The brandgym blog

Brand scizophrenia: Stella Artois 4%

The launch of Stella Artois 4% beer is a chilling reminder of how new product launches can fragment a brand, resulting in "brand scizophrenia".

The new 4% beer is being advertised with the idea of "La nouvelle smooth", in the style of 60's French cinema. It tries to capture the spirit of the French Riviera of bygone days....

... meanwhile, the main Stella campaign dramatises the birth of the brand in 1366 "when the people of Leuven had the courage to create the perfect beer".

Poor old Stella Artois. For more than 20 years it was an amazing case study of sustained success in growing the core. It stuck to the same advertising campaign, based on the idea of "reassuringly expensive". And, just as impressively, sticking to a single product, using different pack formats to meet different needs.

Then, back in November last year I posted on two ominous signs of trouble ahead. The brand ditched its long-running ad campaign and, more worryingly, tried to create "La Famille Artois" by launching Artois Bock and Peterman Artois. Unfortunately, 6 months later in April 2008, and with three products instead of one, the brand sales were down 12% (TNS Worldwdide). Now with the 4% product launch we have 4 products, and the risk of even more fragmentation. I'm sad to say that I don't expect this to do much for the brand's sales. At best, I predict sales will be flat a year from now, but spread over more products.

I wonder if this decline could have been avoided if more had been done to keep Stella fresh and relevant? The trick with rejunenation is to work on updating the brand before sales start to slow. As one sports coach said, "To stay number 1 you need to train like number 2".

Or perhaps Stella has just reached the end of its natural life as a leading brand? The heavy discounting of the brand in supermarkets had undermined its premium credentials. And a whole host of new premium packaged beers is now on sale.

Whatever the truth, adding brand scizophrenia to Stella's list of problems can't be a good idea to improve the brand's health.

When a new bird needs to fly the nest

I posted ealier this year on my concerns about innocent launching a new brand called This Water (From the people at innocent). This was in fact a re-launch of innocent's fruity water as a new brand. My worry was about innocent getting distracted by managing a new brand in a different category to their core smoothies.

So, I smiled when I saw how the This Water team describe themselves on their new website: 

"We're an entrepreneurial bunch brave enough to take the innocent brand off our label."

But surely its mad for a start-up strapped for cash to remove such a brilliant brand. The innocent "mother brand" would have given the new baby a better chance of survival. And the new product would have had a "halo" effect on the innocent brand as a whole.

Right?

Wrong.

What innocent have done is very smart. They recognized that innocent Juicy Water was more about water than it was about fruit. And, therefore, it didn't belong in the innocent brand. Rather than helping the product, the innocent brand was a hindrance. The brand stretch logic described above fell down on both counts:

- Mother brand helps the new product: No. In fact, the innocent brand suggested the product would be very fruity and juicy. This put off people who wanted a water. And led to people who did try it being disappointed as it was more watery than they expected!

Furthermore, as the This Water team explain: "Juicy Water never got much focus because innocent was concentrating on their smoothies."

- New product has halo on mother brand: No. First, innocent Juicy Water was small, and so as if often the case, the hoped for halo is a mirage. And as the product was about water, not fruit, it didn't feed back much anyway, even for people who did try it.

This is a case where the new "bird" is better off flying the brand nest, free to have its own identity, positioning and team.

My concern in May 2007 when This Water was launched was that innocent management time would be distracted away from the core smoothie business. However, this didn't happen, as This Water effectively became a separate business, in a separate office. Although the packs at launch had "From the innocent people" on, this has now gone altogether.

And the results? Sales have doubled since launch and the brand is now in more shops than ever. 

Too often, good products are force-fitted into brands where they don't belong with the logic that its cheaper than lauching a new brand. However, as This Water seems to show, letting the new bird fly the nest may actually make you more money in the long run.

Stella fail the Stella test - Part 2

Last week I solemnly posted on the passing of one of the best communication campaigns of all time: "Reassuringly Expensive" from Stella Artois. In this post we look at another side of Stella's marketing where they've walked away from the simple recipe of success that worked so well for 20+ years: brand architecture.

Stella is my star case study in coaching session about  growing the core. For 20 years they've focused on a single product, avoiding the fragmentation of marketing effort that comes from brand extension. They grew instead by inspired use of packaging and promotion. Re-designing multi-packs to look more like wine than beer. Creating a unique embossed glass for in-bar consumption. Creating a range of sizes, from small to big, for different occasions. The list of clever innovation on the core business goes on, and on, an on.

But no more.

Stella has gone from being a mono-product brand to suddenly having three products: Stella, Artois Bock and Peeterman Artois. And a new umbrella brand to tie these all together: Artois. Instead of one brand, we now have four. The new ad campaign is not for Stella, but for La Famille Artois.

You can see the beautiful Powerpoint chart showing the brand architecture, and how it all works in theory. And I'm sure there is a rationale about why the Artois Bock (darker, stronger beer) and Peeterman Artois products meet relevant needs. The beautiful 3-brand pub deilvery shown on the right will get more attention from drinkers. But it all seems a bit complex. And brings a risk of diverting focus from the beautiful, big core Stella business onto the new "dwarves", which I fear the two new products will be.

Some thoughts/suggestions from this story:
1. Extend sequentially: two new products at the same, after having none for 20 years, seems too much for Stella Artois. Better to launch one thing well, make it work, then follow up with the next one.

2. Build on strong brands: the bit of the Stella Artois brand people know is Stella, not Artois. So trying to turn Artois into the umbrella brand, and using it for Artois Bock is an uphill struggle. [One reason for shying away from building on the Stella name may be that it does have a tarnished reputation for being a strong beer drunk by yobs. But then isn't working on fixing this perception a better route?]

3. Keep it simple: the new Artois range is hard to navigate, with three different brands (Stella, Artois and Peeterman). And, to make it more confusing, they're used in different ways: Artois is the 2nd bit of Stella Artois and Peeterman Artois...then it becomes the lead name for Artois Bock. And what's a Bock anyway?

4. Avoid umbrella brands if at all possible: the Artois brewery creates an extra level of complexity, and distracts attention away from the product brands which actually drive sales

iPhone announces the end of Apple Computer

Apple finally unveiled their iPhone this week in front of 4000 fervent fans at MacWorld. The event was more like a rock concert than a computer company presentation, with CEO Steve Jobs in the role of Robbie Williams. The iPhone created a frenzy of media coverage, with the mouth-watering photo on the front pages of many newspapers and a Google search bringing back 21 000 mentions. It does look like all the fuss may be justified: this is a truly remarkable bit of industrial engineering that combines amazing looks, functionality (phone+video iPod+web browser) and ease of use.

A less reported but nonetheless important bit of news was the formal changing of the company's name from Apple Computer to simply Apple. If we needed it, here was confirmation that Apple was no longer a computer company but rather a digital entertainment, creativity and communication company. So, what brand stretching lessons we can take out of this amazing transformation?

First and foremost, Apple's success dramatises the power of the product. Apple products are so cool they freeze your fingers off. But this coolness comes not from any attempt to be a lifestyle brand or emotionally-based communication. No, the coolness comes from the drop-dead gorgeous design of the physical product and the user interface. Isn't the real genius behind Apple's success not Jobs but rather head designer Jonathan Ive? No matter how much money Sony and Microsoft spend on their MP3 players, they'll never match the iPod in the coolness stakes as their products are not in the same league.

Second, it shows that as with the human body, the more you stretch your muscles, the more supple they become. Apple may have lacked the credibility to go straight from a computer to a mobile phone. But by moving into music players first, they created new brand associations to do with portability and music that mean the iPhone is now a more achievable stretch.

Third, Apple's success shows the power of an architecture based on simple naming not the use of the dreaded "sub-brand", maintaining a very coherent brand identity. Several key elements link the Apple brand and each extension. This creates a "virtuous circle" where the extension benefits from the brand, and the brand benefits from the extension:
- Unmistakable product design using white and chrome
- Use of the "i-" prefix: iPod, iLife, iMac, iTunes etc.
- Investment in Apple stores that allow the whole range to be presented together
- Launch of the the iTunes software and on-line store to create a link between the computers and the iPod

The only bad thing about the iPhone is the 8 month wait to get one for all the Apple-aholics out there. How will we survive so long without one?!

T-Mobile's Flext and the power of ownable descriptors

One of most misunderstood and mis-used bits of branding is the "sub-brand", and there are very few examples where this has been done successfully. The theory: by using a "brand-like" name and design for your new product, rather than a straightforward 'descriptor', in theory you can stretch further and differentiate better. And at the same time you still build the equity of the "mother brand" that has given birth to the extension.

It works when:
i) the sub-brand and mother brand work together, like a forename and family name. For example: Gillette (family name) Mach 3 (forename); Bacardi (family name) Mach Breezer (forename). Ideally the combined names should be no more than 5 syllables, so they can be pronounced together, even if over time consumers will use a shorthand.
ii) the sub-brand tells a new 'chapter' of the same brand story, rather than telling a different story altogether. So, Breezer has Bacardi "Latin spirit in every one" and Mach 3 is the latest and best version of "The Best a Man Can Get" (though its all got a bit confused now with Turbo, Power and Nitro being added in the branding recipe).

Unfortunately, most sub-brands fail to respect these two rules. They are in effect new brands in disguise, often called "sub-brands" by marketing people to smuggle them past internal approval processes that have banned the creation of new brands. These sub-brands get their own budgets and brand teams and steal resources away from the main brand.

Which brings us onto the power of the "ownable descriptor": it gives you a clue about what the product does, but has enough of a twist to make it hard to copy. A good example is T-Mobile UK's new Flext tariff proposition, that has shaken up the UK mobile market and been highly successful in attracting new customers. As you expect from the name, it allows you to spend your monthly allowance on whatever mix of voice minutes, SMS and date you want, rather than having to pick x minutes, y SMS and z MB of data. You get a text alert when you are reaching your monthly limit. And you even get an automatic alert to tell you if you would get better value from a different plan.

There is no attempt to give Flext a personality, look and feel separate from the rest of T-Mobile, it is clearly a new chapter in the same brand story about helping connect more freely with people and stuff that matters. Using an ownable descriptor rather than a generic same, such as 'flexible plan', also makes it easier to recall and harder to copy. Contrast this with Vodafone's  "Free weekend calls" and O2's "Long Weekends". These both feel like pure promotions, and so less ownable, whereas T-Mobile's Flext feels more like a branded concept that has the legs to survive.

5 minute workout: are you at risk of falling into the sub-branding trap, or using a purely generic name for your new launch? If so, how could you create an ownable descriptor to do the branding job more effectively?