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Chapter 13
Managing Brands Over Time
Chapter Objectives
1. Understand the important considerations in brand reinforcement.
2. Describe the range of brand revitalization options to a company.
3. Outline the various strategies to improve brand awareness and
brand image.
4. De ne the key steps in managing a brand crisis.
Overview
The health and well-being of a brand can be signi cantly a$ected by
both external forces (related to consumer behavior, channel structure
and power, competitive intensity and strategy, government regulation,
and other facets of the marketing environment) and internal forces
(related to a company’s commitment to and stewardship of a brand).
This chapter examines how best to manage equity over time in the
face of external and internal pressures on a brand.
The keystones to successful brand management are reinforcement of
brand meaning and identi cation of new sources of equity. Two
important factors in reinforcing brand meaning are consistency in the
amount and nature of marketing support given to a brand, and a
commitment to preserving and protecting existing sources of equity.
When identifying potential new sources of equity, it is necessary for a
company to recognize the inherent tradeo$s between marketing
activities that fortify brand equity and those that leverage it in pursuit
of growth and nancial gains.
If a brand loses its luster, a revitalization strategy may be required to
return it to prominence. This entails either taking a brand back to its
roots to recapture lost sources of equity, or identifying and establishing
new sources of equity. Sometimes a brand’s misfortunes arise from a
lack of breadth in consumer awareness levels, caused by a tendency of
consumers to think of it in very narrow ways. In such cases, marketers
can identify ways to use the brand more frequently, use more of the
brand when it is consumed, or use the brand in more ways.
When the problem is one of image, not awareness, a new marketing
campaign may be required to improve the strength, favorability, and
uniqueness of a brand’s associations. This can involve neutralizing
negative associations, shoring up or creating positive associations. A
© 2013 Pearson Education, Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall.
company may want to reposition a brand by establishing new
points-of-parity or points-of-di$erence.
Companies with more than one brand in a product line should develop
migration strategies that rationalize the movement of consumers
across franchises as their needs and wants change, or as the features
and positions of the brands change. If a brand fails to maintain or build
equity over time, a milking strategy to extract maximum pro ts before
“retirement” may be in order.
Brand Focus 13.0 discusses the concept of responding to a brand crisis
by throwing light on how Tylenol’s product tampering crisis was
handled, followed by discussing crisis marketing guidelines.
Science of Branding
THE SCIENCE OF BRANDING 13-1
BRAND FLASHBACKS
Dubbed “retro-branding” or “retro-advertising” by some marketing
pundits, the tactic is a means to tie in with past advertising that was,
and perhaps could still be, a key source of brand equity. Retro-branding
can activate and strengthen brand associations that would be virtually
impossible to recreate with new advertising today. Heritage can be a
powerful point-of-di$erence—at least as long as it conveys expertise,
longevity, and experience and not just age!
Anniversaries and milestones of longevity can be excellent
opportunities to launch a campaign to celebrate. Marketers should
focus as much on the future of the brand as on its past, of course,
perhaps emphasizing how all that the brand has gone through will
bene t its customers in the future. L.L. Bean’s 100th anniversary
celebration in 2012 was intended to do just that. The main thrust of the
campaign was to celebrate exploring the outdoors. Nostalgia can play
a valuable role for many brands. Oreo cookies and Keds tennis shoes
have run nostalgia-focused campaigns targeting adults who
presumably stopped using the product long ago. Research shows that
nostalgic advertising can positively in>uence consumers. One empirical
study con rmed that intentionally nostalgic advertisements yielded
favorable attitudes toward the advertisement and the brand. Another
study identi ed a potential source of nostalgic purchase behavior,
called “intergenerational in>uence,” or the in>uence of a parent’s
purchase behavior and brand attitudes on a child’s behavior and
attitudes.
© 2013 Pearson Education, Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall.
Some brands attempt to make the case that their enduring appeal is
still relevant for lapsed users today. Heritage appeals do not
necessarily have to use advertising though.
Branding Briefs
BRANDING BRIEF 13-1
RAZOR-SHARP BRANDING AT GILLETTE
Gillette is one of the strongest brands in the world, with roughly
two-thirds of the U.S. blade and razor market and even more in Europe
and Latin America. Fundamentally, Gillette continually innovates to
produce a demonstrably superior product. Gillette’s credo is to
“increase spending in R&D, plant and equipment, and advertising”.
Gillette backs its products with strong advertising and promotional
support. Skillful marketing thus creates both strong performance and
imagery associations.
When it launched the Mach3 in 1998, Gillette considered it to be the
most important new product in its history and invested more than $750
million in research and development and manufacturing expenses,
securing 35 patents in the process. As successful as Mach3 was,
Gillette’s women’s version of the product was perhaps an even more
impressive achievement. Gillette spent $300 million on research and
development for Venus, its rst razor designed solely for women.
Based on extensive consumer research and market testing, Venus was
a marked departure from previous women’s razor designs, which had
essentially been colored or repackaged versions of men’s razors. In
2004, it upgraded the Mach3 by introducing the M3 Power, the rst
disposable razor to feature a battery-powered vibration option, which
allowed for a closer shave. A Venus version, called Venus Vibrance,
soon followed. In its next major launch in 2006, Gillette introduced the
six-bladed Fusion and Fusion Power razors. Gillette had spent $1.2
billion on R&D since introducing the Mach3 and then spent more than
$1 billion to market the product to the world’s 3.2 billion males. The
Fusion ProGlide, Gillette’s most expensive razor ever, followed a few
years later.
Much of Gillette’s success results from its having relentlessly innovated
and stayed relevant. The company has also carefully branded new
products. Major introductions receive totally new brand names (Sensor,
Mach3, and Fusion), while minor improvements are sub-branded
(Sensor Excel, Mach3 Turbo, and Fusion ProGlide).
BRANDING BRIEF 13-2
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REMAKING BURBERRY’S IMAGE
Burberry, founded in 1856 by 21-year-old Thomas Burberry, was a
veritable “fashion disaster” in the mid-1990s. Yet within a span of
several years, with the help of contemporary designs and updated
marketing, the brand shrugged o$ its staid image and became
fashionable again. One of Burberry’s rst moves to freshen the brand
was to leverage its classic beige-check plaid in a series of accessories
that quickly became bestsellers, including handbags, scarves, and
headbands. Another was rejuvenating the check itself by using
di$erent colors, patterns, sizes, and materials. Burberry was careful to
maintain a balance between the contemporary and the traditional. It
also sought to leverage other iconic imagery, such as the trench coat
and the Prorsum horse insignia. Another key to Burberry’s turnaround
was refreshing its advertising. The ads were credited with bringing a
“rebellious, streetwise image to the brand.” The company gave its
retail stores a makeover as well in order to match the contemporary
feel of the new designs.
Together, these di$erent e$orts turned the company’s fortunes around.
After peaking in 2002 with a successful IPO, the brand began to su$er
from overexposure and a slew of counterfeit products. Following a
holiday sales slump in 2004, the company knew it had to set a di$erent
course. A number of marketing changes were implemented. The
trademark tan/black/white/red Burberry plaid was dialed down and
made more discreet. More emphasis was placed on high-margin
accessories—non-apparel accounts for one-third of revenue—and
high-end fashions.
Bene ting from vibrant emerging markets such as China, a constantly
updated new product pipeline, and one of the most advanced digital
strategies of any luxury brand, Burberry found itself in 2011 with
annual revenues over $2 billion, far exceeding nancial forecasts.
BRANDING BRIEF 13-3
HARLEY-DAVIDSON MOTOR COMPANY
Harley-Davidson has twice narrowly escaped bankruptcy and is today
one of the most recognized brands in the world. In recovering from its
nancial downfalls, Harley-Davidson realized its product needed to
better live up to the brand promise. Harley’s back-to-basics approach
to revitalization centered on improving factories and production
process to achieve higher levels of quality. The company also dialed up
marketing e$orts to better sell its products. Establishing a broader
access point with consumers to make the brand relevant to more
people, Harley was able to attract a diverse customer base that went
© 2013 Pearson Education, Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall.
way beyond the traditional biker image. The company also changed
the way it went to market.
The company established an owners’ club, the Harley Owners Group
(HOG), which sponsors bike rallies, charity rides, and other motorcycle
events. Every Harley owner becomes a member for free by signing up
at the www.hog.com Web site. Harley-Davidson began a licensing
program to protect its trademarks and promote the brand. Early e$orts
primarily supported the riding experience with products like T-shirts,
jewelry, small leather goods, and other products appealing to riders.
Currently, the primary target for licensed products is existing
customers through the Harley dealer network. To attract new
customers, though, Harley-Davidson has licensed children’s clothing,
toys, games, and many other items aimed at children and sold beyond
the dealer network. As business grew, Harley-Davidson created
Harley-Davidson MotorClothes to produce traditional riding gear along
with men’s and women’s casual sportswear and accessories to reach
an ever-expanding and diverse customer base of riders and non-riders.
Harley-Davidson continues to promote its brand with grassroots
marketing e$orts. Many employees and executives at the company
own Harleys and often ride them with customers, making traditional
advertising almost unnecessary. For women and smaller riders, Harley
o$ers Sportster motorcycles that are built low to the ground with
narrower seats, softer clutches, and adjustable handlebars and
windshields. Several times a year Harley dealers hold garage parties
for women to help them learn about their bikes. Women now represent
about 12 percent of sales.
BRANDING BRIEF 13-4
A NEW MORNING FOR MOUNTAIN DEW
Mountain Dew hit its stride in the 1990s, experiencing phenomenal
double-digit growth. Mountain Dew was the fastest-growing major U.S.
soft drink for much of the decade. Growth was fueled by some edgy
advertising from PepsiCo’s long-time ad agency BBDO that was funny
and fast-paced. The tag line “Do the Dew,” was a strong call to action,
and the ads were a high-energy blast of adrenalin.
The next decade saw much product expansion, introduction of
nontraditional marketing, and a pioneering digital strategy. To better
connect with its core teen audience, Mountain Dew increased its
sponsorship of the Mix Tape street basketball tour and the Dew Action
Sports Tour. The company also launched the Dew U loyalty program, in
which drinkers exchanged codes printed under bottle caps for a variety
of goods available on the Dew U Internet site. In 2005, Mountain Dew
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launched another brand extension, a highly ca$einated energy drink
called MDX aimed at the estimated 180 million video game players, by
introducing it as the oMcial soft drink of the E3 Electronics
Entertainment Expo.
All these actions helped Mountain Dew remain the number four
carbonated U.S. beverage in terms of sales throughout the decade. A
logo change on the packaging occurred in 2008, as the company chose
the simpler “Mtn Dew.” An even bigger change was a viral marketing
experiment in crowdsourcing that put customers into the actual
product development process. The initial “Dewmocracy” campaign
began in 2007 and included an online game in which players designed
a new drink.
The follow-up Dewmocracy campaign in 2009 raised the stakes.
Mountain Dew marketers put the bulk of their marketing budget online
to allow consumers to select three new >avors to be distributed
nationwide. Enormous buzz followed—much of it generated by the
actual product users, as intended.
Brand Focus
BRAND FOCUS 13.0
RESPONDING TO A BRAND CRISIS
Originally introduced by McNeil Laboratories as a liquid alternative to
aspirin for children, Tylenol achieved nonprescription status when
McNeil was bought by Johnson & Johnson (J&J) in 1959. J&J’s initial
marketing plan promoted a tablet form of the product for physicians to
prescribe as a substitute for aspirin when allergic reactions occurred.
Tylenol consists of acetaminophen, a drug as e$ective as aspirin in the
relief of pain and fever but without the stomach irritation that often
accompanies aspirin use. Backed by this selective physician push,
sales for the brand grew slowly but steadily over the course of the next
15 years. Advertising support for the brand was heavy.
The Tylenol Product Tampering Crisis
All this success came crashing to the ground in the rst week of
October 1982, with the news that seven people had died in the
Chicago area after taking Extra-Strength Tylenol capsules that turned
out to contain cyanide poison. Consumer con dence was severely
shaken. Most marketing experts believed the damage to the brand’s
reputation was irreparable and that Tylenol would never fully recover.
© 2013 Pearson Education, Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall.
The Tylenol Product Tampering Recovery
Within the rst week of the crisis, J&J issued a worldwide alert to the
medical community, set up a 24-hour toll-free telephone number,
recalled and analyzed sample batches of the product, briefed the Food
and Drug Administration, and o$ered a $100,000 reward to apprehend
the culprit of the tampering. The company began a voluntary
withdrawal of the brand by repurchasing 31 million bottles with a retail
value of $100 million. It stopped advertising, and all communications
with the public were in the form of press releases. To monitor consumer
response to the crisis, J&J started to conduct weekly tracking surveys
with 1,000 consumer respondents. The company introduced a capsule
exchange o$er, promoted in half-page press announcements in 150
major markets across the country, that invited the public to mail in
bottles of capsules and receive tablets in exchange. Although well
intentioned, this o$er met with poor consumer response.
Later, J&J made its return to TV advertising with the goals of convincing
Tylenol users they could continue to trust the safety of Tylenol products
and encouraging the use of the tablet form until tamper-resistant
packaging was available. Six weeks after the poisonings and after
intense behind-the-scenes activity, the chairman of J&J held a live
teleconference with 600 news reporters throughout the United States
to announce the return of Tylenol capsules to the market in a new,
triple-sealed package that was regarded as virtually tamperproof. To
get consumers to try the new packaging, the company undertook the
largest program of couponing in commercial history.
Millions of coupons o$ering a free Tylenol product (valued up to $2.50)
were distributed in Sunday newspapers nationwide. J&J’s ad agency
developed three ad executions using the testimony of loyal Tylenol
users with the goal of convincing consumers that they could continue
to use Tylenol with con dence. By February 1983, sales for Tylenol had
almost fully returned to the lofty pretampering sales levels the brand
had enjoyed six months earlier.
Johnson & Johnson and McNeil Consumer Healthcare’s remarkable
recovery from the brink of disaster allowed the company to reap the
bene ts of market leadership. The tide began to turn in the 1990s,
however, as the possibility of liver damage and even death from taking
more than the recommended dosage of Tylenol was found.
Tylenol’s Quality Control Crises
Concerns about dosage were exacerbated by a series of disastrous
quality-control scandals and problems. These wounds were
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self-in>icted, and although no deaths occurred, the care, comfort, and
con dence of Tylenol customers was at stake, making Johnson &
Johnson’s actions highly troubling. Cost-cutting and a change in
oversight procedures let several defective products fall through the
cracks, while errors in judgment after the fact only compounded the
problems.
J&J recalled several hundred batches of Tylenol, Motrin, Benadryl, and
St. Joseph’s Aspirin, 20 months after it reportedly rst began to receive
consumer complaints about moldy-smelling bottles that made some
people feel ill. The culprit was the breakdown of a chemical used to
treat wood pallets that transported and stored product packaging in a
Las Piedras, Puerto Rico facility. J&J also recalled millions of bottles of
Tylenol, Benadryl, Zyrtec, and Motrin because excessively high levels
of an active drug, metal specks, or ingredients that had failed testing
requirements led to possible safety violations.
These unprecedented quality-control miscues cost the company $1
billion in sales and, perhaps more importantly, the trust, respect, and
admiration of the public it had worked so hard to preserve back in
1982. After much criticism contrasting his handling of the quality
control problems with the product tampering crisis, CEO William
Weldon stepped down in April 2012.
Crisis Marketing Guidelines
Another brand sharply criticized for its crisis response was Exxon.
Although this company spent millions of dollars advertising its gasoline
and crafting its brand image over the years, it essentially ignored the
need to market its corporate identity and image. Brands as diverse as
Wendy’s restaurants, Firestone tires, Tyco diversi ed holdings, and
Vioxx painkiller have all experienced a potentially crippling brand
crisis. Marketing managers must assume that at some point in time, a
similar incident will occur. In general, the better they have established
brand equity and a strong corporate image—especially credibility and
trustworthiness—the more likely their rm can weather the storm.
Careful preparation and a well-managed crisis management program
are also critical, however. The two keys to e$ectively managing a crisis
are that the rm’s response should be swift and that it should be
sincere.
Swiftness—The longer it takes a rm to respond to a marketing crisis,
the more likely that customers will form negative impressions based on
unfavorable media coverage or word-of-mouth. Perhaps worse, they
© 2013 Pearson Education, Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall.
may decide they do not really like the brand after all and permanently
switch to alternatives.
Sincerity—Swift actions must also come across as sincere. Public
acknowledgment of the severity of the impact on consumers and
willingness to take whatever steps are necessary and feasible to solve
the crisis reduce the chance that consumers will form negative
attributions for the rm’s behavior.
Brand crises are diMcult to manage because, despite a rm’s best
e$orts, these situations are hard to control. To some extent, the rm is
at the mercy of public sentiment and media coverage, which it can
attempt to direct and in>uence but which sometimes take on a life of
their own. Swift and sincere words and actions go a long way toward
defusing the situation.
Discussion Questions
1. Pick a brand. Assess its eorts to manage brand equity in the last
ve years. What actions has it taken to be innovative and relevant?
Can you suggest any changes to the company’s marketing
program?
2. Pick a product category. Examine the histories of the leading brands
over the last decade. How would you characterize the company’s
eorts to reinforce or revitalize brand equity?
© 2013 Pearson Education, Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall.
3. Identify a fading brand. What suggestions can you oer to revitalize
its brand equity? Try to apply the dierent approaches suggested in
the chapter. Which strategies would seem to work best?
4. Try to think of additional examples of brands that adopted either a
back-to-basics or reinvention revitalization strategy. How well did
they work?
5. Choose a brand that has recently experienced a marketing crisis.
How would you evaluate the marketers’ response? What did they do
well? What did they not do well?
© 2013 Pearson Education, Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall.
Exercises and assignments
1. Ask students to pick a classic Disney movie – Snow White,
Cinderella, Lady and the Tramp, 101 Dalmatians, etc. – and analyze
the company’s strategy for maintaining brand equity in the lm
over the years. Factors examined might include the theater
re-release schedule, limits on the number of video copies made
available, and the marketing communications campaign that
accompanies a re-release.
2. The growth of the video rental industry has shortened the “shelf
lives” of movies at theaters. New releases often are on marquees
for less than a month before being made available on video. Tell
students to pick a recent successful movie, analyze its marketplace
performance, and suggest ways the studio— a) could have
extended the lm’s theater run and b) can maximize rental sales.
3. Have students identify brands that have had long, robust lives,
analyze the reasons for their continued success, and suggest ways
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their parent companies might leverage or capitalize on their equity.
Possible brands include Wrigley’s, Campbell’s, Crest, and Gillette.
4. Have groups of students pick out a real crisis faced by a brand. The
students may then discuss how the crisis could have been handled
di$erently.
© 2013 Pearson Education, Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall.
Key take-away points
1. A brand’s health can be a*ected by changes in consumer
preferences, company commitment, competitive products
and programs, and channel support, among other factors.
2. Successful brand management requires reinforcing brand
meaning and identifying new sources of equity.
3. Brands on the comeback trail must make more
“revolutionary” than “evolutionary” changes to reinforce
brand meaning.
4. Building and maintaining customer-based equity requires
consistency in the amount and nature of marketing support
a brand receives.
5. E$ective brand management requires taking a long-term view of
marketing decisions.
© 2013 Pearson Education, Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall.
