Brand Relevance: Making Competitors Irrelevant - always yours

CREATING BARRIERS 281
If a master brand would make a difference in establishing the
new category or subcategory, especially in crowded contexts, a
radical step is to source a brand from another firm to be either
the master brand or a cobrand. P & G developed an advance
in plastic food wrap and considered going to market under the
Impress name. However, a sober analysis suggested that the payoff
would be long and uncertain. Instead, they went to the category
leader Glad, owned by Clorox, and suggested that this
technology and other P & G innovations be marketed under the
Glad brand. They formed a joint venture, in which P & G held 20
percent, that included the new Glad Press ‘ n Seal wrap and Glad
ForceFlex (a stretchable, stronger trash bag also developed by
P & G). The resulting new subcategories were protected by brand
and distribution strength that would never have been possible as
a P &G venture.
Whether a new brand, an endorsed brand, or a subbrand is
used, the optimal result is for the brand to become an exemplar
defi ning and simultaneously linking to the new category or subcategory.
An exemplar brand can create enormous barriers to and
sources of frustration for competitors. Much of competitors ’ own
brand - building work will often end up helping the new category
or subcategory and thus the exemplar. Google, like classic
exemplars Kleenex, Xerox, V - 8, Crayola, Band - Aid, Jell - O, and
Birkenstock, has created decided barriers to competitors by
being such a strong exemplar that their brand. The ultimate
exemplar signal is when the brand became the label for the category
or subcategory as in the phrase “ Google it. ”
Brand Networks
If a fi rm can create networks around its brand, the tasks for
competitors will become more complex and diffi cult. Apple has
long benefi ted from a supporting network that would be hard to
duplicate because it largely is controlled by the participants and
because it is nurtured by the brand and the products. There has