viewing Aaker on Brands blog posts from April 11, 2012 through June 13, 2012. You can also view the most recent posts.

Disney’s War on Childhood Obesity Trumps Profitability

For the last six years, Disney has engaged in a remarkable and gutsy program to improve the nutritional knowledge and choices for kids. Without question, Disney’s leadership and actions appealed to a growing segment, enhanced their brand and made a difference concerning an important social issue. Yet, the decisions behind the program could not have been easy, as there was significant cost and risk involved. How much weight should a firm place on addressing social issues? How much financial risk and sacrifice should be accepted in order to do the “right” thing?

In 2004, Disney made the dramatic decision to establish nutrition guidelines that they leveraged in a variety of ways. In 2007, they phased out all trans fats in their parks and continued a policy of upgrading the healthiness of their park menus. In 2010, they launched the Disney Magic of Healthy Living consumer campaign, complete with a website that encouraged kids to eat right and exercise. In 2011, we saw the TRYit…

June 13, 2012 • Permalink

The Power of the Shadow Endorser

There is often a business case to stretch a brand into an area that it just does not fit, even when shielded by a subbrand or as an endorser. The answer can be a shadow endorser.

BMW is a shadow endorser of the MINI Cooper. A shadow endorser brand is not connected visibly to the endorsed brand, but most consumers or potential customers know about the link or can be informed about it prior to purchase. It's in the shadows. The fact that the brands are not visibly linked makes a statement about each brand. It communicates that the organization realizes that the shadow-endorsed brand represents a totally different product and market segment than other offerings connected to the endorser.

A shadow endorser can protect the endorser brand while still providing the reassurance that an endorsement provides. Every buyer of a MINI Cooper knows that it is made by BMW and will have the same quality and innovation

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June 6, 2012 • Permalink

Ries & Trout Were Wrong: Brand Extensions Work

I am deeply indebted to Al Ries and Jack Trout for advancing branding with their classic book, Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind, in which they introduce the concept of positioning, defined as the brand perception residing in a person's mind. It is an excellent book in many ways and still relevant. However, their judgment that practically all extensions are strategic mistakes is just wrong. In a subsequent 1993 book, The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing, they doubled down on their anti-extension advice saying "a line extension ultimate leads to oblivion" and warning that to be successful you have to narrow a brand's focus.

Their argument is that brand positioning strength is context sensitive, and if the brand is exported to another product area, its image — particularly…

May 30, 2012 • Permalink

Coca-Cola Struck CEO Gold

Muhtar Kent, CEO of Coca-Cola, is a reminder of how much a talented CEO can do for a firm in just a short amount of time. Since he took over in July of 2008, the stock has increased 50% over 5 times that of the S&P and 10 times that of Pepsi. Even more impressive is how he has transformed Coke and set the stage for its future growth and relevance. Let me provide a few reasons for this judgment.

He has a strategic vision for the company that has a visible social component. There is the audacious goal of doubling the sales by 2020 that has energized the organization. It is coupled with a headline goal of becoming water neutral by that date. For every gallon used, a gallon is replaced in part by innovation in factory processes, packaging and recycling. And there is much more. For example, the firm invests…

May 23, 2012 • Permalink

Entering (vs. Creating) New Categories — Get the Timing Right

Creating a new category or subcategory using substantial or transformational innovation is difficult, can be diverting, and involves the ultimate risk that it may not work in the marketplace. Many firms explicitly or implicitly avoid innovating new categories or subcategories because of these risks and because they want to focus on existing product markets. Their strategy is to allow small firms to innovate and prove the new category or subcategory has traction. They then enter the category or subcategory by acquisition or by creating a competitive offering.

For this strategy to work, the timing needs to be exactly right. If the timing is too early, market and offering uncertainly will still be high and the category or subcategory sales level will be inadequate to justify organizational support. The far more prevalent problem with this “enter” strategy, however, is that the timing is likely to be late.

One “enter” option with a category or subcategory that has “arrived”…

May 15, 2012 • Permalink

Before Branding A Subcategory, Ask 4 Questions

During my recent webinar around brand relevance, I noted as usual that you need to brand innovations in order to own them and to provide the basis for defining a new subcategory with a “must have.” Someone from the floor noted that over-branding can result and asked how that can be avoided.

Over-branding is a risk. Innovation champions usually inflate the potential importance of their ideas and are overly optimistic about sales impact, for both personal and professional reasons. When there is a policy in place to brand important innovations, these champions expect and usually receive a brand. After years of this pressure to support innovation with brands, the result can be a bewildering and unsustainable blizzard of brands that are not supported adequately and ultimately become, at best, expensive descriptors.

Any innovation that is

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May 9, 2012 • Permalink

Fight Off Your Heavy User Obsession: What About Noncustomers?

As noted in my book, Brand Relevance the only way to grow is to innovate, creating “must haves” that form new subcategories. One source for innovation are noncustomers that are usually ignored by firms trained to look to the heavy user, where the money (and competition) resides. But there can be a substantial market that is lying dormant because there is a deficiency or omitted feature in the current offerings that prevents these people from buying.

Turn the heavy user obsession on its head. How would you define the customer that wouldn’t qualify as part of the heavy user group? What segment would be the opposite? What offering modification would turn off the heavy user? What new application wouldn’t be of interest to the heavy user?

The noncustomer might be attracted if the offering were augmented or changed. Energy bars pioneered by PowerBar had very male taste, texture, ingredients, packaging and associations when Luna and then Pria created an energy bar…

May 2, 2012 • Permalink

Steve Jobs and The Bobby Knight School of Leadership

I believe that Steve Jobs was among the best CEOs of this generation because he created entirely new categories six times in a decade, and built the largest company market cap ever. Yet two recent and excellent books (Inside Apple, by Adam Lashinsky and Steve Jobs by Walter Issacson) describe a management style that was disturbingly harsh.

To understand Jobs's success, I find it helpful to look at the success of Bobby Knight, the fabled basketball coach at Indiana. Knight was one of two coaches to win over 900 games, won the NCAA championship three times, and was the national coach of the year four times yet had a management style similar to Jobs (described…

April 25, 2012 • Permalink

Three Keys to Managing Your Personal Brand

Every person has a brand, represented by a name and face that has a host of associated characteristics, such as: professional skills and assets, career paths, communication styles, appearance, personalities, interests, activities, friends, family and more. The brand influences all relationships by affecting how a person is perceived and whether he or she is liked and respected.

The “person brand” can be actively managed with disciple and consistency over time, or it can be allowed to drift. There is a huge payoff to employing the active management option, and there are large risks to the alternative. There are three keys to getting your brand under your control.

Your brand needs to have a strategic vision that details what you want it to stand for.

It should be aspirational but realistic in terms of what can be added, changed or made credible. Just the decision to manage your brand and develop a brand vision…

April 18, 2012 • Permalink

Ten Routes to a Successful Brand Extension

A brand extension can be a source of new offering ideas, bursts of energy, brand enhancements, brand building economies and new growth platform. The extension option is not always optimal, but it should be part of most strategy and new product discussions. One key step is to identify extension product categories where a new entry will benefit from and contribute to the brand associations. The process usually involves identifying the associations and brainstorming where they might be relevant. A more systematic approach is to explore the 10 routes to brand extensions that come from an analysis of successful extensions.

A friend of mine, Ed Tauber, considered the father of brand extensions, did a classic and influential 1988 study of 275 successful extensions in which he concluded most companies employed one of seven approaches to extensions. The Parham Santana extension agency, in conjunction with Ed, has reprised that…

April 11, 2012 • Permalink

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