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Brand Relevance: Making Competitors Irrelevant - always yours

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242 BRAND RELEVANCE<br />

Multiple benefi ts could be driven by a cobrand. The Ford<br />

Explorer Eddie Bauer Edition, launched in 1983, has sold well<br />

over one million vehicles by offering a combination of benefi ts,<br />

becoming an exemplar for a subcategory of SUVs. The vehicle<br />

has the features and qualities of the Ford Explorer, and in addition<br />

the Eddie Bauer brand serves to communicate the vehicle ’ s<br />

leather - appointed comfort and styling and reinforces the outdoor<br />

activity association to which the Explorer brand aspires.<br />

The Right Functional Design<br />

Can an offering be delivered in a different form that does not<br />

involve a new technology but is qualitatively different from what<br />

came before? The Plymouth Voyager, for example, one of the<br />

subjects of Chapter Four , provided a very different product from<br />

the station wagon it replaced both visually and functionally.<br />

Functionally, it offered much more internal room plus a way to<br />

access that room that was far better than in the station wagon.<br />

The Yamaha Disklavier, described in more detail in Chapter Nine ,<br />

moreover, is a piano that can be played with a digital memory and<br />

was different functionally from its predecessor the player piano.<br />

The Kindle wireless reading device, Listerine PocketPaks breath<br />

strips, the Segway people transporter, and Crest ’ s Spinbrush all<br />

delivered benefits in new and different ways that served to define<br />

new categories or subcategories.<br />

Packaging innovation can provide a defining attribute.<br />

Yoplait ’ s Go - Gurt, the yogurt in a tube that kids slurp up, created<br />

a new business with a different target market, value proposition,<br />

and competitors from those of conventional yogurt containers.<br />

It created a major market share shift, and Yoplait overtook<br />

Dannon as a result. Further, the L’eggs stocking package, a white<br />

plastic chicken - egg - shaped containers, coupled with its dedicated<br />

displays and availability in new channels such as supermarkets,<br />

completely turned the stocking industry on its head and created a<br />

subcategory when it was introduced in 1970. Finally, the Hershey

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