Have you ever been the customer of a company that’s launched a new brand?
Has it been confusing?
Or maybe it made sense?
A little while ago a brand that I had been a customer of and had been interacting with for a long time came out with a new product. And for that new product they decided to launch a new brand.
But in their marketing they presented it as kind of the new brand, but still kind of the old brand. And it was all pretty confusing.
Maybe you remember several years ago when FedEx bought Kinko’s. You could ship packages, but you could also print papers and signs and do all kinds of other things.
Here is the Wikipedia description of what that brand was and is now:
FedEx Office Print & Ship Services Inc. (doing business as FedEx Office; formerly FedEx Kinko’s, and earlier simply Kinko’s)
Crazy, right?
Meanwhile their competition has always been: UPS Store.
The point of this article is to point out that sometimes businesses get in their own way when it comes to launching products and new brands.
I just want to go over a few guidelines of when to present a new brand and when not to present a new brand.
When To Launch A New Brand
The time to launch a new brand is when you’re looking to basically create an entirely new business.
New products.
New services.
New target customer.
There are lots of reasons this could happen.
You might get a great idea for a new business. You don’t really need to use your current brand to launch it. Or maybe you don’t necessarily want your current customers to know about the affiliation. Maybe you’re going after a young audience. In all those instances and more it makes sense to launch a new brand.
Walmart did this when they launched Sam’s Club. It was basically an entirely new business. Mostly new target customers. A new business model. A new brand.
Most people knew they were affiliated, but the brand separation made sense. If you were going to Sam’s Club you weren’t going to Walmart. Mention of the brand “Sam’s Club” brought about thoughts of something completely different than the mention of “Walmart”.
When To Use Your Current Brand
When you’re still giving something to your current customer base and your current target customer.
If you’re launching what you think is a new brand it really might be just a new product or service.
Or maybe you’re tweaking your current offering just a little bit.
Netflix, for example, didn’t create a new brand when they switched from being a DVD-by-mail service to a streaming service.
Amazon didn’t change their brand when they started offering more than just books.
FedEx and their Kinko’s issue was very confusing at the time. They basically got caught in the middle.
They probably would have been fine buying that brand and leaving at Kinko’s or looking to the long-term and just changing it to FedEx Office or FedEx Store and waiting for people to adapt.
Final Thoughts
The main takeaway from this thought is that you’re looking to avoid confusing.
Launching a new brand is not easy. It’s never a short-term thing. You want to be committed to the change for the long-term because it’s going to take people awhile to know what the brand stands for.
And if you’re giving something new to your current customers a new brand throws away the recognition they have for your current brand.
Another good example of when to launch a new brand is Sling TV. Most people don’t know that Dish Network launched Sling TV.
Dish could have launched it as a Dish service, but that would have been confusing. At least in the short-term. People associated the “Dish” brand with satellite TV, not streaming TV.
In the future it’s very possible that Sling is the more well known brand.
Dish didn’t get caught in the middle. They avoided confusion.
If you’re thinking about launching a new brand make sure you’re doing it for the right reasons.
