Brand Failures_ The Truth About the 100 Biggest Branding Mistakes of All Time - Matt Haig [39]
While Miller’s long-standing rival, Budweiser, has now taken its regular brand identity to new levels of simplicity (reflected in the one-word strap line, ‘True’), Miller still suffers from a lack of coherence. So, although the beer itself may taste great, the brand has definitely become watered down.
Lessons from Miller
Don’t extend your brand too far. ‘Leverage is good, too much leverage is bad,’ says brand guru Tom Peters. He is joined in this opinion by Al Ries and Jack Trout, for whom ‘The Law of Line Extension’ is one of ‘The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing.’ This law states, ‘if you want to be successful today, you have to narrow the focus in order to build a position in the prospect’s mind.’
Have a core brand. While Ries and Trout are right to highlight the potential problems of line extension, it is important to differentiate between those companies that can get away with it, and those that can’t. Brand extensions aren’t bad in themselves. For instance, nobody in his or her right mind would call Diet Coke a bad branding decision. Even Miller’s chief competitors have played the extension game. In some respects, Budweiser is as guilty as Miller at broadening its line (consider Bud Light, Bud Dry and Bud Ice, for example), but unlike Miller, it has a core brand, Budweiser itself. Miller, on the other hand, has merely become the sum of its many parts. By the time the company tried to rectify the situation, with the launch of Miller Regular in 1996, it had left it too late.
Learn from your mistakes. Miller was clearly too focused on the success of each new brand it created to understand the negative impact these new brands were having on its existing beers.
Change your brand name. Although Miller was launching new brands, it kept hold of the ‘Miller’ name. If the company had created completely new names for each range, there would have been less consumer confusion.
25 Virgin Cola
A brand too far
Many brands fail when they move into inappropriate categories. For instance, Harley Davidson perfume proved to be an extension too far.
Virgin, however, is one company that seems to be able to apply its brand name to anything. Although Richard Branson’s empire began as a record label, signing groundbreaking acts such as the Sex Pistols, it now encompasses virtually everything – from airlines to financial services.
An article which appeared on 27 August 2000 in the UK newspaper The Observer explained the way in which members of the public can ‘live a Virgin life’:
Every morning you can wake up to Virgin Radio, put on Virgin clothes and make-up, drive to work in a car bought through Virgin using money from your Virgin bank account. On your way home you can pop into a Virgin Active gym. At weekends you can use a Virgin mobile phone or Virgin’s Internet service to find out what is on at the local Virgin cinema. As you head off on holiday on a Virgin train or plane, you can play Virgin video games stopping only to buy your Virgin vodka in duty free. If you meet someone on the beach and one thing leads to another, the Virgin condoms are in the Virgin hotel minibar. When love blossoms, you get married with Virgin Brides and buy your first house with a Virgin mortgage and get a joint Virgin pension.
In most cases, these brand extensions are successful. However, sometimes even Branson, dubbed ‘the people’s capitalist’, can stretch himself too far.
In the mid-1990s, the scale of his ambitions for the Virgin brand became clear. ‘I want Virgin to be as well known around the world as Coca-Cola,’ he was quoted as saying. So what better way to achieve this goal than to enter the cola market itself. He therefore decided to join forces with Cott Corporation, a Canadian private-label soda maker, to produce cola