May 3, 2003
From the desk of Jane Galt:In marketing, the brand is sacred. It is fetishized, coddled, propitiated like the mysterious god it is. A great brand, like Coke spits money out of the mouth of the golden idol. On the other hand, when a brand goes bad -- well, just think of the poor schmucks in the diet industry whose best-selling product in the mid-eighties was called "AIDS".
Unfortunately, the care and feeding of a brand is an art, not a science. Some of them just keep chugging along, like Coke. Others get tired and stale and take on bad associations that are hard to shake, like Cadillac. When that happens, companies will often take radical steps to revitalize the brand. Which is what's happening right now with the venerable K-Y jelly, where they're currently seeking a way to bring their brand into the 21st century. This article's a fascinating look at how marketing executives think about those sorts of decisions. This quote encapsulates a lot of the magic of brands:
Could a name change be all K-Y needs to prevent chafing? Possibly. "I hate K-Y Jelly and it's all there in the name. Why a K? Why a Y? It sounds so Jiffy Lube. No one wants to have that slimy jelly feeling reinforced by, say, the very tube you're staring at during a moment of passion," says a Manhattan financial writer. "I use Silk. Every time I pick it up I think, 'Aaah, silk. This feels silky! And whether it does or not, that's the beauty of branding. Brands make you believe."
Or for those who don't care about brand management, it's a good opportunity to snigger every time someone says "market penetration". Posted by Jane Galt at May 3, 2003 11:44 AM | TrackBack | Technorati inbound links
The candies were Ayds, not AIDS, and I think a bigger factor was that they didn't taste that great and didn't work.
But while I was looking that up, I found this Newsday story about businesses which were named Ground Zero before 9/11, and now fear some sort of bad association from the name.
When they started one, 10, 20 years ago, it had a nice ring to it. Ground Zero. The center of activity, development, change.
This is really funny, to me. The only usage of "ground zero" I knew before 9/11 was to describe the center of an atomic blast.
Interesting post, especially since I work as a trademark attorney and have to deal with brand management issues all the time. The reason there's a bad association with KY Jelly, by the way, is that it's crappy. If they want to increase their market share, they should create another product (a better product) which they can then saturate the mark with. The strategy for KY is wrong.
Sometimes, if you don't have adequate marketing, or you don't have a diversified product base, you lead yourself into these traps. Coca-Cola is successful in part because Coca-Cola doesn't just refer to a single product, it suggest a while line of products, Sprite, Frutopia, etc. And that Coca-Cola brand is a promise to it's customers, "This is what this product will be."
But K-Y doesn't have that diversified base. They've never expanded into other related markets such as condoms. Therefore, when their one brand goes out of favor, they're screwed.
And rebranding, by the way, happens all the time. Think of the Datsun to Nissan transfer. It's expensive, but you can do it.
. . . and Mrs. Japp's potato chips became Jay's potato chips after Pearl Harbor.
K-Y Joke:
Did you hear about the prostitute who mistook K-Y Jelly for glazing compound?
No, what happened?
All her windows fell out!
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