Brand Failures

38 Pond’s toothpaste
Pond’s, the popular brand of face cream, didn’t prove to be quite so popular
when it applied its name to toothpaste. In a blind test environment, people
were not able to differentiate Pond’s toothpaste from that of Colgate.
However, when the Pond’s name and imagery were attached to the toothpaste,
no-one was interested. Although Pond’s had successfully extended its
brand before (into soap products, for instance), these extensions had all been
linked by a similar fragrance. ‘The main attribute of a toothpaste is taste, this
mismatch between taste and fragrance created a dissonance in the minds of
consumers,’ says Dr M J Xavier, professor of marketing at the Indian Institute
of Marketing. ‘To most people Ponds was something to do with fragrance
and freshness and used for external application only.’