Brand Failures

46 Brand failures
But the advantages for Unilever are that it could develop Unilever as a
brand with ‘values’ that could be applied to all brands.
One example Niall Fitzgerald gives in the article was establishing Unilever’s
environmental credentials. ‘The cost of doing that for individual brands is
immense,’ he said.
As the Persil Power episode illustrates, this is a risky move. If, in 1994, the
new brand had been branded clearly as ‘Persil Power from Unilever’, it would
have tarnished all Unilever brands, and the damage would have been even
greater.
Lessons from Persil Power
Don’t fuel your competitor’s publicity. Procter & Gamble’s negative campaign
against Persil Power helped to boost its Ariel brand of detergent.
Test products in all conditions. Products need to be tested in every environment
or context they are likely to be used. If Unilever had been able to spot
the fundamental flaw with the product it would have prevented what the
then Unilever chairman Sir Michael Perry referred to as ‘the greatest
marketing setback we have seen.’
Accept that no brand is an island. ‘Even if we had wanted to ring-fence our
product, we couldn’t have,’ admitted Unilever chief executive Niall
Fitzgerald.