“Beware of the temptation to expand your brand”

🌟 Brian Till writes in his book “Creating Popular Brands”: Although the secret to building a successful brand is maintaining its consistency and focus, in reality, once a brand becomes famous and widely loved, its owner often tries to profit from that success by using the brand to introduce other products.

🌟 Although this behavior may seem justifiable in practice, it is not acceptable in the science of branding. In other words, even if a company that has spent millions of dollars building its brand feels entitled to use it for launching new products, from a branding perspective this means wasting all the investment made on the brand.

🌟 For example, Heinz, after gaining massive popularity in the ketchup market, decided to add products like mayonnaise, baked beans, and even vinegar to its portfolio. But it failed in most of these categories and eventually had to discontinue many of them.

🌟 As a result, Heinz paid two separate costs: – the cost of developing and launching new products that were soon discontinued, – and the cost of maintaining its brand strength in the ketchup market.

🌟 This is why managers who care about protecting their brand’s power are extremely cautious and selective when deciding to expand their product line.

🌟 Heinz survived because it quickly removed unrelated products, but many brands lack the courage to do so — and eventually disappear from the market altogether.

🌟 Another example is the brand Healthy Choice, which first became known for ready-to-eat cold meals. When customers welcomed the brand, managers expanded it to cakes and wafers under the same name.

🌟 Since these products sold poorly, the managers refused to discontinue them, and eventually the brand weakened so much that it lost its position even in the cold‑meal market — and disappeared entirely.

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