How to Evaluate your Brand Extension Strategy

What critical questions would you recommend to evaluate brand extension pathways?

I would suggest four questions that brand teams ask themselves as they plan their brand extension strategy:

Do you know your Brand Lover?

It is imperative that you not only know, but really understand and integrate what your best customers believe about your brand, as this is what you must deliver in any product extension.

Does the anticipated product or service convey not only your brand promise but answer a need for its potential customers?

In many cases, the “need” is not clearly voiced, e.g. Apple’s customers may not have requested an IPad, but may have indicated the ITouch was too small, or the MAC was too heavy, etc. Well-planned and carefully analyzed research is key.

Is this a product or service you can realistically produce in-house on a quality level commensurate with your base business, or should you align with a partner that has the necessary expertise to ensure success?

Knowing your own company’s core strengths – and what are NOT its core strengths – will help you define your next step and evaluate your need for a partner.

Are you anticipating a win-win-win-win situation?

Specifically, your brand, your customer, your potential partner and your chosen distribution channel should all benefit from the extension planned. A zero-sum game is not a long term strategy. Before planning brand extensions at Fila and Nine West, for example, I spent considerable time analyzing consumer research and discussing potential strategies with international distributors and key accounts, ensuring not only that the plan was viable, but that it had their support.

Brand Extensions Strategist

Tracey is a recognized leader in the fields of brand management and brand extension. She has over twenty years’ experience in senior strategic brand management and consulting positions for world-class multinational companies, including Polo/Ralph Lauren, FILA Sports and Turner Networks. Her work spans multiple channels, product categories, industries and countries and her cross-industry experience gives her a unique perspective and expertise on the potential of brands to mine new revenue opportunities while enhancing brand equity.

Consistently designing and delivering on growth-oriented strategic and business plans for large enterprises, Tracey has also crafted numerous strategic alliances between brands and companies. She has a track record of building consensus around common goals, across multiple departments, divisions and companies, as well as a P&L management track record and perspective.

Tracey received her MBA, with a concentration in international marketing, from the Thunderbird School of Global Management. She is on the faculty of the University of Texas’s McCombs Graduate School of Management. Tracey speaks on multiple brand topics to industry groups and serves as an expert witness in trademark litigation.

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The Importance of Modeling the Brand

"Our brains are essentially model-making machines. We need to construct useful, virtual reality simulations of the world that we can act on. Within the simulation, we need also to construct models of other people's minds because we primates are intensely social creatures. (This is called "a theory of other minds.") We need to do this so that we can predict their behavior." 

- V.S. Ramachandran, M.D., Ph.D., Director of Center for Brain and Cognition at the University of California, San Diego

The Power of Modeling

A good model allows us to focus on the essentials while screening out trivial details. Imagine you want to teach children about the world. While taking them into space might provide them with the most objective experience of Earth, a "Field Trip to Outer Orbit" is a hard sell to any parent. The alternative? Here, a model of Earth will do just fine. Children get the essential details from the model to deepen their understanding of the world. If the context were different (for example, if you wanted to teach children about the Milky Way galaxy), a different model would be required.

Why is it important to model the Brand?

A Brand Model is a representation of the most important elements, both perceived and experienced, that create the Brand System. Modeling the Brand offers the business four important benefits:

1. The Brand Model is descriptive. It describes the consumer's mindset, attitudes, and behaviors toward the Brand.
2. The Brand Model is predictive. It takes "what if" questions and turns them into observations to consider for future action.
3. The Brand Model is normative. It provides us with information about what is needed to reach our goals.
4. The Brand Model provides a synthesis of the whole, creating "The Quintessential Brand."
   

Here are a few direct benefits your organization can acquire from modeling the brand.

A Brand Model:

• Leads to better decisions ("Better" in this context = Business Results are Achieved).
  
• Uncovers emerging consumer needs and highlights where to innovate next.
  
• Pinpoints changes in the Consumer Ecosystem faster and adjusts strategies to stay ahead of the competition.
  
• Helps identify what actions will benefit your brand the most (based on its descriptive and predictive power).
  
• Solves for a specific problem. Data without context turns into white-noise.
• Clarifies the role your brand assets play (e.g. marketing, advertising, innovation).
• Organizes and structures information that CEOs, CMOs and Brand Managers can utilize right away.