A Nodding Dog?
When is a brand not a brand? When it mutates into something quite different from the original.
A classic example is that of Wartime UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill. A recent poll found that one in four children in the UK thought his name, his brand, was actually that of the nodding dog in insurance adverts. That the two have a certain physical similarity is not to be doubted but to be totally replaced by a dog in the minds of primary school children must be somewhat galling. Incidentally, the same poll also threw up a lot of confusion over which historic figures were real and which were fictional – with Eleanor Rigby thought real and Dickens fictional.
Conversely the same is true when brands metamorphose into something greater than the sum of their parts: witness the ubiquitous brand that is Hoover. Good or bad, all vacuum cleaners are represented in that universal brand.
Loosing your brand or absorbing the whole sector into your brand is not good for either – as with most things, moderation is king!
A Nodding Dog?
When is a brand not a brand? When it mutates into something quite different from the original.
A classic example is that of Wartime UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill. A recent poll found that one in four children in the UK thought his name, his brand, was actually that of the nodding dog in insurance adverts. That the two have a certain physical similarity is not to be doubted but to be totally replaced by a dog in the minds of primary school children must be somewhat galling. Incidentally, the same poll also threw up a lot of confusion over which historic figures were real and which were fictional – with Eleanor Rigby thought real and Dickens fictional.
Conversely the same is true when brands metamorphose into something greater than the sum of their parts: witness the ubiquitous brand that is Hoover. Good or bad, all vacuum cleaners are represented in that universal brand.
Loosing your brand or absorbing the whole sector into your brand is not good for either – as with most things, moderation is king!