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However, when the Bic brand applied its name to women’s underwear, consisting of a line of ‘disposable pantyhose’ they were unable to attract customers. Okay, so the disposability element was still there. But that was about it. Consumers were unable to see any link between Bic’s other products and underwear, because of course there was no link.

The main problem was that the company insisted on using the Bic name. As marketing writer Al Ries has observed, using the same name in unrelated categories can create difficulties. ‘If you have a powerful perception for one class of product, it becomes almost impossible to extend that perception to a different class,’ he argues. ‘Names have power, but only in the camp in which they have credentials and when they get out of their camp, when they lose focus, they also lose their power.’ Although this doesn’t hold true for every brand – Virgin is an obvious exception (and one Ries rarely discusses) – it certainly holds true in this instance.

Furthermore, Bic underwear required a completely new distribution channel and required different production technology. The lighters, razors and pens were all made from injection-moulded plastic, and could therefore share resources. Production and distribution problems, combined with the fact that the product’s function was totally unlike that of the previous products, meant that Bic underwear met an early, and not much-mourned death.

Lessons from Bic underwear

Exploit existing resources. The other Bic brand extensions made sense because the company could exploit its existing sales force, distribution channels and production technology. None of which came in handy for the range of underwear.

Be flexible. The brand association for Bic in the mind of the consumer simply wasn’t flexible enough for a move into an unrelated product category.

27 Xerox Data Systems

More than copiers?

Xerox is one of the branding success stories of the 20th century. In August 2010 Ursula M Burns, the company’s CEO since July 2009, was heading an empire employing 130,000 employees in 160 countries. Burns joined nearly 30 years earlier as a mechanical engineering summer intern, and people like her had delivered the 9,400 active patents that kept the company on top of its game. As with many other similar successes, the company didn’t just create a product, it invented a whole new category. Indeed, such is Xerox’s achievement that its brand name has become a part of everyday speech. In the United States, xerox is a verb, used when people are copying paper.

Chester Carlson was the man who started it all. In 1928, he invented plain-paper copying, a process he referred to as ‘xerography’ (a term based on the Greek words for ‘dry’ and ‘writing’). But it wasn’t until 1947 that ‘xerography’ became a business, as well as a technological, venture. That was when the New York-based Haloid Company met with Carlson and acquired the licence to develop a xerographic machine. One year later the words ‘Xerox’ and ‘xerography’ had been patented.

1949 saw the launch of the first ever Xerox machine, called simply Model A. A few years later the Haloid company had changed its name to Haloid Xerox and in 1959 it introduced the product which was to put Xerox on the map. The Xerox 914 was the first automatic plain-paper copier and, as such, attracted considerable media attention. Indeed, within months of its launch Fortune magazine was writing enthusiastically about this machine, which could make over seven copies a minute, and referred to it as ‘the most successful product ever marketed in America.’

Word spread about this amazing product, and very soon it was becoming an office essential. The company, rechristened the Xerox Corporation in 1961, was now listed on the New York Stock Exchange. By 1968, company sales rose to the US $1 billion mark. In 1969, Xerox became a majority shareholder of the European operation, Rank Xerox, and so the Xerox name was now a truly global brand.

The following year, the company strengthened