To kill a brand
To kill a brand is actually not that difficult. Yes, one may have invested millions in it plus countless hours of toiling on strategies and media plans. Yet all it takes to destroy a brand is actually one or two moves in the wrong direction plus some ingenuity in “being original” on the part of the marketing management of the company and the advertising agency.
It is really a great temptation for any new marketing director to change a brand when it is perceived as “stagnating”. Such was obviously the case for a brand I actually worked on in the 1990s. I have in mind Bulgaria’s undoubtedly most prestigious cigarette brand, “Victory”. The brand started as a taste copy of Rothmans Blue. It stood out from the other brands in communist times with its balanced and rich taste due to the top quality Virginia tobaccos and other materials used. The original Victory was the blue version. Soon new versions – brown and red – were introduced but the blue one remained by far the most popular one with almost 15 % total market share while the other two versions had less than 1 % each (think of Coke and its derivatives). The positioning of the brand was clearly premium – highest price among Bulgarian cigarettes and consistent quality directed at long-term smokers.
Chaos in the brand started somewhere in the late 90s with the introduction of numerous horizontal extensions. So many “Victory”s appeared that I actually doubt if anybody keeps track on their number. Silver, blue, gold, light, long 100mm, short, white filter, thin…
Positioning was all over the place with inconsistent support. A campaign in 2012 actually used semi-naked ladies as an obvious attempt to appeal to the male audience.
A new campaign in 2014 used the slogan “The New Line-Export Selection” in a strange combination with one of Bulgaria’s more notorious rappers plus some young women. It seems that this time the target group were young smokers from both sexes.
To be fair, this branding chaos was due also to factors like increasing pressure from foreign manufacturers, shifting market landscape, and change of ownership. Still, it hurts me to see a great brand go down in flames.
Change of ownership can indeed be a crucial moment for brands and this was proven by the case of Kika and Leiner in Austria. Leiner is one of the oldest furniture store brands in Austria with more than 100 years of history. The store was clearly positioned as a premium place to shop for furniture with excellent downtown locations, good service, and high prices. Kika was founded in 1973 and occupied the middle market segment. In the autumn of 2013 the owner of these brands was acquired by the Steinhoff group, the second biggest furniture dealer in the world. What followed was quite incomprehensible from a branding point of view. The new owner decided to merge the two brands in a “kika leiner” brand. Frankly, this does not make any sense to me regardless from what perspective I examine it. Why kill an established premium brand? And if you have decided to kill it, why confuse customers by merging it with Kika? If two brands are too much to maintain from a marketing, IT, and logistic point of view, why not keep Leiner and discard Kuka? I am very much convinced that this move came after pressure from non-marketing people and that Steinhoff will incur significant long-term losses from it.
Of course, it is easy to give advice and judgment from the sidelines. Still, consistency must be a key element of every branding strategy. It just seems that even big companies tend to forget this.
