Brand Failures
Brand Failures Brand Failures
80 Brand failures ‘Oh absolutely,’ I said. ‘It looks and smells just like motor oil, but it makes my hair so manageable!’ I smiled as I made my escape, but I know it’s just a matter of time. Tinker was not alone in her criticism. And pretty soon, it became clear that the motorcycle giant was alienating its core customers. ‘Harley Davidson values are strong, masculine, very rugged values,’ says Charles E Brymer, chief executive officer of the Interbrand Group, a branding consultancy based in New York. ‘For Harley Davidson to go into a sector that doesn’t live up to what those values are would be disastrous.’ However, the disaster was a relatively limited one. The company has now admitted its mistake, and stopped producing perfumes and other inappropriate products. In an interview for The Business Knowledge Network, Joe Nice, the director of corporate communications for Harley Davidson, spoke candidly of the company’s branding failures. ‘Over the years,’ he said, ‘we’re tried a number of different approaches to merchandising and put the Harley Davidson brand on some things that, in retrospect, we may not have been well-advised to do. The company is much more selective today about who we work with and how we go about extending the brand.’ Lessons from Harley Davidson Focus on your brand values. If your values are ‘strong, masculine and very rugged,’ you shouldn’t be selling perfume or wine coolers. A range of baby clothes may also be a bad idea. Don’t alienate your core customers. For brands that inspire strong loyalty, the temptation is to test that loyalty to its limits by stretching the brand into other product categories. However, this is a dangerous strategy and can lead to what marketing experts refer to as ‘brand dilution’ – in other words, a watered-down brand. Remember that more is less. ‘When you study categories over a long period, you can see that adding more can weaken growth, not help it,’ writes Jack Trout in his book, Big Brands, Big Trouble: Lessons Learned the Hard Way. ‘The more you add, the more you risk undermining your basic differentiating idea, which is the essence of your brand.’
Extension failures 81 Keep it tight. Harley Davidson built its brands by staying true to what it does best, namely making big, classic, US motorbikes. The further it moved away from this original focus, the further it got into trouble. Any brand which attempts to be a ‘Jack of all trades’ will ultimately fail to carve a strong identity in any category. Handle ‘lovemarks’ with care. According to advertising guru Kevin Roberts, truly successful brands don’t have ‘trademarks’. They have ‘lovemarks’. In a now famous article for Fast Company magazine’s September 2000 issue, Roberts cited Harley Davidson as a supreme example of a lovemark and commended the company for not following the marketing rulebook. Although Roberts says that the motorbikes themselves are ‘actually pretty average’, the nature of the brand has meant that the motorbikes don’t have to be compared to others in terms of performance. Roberts says: As a lovemark, Harley Davidson has two things. One is its signature rumbling sound. The other is that you can’t go very fast on a Harley, so you have to ride in a pack [. . .] The mystery of the Harley isn’t in its performance, and it isn’t in any of the words that end in ‘er’. Most brands are built on ‘er’ words – faster, bigger, better, cleaner. Mystery doesn’t need those words. Mystery also doesn’t need hundreds of themed stores to push its brand extensions. In fact, such an approach tends to erode the mystery altogether.
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Extension failures 81<br />
Keep it tight. Harley Davidson built its brands by staying true to what it<br />
does best, namely making big, classic, US motorbikes. The further it<br />
moved away from this original focus, the further it got into trouble. Any<br />
brand which attempts to be a ‘Jack of all trades’ will ultimately fail to carve<br />
a strong identity in any category.<br />
Handle ‘lovemarks’ with care. According to advertising guru Kevin Roberts,<br />
truly successful brands don’t have ‘trademarks’. They have ‘lovemarks’. In<br />
a now famous article for Fast Company magazine’s September 2000 issue,<br />
Roberts cited Harley Davidson as a supreme example of a lovemark and<br />
commended the company for not following the marketing rulebook.<br />
Although Roberts says that the motorbikes themselves are ‘actually pretty<br />
average’, the nature of the brand has meant that the motorbikes don’t have<br />
to be compared to others in terms of performance. Roberts says:<br />
As a lovemark, Harley Davidson has two things. One is its signature<br />
rumbling sound. The other is that you can’t go very fast on a Harley,<br />
so you have to ride in a pack [. . .] The mystery of the Harley isn’t in<br />
its performance, and it isn’t in any of the words that end in ‘er’. Most<br />
brands are built on ‘er’ words – faster, bigger, better, cleaner. Mystery<br />
doesn’t need those words. Mystery also doesn’t need hundreds of<br />
themed stores to push its brand extensions. In fact, such an approach<br />
tends to erode the mystery altogether.
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