Improving success in brand extensions.

First of all, it’s worth pointing out that there are is no such thing as a standard manual on how to achieve succes in brand extensions.

Nevertheless some characteristics should be considered. BIC, for example, applied it’s name a few years ago to women’s underwear. This action resulted in an epic fail, since customers were unable to link BIC pens and women’s underwear. BIC has been having some success in brand extensions, cfr. Cigarette lighters and safety razors, but with the women’s underwear, they certainly crossed their brand extension baundary line. Secondly, BIC had some additional difficulties since they were obliged to a completely new distribution network and production processes.  But brand extension isn’t an exact science, which is proved by Virgin. They were able to create success in completely different categories of products.

Crucial conditions for successful brand extension seem to be flexibility, exploiting existing resources, know your strenght and market.

Source: http://brandfailures.blogspot.com/2006/11/brand-extension-failures-bic-underwear.html


Van Vooren Lennert