Hailee Steinfeld is principally recognized for her performing chops, however her singing talents bolster her esteem as a performer and stretch her model to extra audiences and followers. And identical to her enterprise into music, corporations usually lengthen their model to develop new merchandise in industries the place they don’t have any market share.
These initiatives are known as model extensions, and so they enable corporations to leverage their model consciousness and fairness to create extra income streams.
On this article, you’ll study extra about what a model extension is and see examples of extension concepts that would encourage you.
Skip to:
What’s a model extension?
Model extension is a advertising and marketing technique that entails an organization utilizing its well-established model identify or picture to introduce a brand new product or product classes to its buyer base.
This technique works finest when the brand new product class is expounded to its guardian class and is one thing customers and clients need.
Many corporations use model extensions as a result of it permits them to leverage their guardian model’s model consciousness and authority to succeed in new demographics and open up new gross sales channels.
One firm that does model extensions properly is Apple.
Though Apple began as a know-how firm that makes solely computer systems (Macs), it quickly prolonged its product line to incorporate music gamers (iPods), cell units (iPhones), and tech equipment (Apple Watch and Earpods). Although all these new merchandise are totally different, the extension works as a result of Apple did not drift too removed from its guardian product class. As an alternative, it leveraged its model identify to make penetrating the market successful.
What are the sorts of model extensions?
Relying on the kind of clients you could have and what you need to obtain as a model, you could resolve which model extension technique is correct to your firm.
Listed below are 5 totally different extension methods that would be just right for you.
1. Line Extension
A line extension is when a guardian model launches a brand new product line in a class already accustomed to its clients. With a line extension, manufacturers do not should create new classes.
A wonderful instance of a line extension is when comfortable drink corporations introduce new flavors to their current drink lineup. Different examples may embody introducing new scents, sizes, and colours to a product line.
2. Complementary Product Extension
One other method a longtime model can lengthen itself is by creating complementary merchandise for its foremost merchandise.
For instance, Nike, a sports activities model, creates numerous gear, wears, and different sport-related merchandise that complement one another. We have additionally seen toothpaste corporations use this kind of extension for his or her authentic model by including toothbrushes and different oral care merchandise as new classes.
3. Buyer Base Extension
An organization can create a branding extension for itself by launching totally different product classes for a single demographic.
Procter & Gamble (P&G), for instance, does this properly with the Pampers model. Though P&G focuses on numerous merchandise, the Pampers line focuses on making merchandise like diapers and wipes for infants.
4. Firm Authority Extension
Firms with excessive ranges of authority of their sector can leverage this authority to create new merchandise.
For example, Samsung has an enormous model identify within the know-how area that enables them to launch totally different merchandise in associated classes with a measure of success. And due to its model picture, most customers would not thoughts utilizing a brand new product, whether or not it is an air conditioner or a cell phone.
5. Model Way of life Extension
Who would have thought a tequila line from an vitality firm would promote out inside just a few hours? Effectively, Tesla did it. And it was primarily because of the character and life-style of its CEO, Elon Musk.
Nonetheless, Elon and Tesla will not be the one ones to make use of a celeb’s life-style to increase an current model. Different cases embody Adidas/Kanye West’s Yeezy lineup and Fenty (a model underneath LVMH) with Rihanna.
Model Extension and Model Well being Measures
Earlier than you may take into consideration extending your model, it’s vital to ensure that your model’s present iteration is in good well being. What does that imply? Model well being refers to a model’s capability to ship on its worth proposition and promise. Earlier than you begin launching a brand new services or products, ensure that clients are delighted along with your present choices.
Subsequent, we’ll dig into what precisely you’ll have to assess model well being.
Model Well being Monitoring
There isn’t only one metric out there to diagnose model well being. As an alternative, you’ll have to view a wide range of metrics to get an excellent image of the place your model stands. Listed below are just a few metrics you must already be monitoring that may allow you to assess model well being.
- Web Promoter Rating (NPS): Discover your NPS by sending a survey asking clients in the event that they’d suggest your service or product to a buddy utilizing a scale of 0 (probably) to 10 (unlikely). Prospects who rated you at a 9 or 10 are thought of “promoters.” Those that rated 0 to six are “detractors,” with these rated 7 to eight thought of “passive.”
- Buyer Satisfaction Rating: Just like NPS, your buyer satisfaction rating can be a survey query. This one asks clients to price their satisfaction along with your service on a scale of 1 (very unhappy) to five (very glad).
- Model Recall: Model recall is used to measure model consciousness. Your survey query would ask one thing just like “What firm/model involves thoughts once you consider [product]?”
- Share of Voice: Share of voice helps you to evaluate model consciousness throughout a number of advertising and marketing channels towards your rivals.
- Buy Intent: This survey query asks clients how probably they’re to purchase your model on a scale from not prone to very probably. To search out the rating, whole the variety of clients that answered “very probably” and divide that quantity by the overall variety of respondents.
The metrics above are key to measuring model well being. With them, you may observe your:
1. Model Consciousness
Surveys and focus teams will allow you to observe each model consciousness and model notion. Instruments like SurveyMonkey could make operating surveys a cinch, and permit your group to drag much-needed buyer insights.
2. Model Loyalty
Utilizing each your NPS and buyer satisfaction rating may also help you gauge model loyalty. In case your clients wouldn’t suggest your services or products to a buddy, it’s an indication you could have extra work to do in constructing belief and delivering in your worth proposition.
3. Social Media Listening
It might sound creepy however on this occasion of social media listening, spying in your clients is an efficient factor. You’ll be monitoring your model’s social channels for direct suggestions and mentions of your model to see simply what clients are saying about it on-line. Use listening instruments to gather buyer suggestions or reply on to folks mentioning you on-line. The extra you study your clients, the higher you’ll be capable to serve them.
4. Messaging Targets
Utilizing the metrics above will even be sure that your advertising and marketing technique corresponds to the proper buyer section. Your clients may have totally different ache factors and desires and will probably be at totally different factors of their buyer journey. As such, your messaging shouldn’t be one dimension matches all. You’ll want to make sure your advertising and marketing efforts goal the precise clients on the proper time for his or her particular state of affairs.
For instance, you might group clients by product pages they’ve visited previously and ship them a advertising and marketing e mail mentioning that particular product. In case your messaging will not be aligned with the precise buyer section, you danger offering a poor buyer expertise — which may derail your model extension efforts.
Do not forget that buyer expertise and model well being are linked. You gained’t efficiently pull off a model extension with out making certain each are in an excellent place.
What separates the very best model extensions from the worst?
Traditionally, probably the most profitable model extensions are those that intently tie to the corporate’s core model or flagship product, like Gerber’s child garments and Dole’s frozen fruit bars. By getting into tangential markets that may protect their model’s distinctive associations and perceived high quality, corporations can launch new merchandise that buyers intuitively perceive the advantages of, although they’ve by no means seen them on a shelf.
On the flip aspect, an organization may exploit its model and, in flip, spoil it.
Growing a brand new product in a market that isn’t intently tied to your flagship product or core model, like what Zippo did with its girls’s fragrance, may trigger some issues.
It may end in undesirable associations to your model and weaken its current associations and harm your established merchandise’ perceived high quality.
So whether or not you’re a SaaS firm or a client model enthusiastic about extending your product line, take a look at our record of probably the most and least profitable model extensions to assist encourage your personal.
Model Extension Examples
- Michelin
- Reese’s Puffs Cereal
- Meals Community’s Kitchen Gadgets
- Gillette’s Razors & Shaving Provides
- Colgate’s Toothbrush
- Star Wars Motion Figures
- Honda’s Garden Mowers
- Sunkist’s Vitamin C Tablets
- Cadbury’s Immediate Mashed Potatoes
- Levi’s Tailor-made Classics
- Pillsbury’s Frozen Microwave Popcorn
- Samsonite’s Outerwear
- Arm & Hammer’s Underarm Deodorant Spray
- Colgate’s Kitchen Entrees
Examples of Good Model Extensions
1. Michelin
Once you hear the identify Michelin, do you consider top-rated eating places or meals? Maybe each? Michelin constructed their empire manufacturing automobile tires. Within the late 1800s, the car business was nonetheless in its infancy — on the time there have been fewer than 3,000 vehicles in France — the Michelin firm’s house base.
In an effort to assist drivers plan their journeys and increase automobile gross sales, Michelin rolled out a information that includes gasoline stations, maps, how you can change a tire, and different helpful data. Nonetheless, it wasn’t till the Nineteen Twenties that the Michelin Information took off. Because the information’s recognition grew, thriller diners have been despatched to numerous eating places to offer evaluations and a star score system was carried out.
Now the Michelin Information is a must have reference for foodies and vacationers, protecting eating places in roughly 41 international locations.
What we like:
Michelin’s model extensions is without doubt one of the riskier ones on this record, however it’s fairly spectacular. They took two seemingly unrelated industries and made it work — changing into the gold normal of restaurant rankings.
2. Reese’s Puffs Cereal
Reese’s Puffs was my favourite cereal rising up, so I could be just a little biased right here. However with all of the chocolate-flavored cereal round within the mid-90s, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup’s entrance into the cereal market was sensible and pure.
At this time, with some advert campaigns highlighting how youngsters can eat their favourite sweet for breakfast, over 6 million customers eat 1 to 4 servings of Reese’s Puffs per week based on Statista.
What we like:
Reese’s advertising and marketing efforts acquired dad and mom on board with permitting their youngsters to eat sweet for breakfast.
3. Meals Community’s Kitchen Gadgets
With an viewers of over 13 million folks, Meals Community stays one of many world’s greatest TV channels.
Contemplating that many individuals have been occupied with what it does, Meals Community noticed a possibility to increase its model by partnering with Kohl’s Company to launch its kitchen and cookware merchandise.
What we like:
The partnership was successful as a result of Meals Community served a selected viewers with what they wanted.
4. Gillette’s Razors & Shaving Provides
Gillette’s extension into making shaving merchandise alongside its security razor blades was a wise transfer. Why? It’s onerous to think about somebody shaving with out utilizing shaving cream, foam, or gel?
What we like:
It was virtually a necessity for Gillette to supply this complementary good for its flagship product.
5. Star Wars Motion Figures
Though Star Wars was common amongst adults when the film was first launched in 1977, many youngsters did not prefer it as a lot.
So how did the franchise grow to be common in the present day? The Star Wars model prolonged into the toy market. With motion figures from characters within the motion pictures, Star Wars was in a position to appeal to a brand new viewers, construct model consciousness and make a ton of gross sales within the course of.
What we like:
Star Wars was in a position to faucet into its devoted fan base and market toys to not simply die onerous followers, however appeal to new ones with the addition of merch.
6. Colgate’s Toothbrush
Identical to Gillette’s razors and shaving merchandise, Colgate’s toothpaste and toothbrush are complementary items. However in contrast to the previous instance, you actually want a toothbrush to make use of toothpaste. In any other case, you may’t brush your enamel.
What we like:
For my part, Colgate’s choice to enter the toothbrush market was a necessity and certainly one of its finest strikes, serving to it safe the third-largest slice of the oral care market.
7. Honda’s Garden Mowers
Honda’s line of lawnmowers won’t elicit probably the most pleasant recollections of my childhood. Nonetheless, its entrance and success in a saturated market communicate volumes for an organization primarily recognized for promoting vehicles.
What we like:
By leveraging its experience in small motors to enter the garden mower market in 1978, it now boasts the seventh-largest slice of market share within the world garden mower business.
8. Sunkist’s Vitamin C Tablets
That includes orange juice as its flagship product, Sunkist’s model has associations with oranges, well being, and vitality. Sunkist produced vitamin C tablets that spawned a whole arm of enterprise devoted to nutritional vitamins and dietary supplements to each bolster and leverage this affiliation concurrently.
What we like:
Sunkist was in a position to parlay their model notoriety for orange juice into vitamin C dietary supplements. It is an extension that’s on model since oranges are an amazing supply of vitamin C.
Examples of Unsuccessful Model Extensions
Not each model extension generally is a hit. Listed below are just a few examples of manufacturers which have made model extension errors — and the teachings you may study from them.
9. Cadbury’s Immediate Mashed Potatoes
Cadbury is understood for making high-end chocolate and sweet. When it began producing low-end meals merchandise, like immediate mashed potatoes, it’s not shocking to study that its affiliation with the best goodies weakened.
Smash, its immediate mashed potato model, truly reached mainstream success, however it was on the expense of reducing its flagship product’s perceived high quality. Cadbury ultimately offered Smash in 1986, over 20 years after introducing its immediate mashed potatoes to the world.
What went mistaken:
Cadbury’s meals merchandise have been less than the identical high-quality requirements as its sweet and misplaced buyer belief within the model.
10. Levi’s Tailor-made Classics
When Levi’s launched Tailor-made Classics within the early Nineteen Eighties, it already owned a big share of its goal market, so it needed to enter some new markets to maintain its excessive progress price.
Considered one of these markets was males’s fits, however since its model was closely related to an informal, rugged, and outdoorsy life-style, Levi’s new product line conflicted with its core identification and did not catch on.
What went mistaken:
Customers trusted Levis to supply sturdy clothes that would endure the wrath of mom nature, however, for that very cause, they did not belief them to ship high-end tailor-made fits.
11. Pillsbury’s Frozen Microwave Popcorn
Although Pillsbury is understood for producing foodstuffs, its frozen microwave popcorn couldn’t compete with Orville Redenbacher or Normal Mills’ Pop Secret as a result of its product positioning of being “frozen for freshness” didn’t supply sufficient worth. Positive, sticking your popcorn within the freezer is handy (I suppose), however that profit pales compared to having fun with a better-tasting popcorn.
What went mistaken:
Frozen popcorn was a tough promote — particularly when customers had better-tasting popcorn choices from rivals.
12. Samsonite’s Outerwear
Whereas Samsonite’s outwear is extra modern than Levi’s Tailor-made Classics, it nonetheless suffers from the identical downside as Levi’s failed product line — the model extension doesn’t align with Samsonite’s core identification.
Samsonite is understood for making high-end baggage, suitcases, and enterprise baggage. So except it thinks its flagship product’s elegant traits can switch to a very unrelated product line, its enterprise into the clothes business may diminish its model fairness. That is most certainly the explanation Samsonite doesn’t record outerwear on its web site anymore.
What went mistaken:
Samsonite was unable to switch its popularity for creating modern baggage to clothes.
13. Arm & Hammer’s Underarm Deodorant Spray
Arm & Hammer has efficiently prolonged its model from an odor-neutralizing baking soda to laundry detergent, carpet deodorizer, and even cat litter. However one product line that isn’t the very best match for its model is an underarm deodorant spray. Making use of a product that shares an ingredient with heavy-duty cleansing provides to such a delicate a part of the physique doesn’t jive properly with customers.
What went mistaken:
Whereas Arm & Hammer is understood for making glorious cleansing merchandise, clients simply could not image themselves utilizing its merchandise on their our bodies.
14. Colgate Kitchen Entrees
Though Colgate did properly by extending its model and creating totally different oral care merchandise, it did not enter the meals area.
This model extension was a failure primarily as a result of promoting frozen meals was in sharp distinction with Colgate’s model identification. Since its viewers already related the model identify with dental care, it was onerous for them to see the corporate in another way.
What went mistaken:
Pivoting from oral care to meals was not a swap that acquired buy-in from clients.
Develop Your Model
Whereas a model extension has its advantages, you additionally have to know that extending your model into unchartered waters would additionally include challenges.
So earlier than you implement any extension technique for your small business, guarantee it is in keeping with what your superb client needs.
Does it make any logical sense to begin advertising and marketing a brand new product to my clients? What profit would a client derive from this new model or product? Have I executed sufficient analysis to know the way a model extension would have an effect on my authentic model?
When you reply these questions, then you can begin enthusiastic about efficient methods to develop your model.
Editor’s notice: This text was initially revealed in June 2021 and has been up to date for comprehensiveness.
