Comments on Cauvin: Costs of Launching a New Brand

Thanks for the comment, Sarah. A brand is a set of associations imprinted in the minds of existing and potential customers. A brand can be an extraordinarily powerful force for selling your products.

The lesson from Al Ries and Laura Ries is that a brand's potential is limited mostly by prior perceptions and biases, not by a company's marketing budget. As a general rule, when introducing new products, companies should choose brand names and images free of historical baggage.

Most companies choose the opposite path. Instead of trying to avoid a brand name with prior associations and biases, they try to leverage whatever positive ones may exist, thinking it will save customers mental effort and the company money. Al Ries, Laura Ries, and other top marketing experts who think outside the box believe this philosophy is a dangerous oversimplification.

What about the decision on how to move into a new ...

2011-01-21T10:50:43.850-06:00

What about the decision on how to move into a new industry? Should a company use their brand which is almost unknown to the new industry or use the brand of a recent acquisition that has a previous reputation (good or bad) in the industry already?

Create a new brand to stand for that category in t...

2010-10-18T10:58:04.014-05:00

Create a new brand to stand for that category in the mind of the customer.

This rule is huge for me. Make your brand synonymous with the market "category" you are trying to corner. Google, Facebook, most of these companies were not the first but they succeeded(in a lot of things actually) but one was becoming synonymous with their category. Search = Google, Social networking = Facebook, online music = iTunes. This is marketing gold.

Good luck!

2010-03-25T14:58:30.318-05:00

Good luck!