What's gone wrong with marketing?

Dr. Pepper has given us the definitive answer to this question:  Diet Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper.

The absurdity of this drink should be obvious.  My question to the Dr. Pepper company is, What flavor is Dr. Pepper?  You see, when you keep messing with your soda brand by bringing out new versions, you erode the meaning of the brand.  Coke and Pepsi are even worse off.  Crystal Pepsi, Berry Pepsi, and all of the many flavors of Coke (Vanilla, Lemon, Cherry, Lime), have done nothing for each company's bottom-line, but they have sent us the message these soda brands are still searching for a winning flavor.  Remember Coke's slogan, "Coke is it"?  Well, which flavor, exactly, is it?  Now Coke is using the slogan, "Real."  Will the real Coke please stand up?  With all of these different flavors, the Coke brand is now the equivalent of Shasta, coming in a long list of flavors.  Anyone count the number of flavors of Sprite or Mountain Dew lately?  Isn't it even crazy to have to talk about different flavors of Sprite, or Coke, or Dr. Pepper?!  I can only imagine that next we'll see a new flavor spin-off of root beer?

RC, a perennial third place in the cola wars, has a sparkling opportunity to capitalize on the self-destructive habits of their competition.  Here's what RC should do:

o Drop RC and go back to using Royal Crown.  Initials cheapen a brand and make it less memorable.

o Use real sugar cane, and promote how bad high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is -- and it's really unhealthy vs. sucrose, a.k.a. cane sugar.  Also promote that sugar cane was how sodas were originally made and why they use to taste so good.  Dipping a hand in pure white sugar vs a hand in goopy HFCS would offer a stark contrast, with the question:  "Which do you prefer?"

o Only have one version of Royal Crown, the true blue non-diet version.  When you do just one thing, you tend to do it best.  Promote the idea that Royal Crown doesn't need to experiment with new flavors every month -- "we found the best one and we're sticking with it."

o Mock the fact that no one knows what flavor a Coke or a Pepsi is anymore -- vanilla, lemon, lime, crystal, cherry, berry?!

o Promote Royal Crown as the premium cola brand, not the value brand.  And the reasons above support this premium positioning.  And this is another reason to use Royal Crown rather than RC, as "Royal Crown" sounds like the king of colas.

Bingo, Royal Crown's market share quadruples in the first year.  Coke and Pepsi are too big and stuck in their ways to counter effectively.

What does any of this have to do with the gaming world?

Plenty.

Brand management is one of the most important duties of a company that generates revenues through IP (intellectual property).  And the game industry is just as foolish as soda companies when it comes to creating and maintaining their brands.  But I'll save this for my next update.

Comments

[crowdpleazr]

Quite honestly, consdering all the different "flavors" of Duke Nukem out there, are you sure you should be preaching this point? Not saying I disagree with you, but have you met the kettle? In my mind, I haven't seen a real Duke game in a decade, but I know there have been others, and each one dilutes the flavor of your brand, particularly when they are third person games.

[Anon]

"Use real sugar cane, and promote how bad high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is "

Man I hope someone does that HFCS is the devil...

Maybe more companies will catch on and stop using as much partially hyrdrogenated oils and HFCS

[Anon]

"Quite honestly, consdering all the different "flavors" of Duke Nukem out there, are you sure you should be preaching this point? Not saying I disagree with you, but have you met the kettle? In my mind, I haven't seen a real Duke game in a decade, but I know there have been others, and each one dilutes the flavor of your brand, particularly when they are third person games"

Maybe you've forgotten Duke Nukem's roots...

it's the First Person Duke Nukems that are diluting the brand more than anything considering the series started as a side scroller =P.

[Michael P.]

Can't say I'm knowledgeable about the soda industry, but analogies between marketing games and soft drinks only seem to work at a very superficial level. I'd argue that soda sub-brands (Cherry Coke) are only meant to attract niche markets that might be interested in sweeter or more varied flavors of Coke. The main Coke brand will continue to be consumed by the mainstream audience. Video game sub-brands on the other hand (such as James Bond 007: Goldeneye 2: Rogue Agent or Duke Nukem: Forever or Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2: The Sith Lords [holy shit]) should be treated differently than soda because their market presence is independent of the original game that started the brand. For example, KOTOR 2 is not competing with KOTOR 1 because they are released several years apart. To treat games under the Star Wars: KOTOR sub-brand as akin to soda sub-brands is I think ignoring the fact that consumers see these products as entirely new games. Cherry Coke is still Coke, but KOTOR 2 is not KOTOR 1, nor is it Tie Fighter or Galaxies or any other game under the Star Wars brand name.

But even more than that, video games are highly complex entertainment products, subject to many decisions through their development that can diminish the quality of the game. Soda--and I may be making some horribly simplified statement on account of my ignorance--is a fucking beverage. It will probably taste nice to nearly everyone who tries it, but they may not make it their beverage of choice because a beverage is a beverage, not a highly stimulating piece of interactive entertainment that video games can be. Consumers will likely spend more time discerning the quality of a $50 product than a 50 cent one and will voice their discontent to everyone they know when a game proves to be a pile.

So it certainly may be the nonsensical marketing that's destroying video game brands, but I'd wager that it's the quality of the games that is turning off consumers rather than how many syllables their title contains.

[Robert Howarth]

As far as Coke or Pepsi goes, they could have a line of sneakers and I don't think there would be any product confusion about its flagship line of beverages. The little offshoots like Vanilla or Cherry are just ideas from old timer execs who fondly remember the days of going into a Drug Store, buying a Coke and having their favorite syrups put in. Not that Drug stores do that now, it shows you how things change over the years.

Cola companies would be better served to just release a line of syrups and they could let consumers flavor it the way they like. ;)

RC is more of a regional brand, you don't even see it in stores in some states.

[Tadhg]

Scott, excellent lesson.

Michael,

There are some similarities and differences, but what Scott is pointing out is the subconscious value that a brand can create in the mind (to the point that it becomes ubiquitous), and how then subsequently trying to build on that through diversification can ultimately tarnish the brand and render it less than successful. This is because brands can and do come to mean something to people in an emotional way. It's a complicated relationship, but the upshot of it is that we grow to love them. Coke's brand love was such that it inspired demonstrations in the street when they wanted to change the flavour. Would that happen now?

The question is how much the damage of the brand extension can cause to the original, or whether the two can successfully co-exist. I don't fully agree with Scott that ALL extension is immutably bad, as extension can cause new markets to appear, and a new generation to like what the new brand comes to represent more than the old. An example that Scott used previously is the case of Heinz ketchup, and the way that they lost the soup market in the process of becoming the king of ketchup manufacturers. So they lose one brand and they gain another, but the ketchup thing has been a wild success for them in the long term, so maybe it's not so bad.

The problem for game marketing is not that the brands change. They do. The Mario brand now means something a little different to its original incarnation, because of Mario 64, a radical departure in many ways from Mario World. However, in Nintendo's case this was a good move to make because the old 2D brand was not as strong as it had been, and they recognised that there was a growing retro-looking market for something that appeared childish but was actually quite complicated.

Grand Theft Auto has likewise made a successful transition from its roots. It has lost its original brand meaning, more or less, but managed to regenerate itself from a reputation of frivolous top-down 2D gaming to a massive sprawling hiphop culture game with stories and stuff.

These transitions or extensions can be successful, but they invariably involve a trade-off rather than a doubling up.

This is where colonitis is a bad move, and where trying to overreach is also a bad move. Star Wars, for example, is a truly giant brand. But does it have the same resonance that it once did. Lucasarts' Star Wars game used to have a reputation for excellence, as did the Star Wars films. Both are now irrevocably dashed. So what, you might say, as it has generated billions of dollars. True, but will it still generate billions of dollars in ten years time, or will it go to seed as Star Trek has? It's increasingly likely that Star Wars will drop off the radar within a decade because the brand has become increasingly worthless through bad management and bad associated products (KOTOR not withstanding). You won't see it for now, but eventually it will decline in an unrecoverable sort of way.

Maybe that happens, though. There are few (if any) entertainment brands that do ultimately persist forever.

[Bjorn Larsson/IRIDON]

I suspect that we might be missing a major point here, the fact that we should discern hardcore gamers from the mainstream buyers. Gamers are probably less likely to be affected by brand extension (at least in the short term), as they base their purchases on product content/quality rather than brand/packaging/polish/title.

To make a simple comparison, Star Wars has a lot of product out there that don’t seem to differ from one another that much by looking at it quickly (packaging/screens/title) as opposed to for example Mario Tennis vs. Mario Golf, whose suffixes clearly communicates their difference, and consequently what you get for your money. Average Joe walking into a store today and seeing a multitude of different SW products (add to that the fact that there are also a multitude of SW SKUs for various platforms), will just be confused and perhaps he’ll buy a more focused brand.

In addition, the sheer number of gaming platforms and formats available and about to be released seem to me to be something of an industry Achilles heal, it serves to further – albeit indirect - brand extension of the entire industry (imagine store shelves next year: PS2/PS3/PSP, Xbox/Xenon, GC/GBA/DS/maybe that N64 add-on for GC, PC, Phantom, Gizmondo, Mac --- and probably some more we don’t know about yet). Sure, there will be some offload in backwards compatibility, but the number of SKUs will surely increase.

For what it’s worth, the whole industry may just collapse one day just like it did in the 80’s. Looking at the decline of the Japanese game industry, I’m not sure the future is as bright as your friendly marketing analyst wants you to believe. History has a tendency to repeat itself.

[Adam Vandenberg]

While Boylan does have a wide range of sodas, their "Sugar Cane Cola" rules. If you can find it.

There's also a burrito shop around here that has imported, bottled Coke and Pepsi from Mexico, which list actual sugar as an ingredient.

[Scott Miller]

Well, I might need to turn this subject into a 10-parter, because there are a lot of holes in the dam springing leaks. ;-)

First off, my discussion on brands was going to focus on labels, such as Rockstar, Activision, EA Sports, Ubisoft, and Atari. And even on developer brands. Company names can themselves become brands, like Id Software and Blizzard. Obviously, game brands should be part of the discussion, too, but that's a HUGE topic in its own right.

Another point worth noting is that it's often fine to transition a brand, to keep up with technology, for example. Hence, it's fine to transition Duke Nukem or GTA from the 2D world of sprites to the 3D world of polygons. (In the case of Heinz, they transitioned from pickles to ketchup -- although their strategy was to be the leader of both, something that's practically impossible for a brand to do, which is why it's foolishly self-destructive to broaden the meaning of a brand. Heinz would have been better off creating a new brand for the ketchup category, and that way they could have been the leader in both.)

Sequels are not line extensions, another key point that's often confusing. I think of sequels as further episodes. Each James Bond movie is merely another exciting episode in this character's life. (Character-based IPs are the best adapted to this sort of episodic exploitation, which is a key reason our IPs are 100% character focused.)

Brands are hurt when their core meaning is diluted, or when they fail to develop a core meaning. This will be the focus of my next blog.

[Anon]

Scott - we mentioned this in the other Heinz discussion, but I guess we can mention it again :). Maybe in the U.S. Heinz only wins ketchup, but in the U.K. it's the brand leader for both tinned soup and ketchup (chased by HP in ketchup and Campbells along with a few others in soup). I'm not quite sure why it doesn't do soup in America, or doesn't appear to - it's not like it tries and loses, I've never seen a can of Heinz soup here in North America. It's a pity, as they do make really *good* soup, much nicer than Campbells.

[Anon]

Oh, and BTW, I don't necessarily agree with the character-works-best-for-sequels idea; a good comparison is the science fiction / fantasy arena. Yes, there are many successful sf / fantasy character-based franchises, but there are others that don't rely on character continuation, too. Take Iain M. Banks' 'Culture' novels, or Terry Pratchett's 'Discworld' novels (before J.K. Rowling appeared, Pratchett was the U.K.'s most successful living author).

[Anon]

One more interesting example from that arena - Elizabeth Moon's Serrano series. It's not the most popular sf series ever, but it did get a reasonable following, and it changed protagonists half-way through the series (book 4, IIRC) for no real reason other than (I guess) the author got bored of writing her first character. Didn't seem to hurt the series at all.

[Eric Lulie]

Scott, do sports games count as line extensions? Those seem like one of the easier way to damage a label's rep., especially if you release a bad or lackluster title in a given season.

[Anon]

You might recall "Tab", which was Coca-Cola's attempt to sell a differently-branded diet cola. It did fairly well -- until they introduced Diet Coke, which *steamrollered* Tab.

This is in opposition to Scott's oft-repeated theory that line extension is universally bad, and that the creation of a new, separate brand is universally superior.

Now, if Scott could ever manage to speak on this subject in terms of good ideas, guidelines, and general trends, then it would be par for the course to encounter a few instances where things went differently than he predicts. But such is not Scott's way. Every time he addresses the topic of branding & line extension, it's in rigid, absolute, unyielding terms.

Thus a single counterexample knocks down the whole thing.

[Robert Howarth]

As far as games go, right now the biggest topic which relates to this discussion is Blizzard's World of WarCraft. When people think of WarCraft, the image of a real-time-strategy games pops into mind - Not a massively multiplayer role playing game - Will this hurt the brand or Blizzard in any way?

No. The brand may change, but World of WarCraft is going to give Blizzard a steady monthly revenue for years to come not to mention make back the initial investment of developing the game just by selling a certain number of retail copies.

With WarCraft tied into massively multiplayer RPGs, they can now be free to make StarCraft its premier real-time-strategy lable.

[crowdpleazr]

Game brands like GTA can make the jump from 2D to 3D just fine, but it's problems where you start to dilute the brand with many types of games that's the problem. Duke right now is a third person action platformer AND a 3D FPS. Thus the brand is diluted. Now, if DNF never comes out, then maybe it successfully transitioned, but when you start coming out with games in multiple genres using the same brand, you have problems. Witness how the Crash Bandicoot IP tore itself apart in attempting to go in many directions at once. Hell, you can't even define what the hell a Mario game is at all anymore. He's mostly just a rubber stamp character onto (usually) good gameplay elements, but even now it's tiring to have a new MarioKart, Mario3D, MarioRetro, MarioParty, MarioWhatever every year. I stopped caring a loooong time ago.

However, and just to knock down the "sequals are bad" idea, I'm more than interested in picking up the new GTA, the new Splinter Cell, and the new Final Fantasy. I know what I'm getting every single time, and I like what I buy.

[Scott Miller]

Robert, Sims Online was thought to be a guaranteed monthly extension of the all-powerful The Sims brand. Didn't happen, though. Wouldn't surprise me to see WoW also under-perform.

Remember C&C Renegade? I was telling Westwood developers before that game came out that it was a brand dilution mistake, and most likely wouldn't do well, despite the fact that the C&C brand was, at that time, one of the industry's most successful. When a brand steps outside it's core meaning, it typically has a very tough time.

As for Tab, it's an interesting story of self-sacrifice by the Coke Company. Pepsi came out first with their line extension brand of Cola, cleverly named Diet Pepsi. Tab, though, receiving hardly any support from the Coke Company, continued to outsell Diet Pepsi (which had a massive marketing budget for their new diet drink) by 32 percent, up until the day Diet Coke was released. At that point, the Coke Company stopped all marketing on Tab (actually, they had nearly stopped it long before, knowing their new diet soda was in the wings), and pushed Diet Coke like a madman. Why did the Coke Company abandon the clear category leader, Tab, in favor of Diet Coke? Because they're knuckleheads.

To think how absurd it is to come out with Diet Coke, think how absurd it'd be to go the other way, and make a non-diet Tab. Most people can grasp how silly that would be, yet a diet version of Coke seems somehow okay. But for the health of the brand, it's not. Tab, with proper support, could still be the clear leader of the diet cola category, and Coke could still be the real thing. Instead, now Coke is everything.

And it's no wonder that both Pepsi and Coke has less market today than they did before they ever started down the road of killing the core meaning of their brands.

[Scott Miller]

-- "Duke right now is a third person action platformer AND a 3D FPS."

Fortunately, and predictably, the platformer didn't perform well, and so didn't do much damage to the brand. Hardly anyone really knows about it or played it, so it's negative effect is minimal. And one of the reasons it was a flop is because it was a horribly misguided line extension. Lesson learned.

[Robert Howarth]

>>Robert, Sims Online was thought to be a guaranteed monthly extension of the all-powerful The Sims brand. Didn't happen, though. Wouldn't surprise me to see WoW also under-perform.<<

The demographic for people who play The Sims, and who would play a massively multiplayer game are just so much different that it was doomed to fail from the start. I've never played it myself, so I can't comment on the quality of the title.

World of WarCraft is in a similar situation - RTS gamers don't go for MMORG's - but the attraction to World of WarCraft is that it appeals to a huge pool of gamers who are indeed willing to shell out a monthly fee to pay for a game of this sort. Early feedback and the popularity of the beta indicates that the game is going to do very well.

>>Remember C&C Renegade? I was telling Westwood developers before that game came out that it was a brand dilution mistake, and most likely wouldn't do well, despite the fact that the C&C brand was, at that time, one of the industry's most successful. When a brand steps outside it's core meaning, it typically has a very tough time.<<

Renegade was a fun game at its core, but it suffered from having dated graphics, a slow engine and lots of bugs. It could've done very well if they didn't base their game on old buggy technology and shipped in a better state.

EA pretty much killed the C&C brand off, so it's a bit of a moot point regardless.

[Walter]

I think I agree with Michael P. in that the dynamics and semiotics of games don't work in the same way as soft drinks and similar non-creative goods do, meaning that the line extension theory doesn't apply in the same way.

The reason why The Sims Online failed was because it turned out to invoke few of the pleasures that had made The Sims so popular, when the reason why the whole idea was attractive was because it was thought that a MMO Sims would expand on those pleasures. I think Robert MAY have a point about the demographics, but The Sims defied the demographics to begin with, and I think few people who would join The Sims Online would consider themselves an "MMORPGer". Similarly, I don't think the popularity of Toon Town or the upcoming Hello Kitty MMORPG is dependent on their target market being "MMORPGers".

I think World of WarCraft is going to be a big success. Or, at any rate, even if it's not, I don't think that's because it's a line extension of the WarCraft brand. Games like WarCraft have multiple axes on which to appeal to gamers, the dominant ones being (1) RTS gameplay, and (2) the WarCraft world. Most WarCraft fans (of which there are many) are fairly enamoured of the WarCraft world, and when it comes to worlds, players often appreciate having another mode of access to them. The fiction is strong enough that it appeals in a way that transcends genre, and even medium (hence WarCraft, Halo, Warhammer, and D&D books).

With characters, on the other hand, it wouldn't make much sense to make an RPG with Duke Nukem or Max Payne. Players identify the character, and hence the games named after them, as giving a specific kind of access to the world which they are a part of.

Finally, no matter how much you say it (sorry, Scott :), I don't buy the idea that consumers have trouble knowing what flavor Coke is. All of Coke's line extensions pretty clearly follow the logic of "this is a variation on the Coke formula: we either added something to it or took something away." Coke is just Coke, and all the line extensions are [something] Coke.

Pepsi, on the other hand, was doing some funky junk with Crystal Pepsi...it's really hard to tell if that has any relation to the regular Pepsi formula or not.

[Mark Asher]

Tab used saccharin and there was controversy about that for awhile. Killed lab rats, etc. The brand was somewhat tarnished. It wasn't a bad idea for Coke to develop a new brand.

WoW will do very well. It will attract the MMO players, Blizzard fans, and even casual gamers. I expect it to be the leading MMO in N. America.

[PaG]

"the dynamics and semiotics of games don't work in the same way as soft drinks and similar non-creative goods do, meaning that the line extension theory doesn't apply in the same way."

I always have a hard time with arguments like this. You seem to be saying "Our industry is so unique that what we learned from other ones don't apply here", which is hardly ever true. It's tempting to believe the creativity of the game industry makes it unique, but the psychology of people buying games is the exact same as the psychology of people buying cola. If you're going to convince me that this is different for games, you'll have to explain in more details what "the dynamics and semiotics of games" have to do with it.

In the end, marketing (positioning and branding in particular) is a way to communicate effectively with people in an over-communicated society. Marketing has to explain very quickly why you should be interested in a product (be it a soda or a game) because the person reading probably has better things to do than reading ads.

Branding is a big aspect of this. If the consumer sees a brand and recognizes it as something he wants, there's more chance he'll pick up that product rather than a competitor's (all else being equal, you're more likely to pick up products you know about than those you don't). Line extension has a short term effect on "recognizes it" and a long term effect on "as something he wants".

When you do line extensions, you gain the benefit of the original brand's popularity at first. People notice your product more because it has a name they know and like: "Hey, Diet Coke! I know that!" or "World of Warcraft! A new Warcraft game!" This effect is pretty short-lived because even with a new brand people eventually become familiar with it and it gains similar status as more established brands. So line extension definitely gives a short popularity boost to a product.

The long term effect of line extension, however, is that it reduces the focus of the brand. The meaning of the brand loses strength as it becomes more general. If a new Warcraft game came out, you used to say "Wow, that's going to be a great RTS!" but because of World of Warcraft now it will be "Cool, a new game set in the Warcraft universe". Taking me as an example, I like RTS games but I don't care for MMORPGs. My level of interest when I see the word "Warcraft" in a news item on a website (or on a game box) dropped: it used to be 100% sure to interest me, but now I don't know if it's going to be about something I care about or not.

That's the problem with line extension: in the long term it makes the brand lose focus and it starts meaning less in people's mind. "Warcraft" went from meaning "great RTS" to "good game in a medieval fantasy setting", Coke went from "great tasting cola" to "usually good tasting bunch of soft drinks".

Line extension can be good in the short-term, but is bad in the long-term. If you don't think that your game is going to be there 10 years from now, then extending on its current popularity can be a good move (but then you'll also help making sure it won't have a long life). If you do have great plans for your game and hope to see reach the ranks of Mario or Final Fantasy, then choosing a strong focus and keeping to it is the way to go. You won't have the sudden burst of income line extension can give, but in the long-term you'll have the strongest brand if you play your cards right.

[Patrick Sullivan]

Whether the normal standards of line extension would normally come into play here, Blizzard, being who they are, get an automatic bye. If for no other reason then they own the Korean market outright. If they have fewer then 500k subscribtions I will be shocked, to be honest. They could easily become the 3rd largest player based MMO out (behind a pair of Korean ones, I might add).

WoW will not fail. Might not do as well as expected in the United States, but overall it simply cannot fail. Blizzard simply has too big a mind share that gives them automatic sales/buy ins.

[Scott Miller]

PaG said it better than I could.

WoW may very well succeed, but in the long term, it dilutes the brand. A brand is strongest when someone can ask, "What is Warcraft?" and the answer is both simple and not too broad. Currently, for Warcraft, the answer is, "An RTS game." Short and focused. But soon the answer will have to be either, [1] "An RTS and a MMOG" or [2] "A fantasy game world." The first answer is complicated, and the second answer is broad.

Here's what Blizzard should have done instead: Created an entirely new brand for their MMOG. Leave the Warcraft brand laser focused as an RTS leader, and invent a new IP for their foray into the MMOG category. Some of us remember that Blizzard tried to dilute the Warcraft brand before by making an adventure game spin-off. Luckily for them, they decided to cancel it. But now they're trying once again to broaden the meaning of Warcraft -- an entirely unnecessary risk for this brand. The smart move when you're jumping into a new category is to invent a new brand. In the end, it creates more value for your company to own several successful brands, rather than one successful brand. Plus, by keeping each brand focused, it makes them harder to topple by competitors.

I think this last point is absolutely critical. Regardless of what you think about the merits of line extension, it's always better to create a new brand if the product has a new focus. Does anyone doubt that Blizzard couldn't create a new brand for their MMOG that wouldn't be just as well anticipated? And for those people who disagree, would Diablo had been more popular as a Warcraft line-extension, perhaps Warcraft Underworlds?

But companies are too often afraid to take a risk creating a new brand, ignorant of the fact that a line extension is even riskier because it could crash the appeal of a once popular brand by spreading its meaning too thin.

-- "Tab used saccharin and there was controversy about that for awhile. Killed lab rats, etc. The brand was somewhat tarnished. It wasn't a bad idea for Coke to develop a new brand."

This is a very good point, because at the time saccharin was under attack for possibly being unhealthy. Coke could have responded by coming out with a newly branded diet cola using Nutrasweet. It wasn't necessary to drag the Coke name into this, just as they didn't use the Coke name when inventing Tab. Imagine if they had named Tab as Diet Coke, and then with the saccharin scare the Coke name might have been also tarnished. The funny thing is that nowadays it's Nutrasweet that's recognized as the very unhealthy sweetener, and this reflects poorly on Coke. Saccharin has been redeemed and is now seen as the safest of man-made sweeteners, even ahead of sucralose (Splenda).

BTW, what ever happened to C2? Silly, silly soda companies.

[Patrick Sullivan]

Remember, they were already tieing in role playing elements as of WarCraft 3 to the series, with how heros were leveled up and such. Perhaps they are transplanting the brand purely to RPGs and WC3 was a stepping stone, while Starcraft will be their RTS bread and butter.

[Anon]

I dunno - Mountain Dew Code Red was a huge success. I love Mountain Dew and it's been my favorite soda for years, so when I saw a new version come out I went straight for it. It also has a lot of the original's flavor and style in it (can't say the same for the other spin-offs).

To some degree this is what branding is MADE for. If I like coke better than pepsi, but I want to switch to a diet version to be healthier, I'd go for diet coke before diet pepsi. It's just common sense.

As far as line extension with the Warcraft brand, it may dilute the brand in the long run for hardcore fans, but it also spreads the brand. For instance, Warcraft never meant crap to me because I hate RTSs, but now if I see a news tidbit about Warcraft, Blizzard gets my attention. It's not necessarily always a bad thing.

The Star Wars brand is diluted, but who can say they messed up with the amount of money they've made. Brand longevity doesn't mean as much when you're dead. With the money that's already been made, who cares if it only has 10 years left.

As far as High Fructose Corn Syrup, what can I say? It's cheaper. RC going for cane sugar will need to compete with coke with higher expenses to boot. What's worse, Americans probably prefer the taste of HFCS to real sugar these days because they are used to it. Coke in other countries has different formulas. Mexican coke I think uses real sugar, but they also don't have near as much carbonation. And the water's nasty. It's what the country is used to. A lot of island countries have real cane sugar in coca cola too, because those people have probably never had the high convenience lifestyle that comes with HFCS. They wouldn't have a stomach for it.

I do agree it would be interesting to market a cola as a 'premium' brand, and Scott's RC plan sounds fairly doable.

[Damion Schubert]

Brands are hurt when their core meaning is diluted, or when they fail to develop a core meaning. This will be the focus of my next blog...To think how absurd it is to come out with Diet Coke, think how absurd it'd be to go the other way, and make a non-diet Tab. Most people can grasp how silly that would be, yet a diet version of Coke seems somehow okay.
The important thing is what the brands MEAN - 'Tab' meant 'Diet' - it's almost impossible to extend that brand to include 'non-diet' varieties. 'Coke' on the other hand means 'Refreshing Cola' - it's easy to extend that to include diet varieties as well as fruity flavors. As such, Diet Coke was more successful than Tab ever was - people who are making the choice to buy diet liked to think they were buying something based on taste rather than on their own deficiencies.

It's one of the classic lessons of marketing - know what you're REALLY selling, so you can adapt if the market changes. The classic example is that the railroad industry thought they were selling train service, when they were really selling transportation. Thus, when trains started to go obsolete, the railroad companies had no way to morph to match the new market reality.

Similarly, 'Duke Nukem' doesn't mean '3D Shooter' - it's brand identity revolves more around the character and the action gameplay.

As a hypothetical, 'Clancy' doesn't mean '3d team-based Shooter', it means 'Tactical and Realistic Fights Against Terrorism', and as a result, there's room in the brand for both Splinter Cell as well as Rainbow 6 brands. You could probably extend the brand to, say, include a 2D turn-based 'tactics' GBA game, but doing 'Clancy Battlefield 1942' would be a mistake.

Fundamentally, if you have a brand and are unwilling to extend it, you aren't a brand manager, you're just an advertising guy. The whole POINT of having a brand 'Coca Cola' is having something that you can leverage to sell products that aren't straight 'Coca Cola'. If your brand is something that you cannot apply to more than the basic 'Coca Cola' product - you have a crappy brand. Again, see 'Tab'.

[J.]

Jesus fuck, not another thread on here about soda. :P

Dr. Pepper has always been a weirdo in the soda world -- they don't do any of their own bottling or distributing, they just license their products to those who do. Some areas Royal Crown bottles it, other places Coca-Cola does. Lots of soda companies have tried to clone Dr Pepper (Coke still makes Mr. Pibb) but the Dr Pepper brand is classic Texas marketing.

Royal Crown is more likely farther down than third if you expand the soda playing field to include "generic" brands like Shasta, Rocky Top and Faygo.

[Gestalt]

Scott Miller - "Remember C&C Renegade? I was telling Westwood developers before that game came out that it was a brand dilution mistake."

I think the mistake Westwood made with Renegade was less brand dilution than getting distracted and over-reaching. They had no experience in the FPS genre, but tried to make an ambitious single and multiplayer game with vehicular combat and on foot action, something that (at that point) nobody had managed to get right. As a result, despite looking very promising back in 1999 when I first saw it, Renegade ended up as a very mediocre game (in single player, at least) when it was finally released over a year behind schedule.

Despite that, it still got a hardcore following of dedicated C&C fans who lapped up the chance to see the C&C world up close and personal and play as units from the RTS series. And although it was laggy as hell when I played it, the multiplayer was at least fun. As for the C&C brand, despite that misstep its last iteration (C&C Generals) was the top selling PC game in America last year that didn't have The Sims in its title.

Was Renegade a mistake? Probably. But if they'd farmed the game out to a company who knew what it was doing in the FPS genre instead of trying to do it themselves and getting distracted from what they do best (RTS games), it could well have been a hit.

Scott Miller - "a diet version of Coke seems somehow okay"

That's because you just need to look at the can to know what Diet Coke is - it's Coke for people on a Diet. I honestly don't see people getting confused by having Coke and Diet Coke existing alongside each other.

And it's all very well saying that Tab was the market leader in the diet soda category and that ditching it was a mistake, but the numbers speak for themselves. According to the data I found, in 1980 Tab had a market share of 3.3%, with Diet Pepsi just behind on 3.0% (hardly a clear market leader). By 1990 Diet Pepsi had grown to 6.3%, but Diet Coke was motoring ahead on 9.3%. In the same time, the size of the soda market had grown from a little over 5 billion cases a year to almost 8 billion, so within a few years of its launch Diet Coke was selling four times more each year than Tab ever did.

The total soda market in the US is now around 10 billion cases a year and Diet Coke is still well ahead of Diet Pepsi in terms of market share. In fact, as of 2000 (the latest data I could find) it wasn't just the market leader in the diet soda category, it was also the third biggest selling soda overall, behind only Coke and Pepsi.

As for the damage caused by all that brand dilution from the introduction of new flavours, the total market share of the Coca Cola Company and its various sodas was about 44% in 2000, higher than at any point in the last 40 years. Of course, you could argue that's because all their major competitors are making the same mistake.

PaG - "If you do have great plans for your game and hope to see reach the ranks of Mario or Final Fantasy, then choosing a strong focus and keeping to it is the way to go."

Mario Golf. Mario Tennis. Mario Kart. Paper Mario. Super Mario. Mario Party. Mario Pinball. Mario Sunshine. Dr Mario. Mario Paint. Mario Teaches Typing! Then there's the Wario series, Luigi's Mansion, Super Smash Bros Melee...

I think just about the only thing Nintendo haven't managed to shoe-horn Mario into so far is a first person shooter. And I'm sure it's only a matter of time before he has a guest spot in Metroid Prime.

[Tadhg]

Anon wrote:

"Take Iain M. Banks' 'Culture' novels, or Terry Pratchett's 'Discworld' novels (before J.K. Rowling appeared, Pratchett was the U.K.'s most successful living author)."

You're missing the point there. In books, the author is often the primary brand, not his work. Iain Banks is a good example of this, as he has two labels, Iain Banks and Iain M Banks, reflecting his real world (ish) fiction and his straight sci-fi.

[PaG]

"Fundamentally, if you have a brand and are unwilling to extend it, you aren't a brand manager, you're just an advertising guy. The whole POINT of having a brand 'Coca Cola' is having something that you can leverage to sell products that aren't straight 'Coca Cola'"

If leveraging a brand to sell something else was so helpful, why would "advertising guys" not like it? Since their whole job is selling more, shouldn't they embrace it? Or is it because some people in advertising understand that on the long term brand dilution is bad, but brand managers are more blinded by the short-term money (they'll probably get more of it than that advertising guy).

"I think just about the only thing Nintendo haven't managed to shoe-horn Mario into so far is a first person shooter."

True, and Mario as a brand lost a whole lot of its strength. It used to be that when Nintendo anounced a new Mario game, everybody was cheering and wondering what it would be like. Now Mario has lost his position as Nintendo's top franchise and Metroid gets more cheers at E3 than the Italian plumber...

[Scott Miller]

FYI, TypePad's comments are broken, they're working on it. If you hit the Preview button you are then able to enter your info. Anyway...

-- "Fundamentally, if you have a brand and are unwilling to extend it, you aren't a brand manager, you're just an advertising guy. The whole POINT of having a brand 'Coca Cola' is having something that you can leverage to sell products that aren't straight 'Coca Cola'."

I strongly disagree with this. A brand manager should protect the value of the brand, first and foremost. Second, brand managers should more often think about inventing new brands for new categories, rather than extending established brands into these new categories.

I strongly believe that Diet Coke would be a more successful product with a unique identity/brand.

But, as PaG has said, short term thinking leads brand managers to hitch their new product wagon to established brands because in the short term it is proven to be very effective.

This morning I saw a commercial for a new line of Country Crock products. Country Crock makes margarine, AFAIK. But now they're making mashed potatoes, macaroni & cheese, and other side items that fit conveniently into their recognizable tubs. "Pass the Country Crock" currently means pass the margarine. But, the brand managers that work there apparently want to spread that meaning to include a wide range of foods.

Overall, it's not a bad idea to have convenience side items in tubs, but they should have invented a entirely new brand for these side items. A new brand could have then been focused and perfectly positioned to be a leader in this new category. But these managers must have believed they needed to crutch of the Country Crock name to help them get noticed. If successful, what will Country Crock mean to people in the future? Are they unwittingly sacrificing their strength in the margarine market? Of course they are. Short term thinking wins again.

[Ubiq]

Scott wrote: I strongly disagree with this. A brand manager should protect the value of the brand, first and foremost. Second, brand managers should more often think about inventing new brands for new categories, rather than extending established brands into these new categories.

I think the numbers Gestalt cites points out pretty clearly that Diet Coke was a vast success. Coke TRIED to make a stand-alone diet product with Tab - it hit a glass ceiling.

You're also forgetting how hard it is to build and establish new brands, even if you have a compelling product. You cite C2 as an example of bad use of the 'Coke' brand, but Coke's not in the name of the product. I'd be willing to guaruntee that if they had called the product 'Low Carb Coke', C2 sales would have been vastly superior to what they are now - at one glance, you know exactly what the product is.

"But that would be a mistake! That would further weaken the Coke brand!" Possibly. I doubt it - Coke would still been seen as the premium distributor of 'Cola', in all of its varieties. Coke was willing to sacrifice a bit of their primary brands in favor of potentially growing overall market share. Remember, if you don't compete with yourself, someone else will.

That's not to say that there haven't been mistakes. There are more mistakes in branding than successes. "Pepsi Crystal" and "Pepsi Blue" are both huge mistakes because - well, the consumer doesn't know what the hell they are, but they have a sneaking suspicion that they aren't 'cola'. Similarly, that Country Crock stuff is a horrible idea.

I strongly disagree with this. A brand manager should protect the value of the brand, first and foremost.

Protecting the value of the brand, first and foremost, starts with ensuring that your brand stays relevant in trying times. In an increasingly fat-conscious, Atkins-happy America, this means ensuring that Coke drinkers who've gotten love handles from working too many crunch hours don't have to hate themselves for enjoying their favorite childhood beverage.

[PaG]

Losing focus does weaken a brand: as Scott mentionned, it would be surprising to see a big uproar today if Coke changed its flavor. Because of all the Coke varieties, the attachment people feel for Coke is weaker than it used to be. I think we agree with this; not that the Coke brand is weak, but that it's not as strong as it was in the past.

On the other hand, Coke is still the market leader and it so in its main brand and in the Diet variation. There's no denying this -- so how does that fit into the whole "brand extension weakens it in the long term" idea? Simple: no major competitor is any more focused than Coke. Pepsi is even worse than Coke in messing with its base concept and the photo at the top of this thread shows that Dr Pepper isn't much better. All other companies are too small to matter as far as I know.

Even if your strategy playing a game is not very good, you will still win if all other players' strategy is worse. This is the case with sodas: no company has a strong focus, so the fact that Coke doesn't have it either doesn't hinder it much. For that matter it may not even be a bad idea for Coke to be unfocused as long as its competitors aren't either: it loses brand strength, but not more than competitors, and it gains the short term effects of brand extension. It does weaken Coke against a focused competitor, but who's that going to be? Then again, I bet nobody thought the Roman empire would fall...

Basically, extension is a bad move at the branding game, but you can still win if everybody else plays as bad. Still, I've been in too many debates to ever hope to change the mind of anybody here -- a set mind is the hardest thing to change (the only hope I'd have would be for me to create a new soda company and topple Coke -- and even then...). So let's forget the sodas and get back to games.

This thread is making thirsty. I wonder if I can find a diet cherry vanilla Dr Pepper around here...

[Gestalt]

PaG - "extension is a bad move at the branding game, but you can still win if everybody else plays as bad"

Actually, if everyone else is doing that then maybe following suit is the *only* way to win. If your rival uses their brand to give a related product a leg up, it's generally going to give them an advantage, in the short term at least. And even a company the size of Coca Cola can't just sit back and let their competitors get the jump on them while they sit in their office saying "just wait another 20 or 30 years and they'll dilute their brand so much it'll be worthless". Whether or not the theory is sound, real life doesn't work that way.

And there's no real certainty that the theory *is* sound.

Going back to Diet sodas, Tab's main competitor was .. Diet Pepsi. Yes, that's right, Pepsi had been diluting their brand with a diet variety since 1964. But by 1980 Diet Pepsi's sales were about equal to Tab's, and during that period regular Pepsi's market share had also gone up, from 16% to 20%.

Then Diet Coke came out. Diet Coke has outsold Diet Pepsi by at least 3-2 ever since. In the same period regular Pepsi's market share has dropped from 20% to 14% while regular Coke's has stayed more or less constant at about 20% since they got past the whole New Coke fiasco.

In both cases, there's no evidence that the introduction of the diet variety of the drink has caused any harm to sales of the regular variety, even on a time scale of decades. If anything, the opposite is true.

And when you stop to think about it, that makes sense. Marketing spend on Diet Coke isn't just promoting Diet Coke, it's also promoting regular Coke. Whereas advertising Tab wouldn't have any obvious link to Coke. And people switching between Diet and Regular sodas are more likely to make the jump from Diet Coke to regular Coke than from Tab to Coke (and vice versa).

To some extent then, maybe extending your brand is actually a good thing. It's *over* extending that causes the problems, trying to stretch it to cover something so radically different from what it meant originally that you really do lose focus. Like if Coca Cola started make bread or something.

Of course, whether that stretches to Diet Cherry Vanilla Dr Pepper With Lemon is another matter. As someone else said earlier, if you're going to stick that many different things in the can you might as well just start selling syrups and let people mix them how they want to.

But Diet Coke is a no-brainer. It's Coke, for people on a Diet. And having two (or even three or four) varieties of Coke on the shelves that are clearly differentiated (ie, none of this C2 nonsense) is not going to confuse consumers. They're not *that* stupid.

[Suresh V. S.]

A good example to look at is the way Toyota and Lexus were handled. Same company, two brands. It creates a very clear market distinction in terms of mind share.

[Anon]

A good example to look at is the way Toyota and Lexus were handled. Same company, two brands. It creates a very clear market distinction in terms of mind share.
And a very bad example is the VW Phaeton. "Volkswagen" literally means "people's car" or even better "ordinary people's car". And selling a Mercedes competitor under the brand "ordinary people's car" must be the worst idea ever. But it was the boss of VW himself who insisted on it.
Even Mercedes resurrected the Maybach brand when they wanted to compete with Rolls-Royce.

[Anon]

I don't mean to come across as a troll, but most of your posts like this could really be summed up as "go read Al Ries", could they not?

Still, a very funny find.

[Damion "Ubiq" Schubert]

Scott -- If you don't like Diet Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper, you must have some choice comments about "Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield".

[Scott Miller]

Damion, my comment is that that's one whacked out name. Rainbow Six: Raven Shield would have been plenty.

[AdamW]

TadHG - anon was me, forgetting to log in at work :). So what's the special rule that makes an author a brand but a game developer or studio or publisher not-a-brand?

BTW, I don't think it's entirely true, either. Terry Pratchett's not-Discworld books (of which, significantly, he doesn't write a lot) sell well but nowhere near the truckloads Discworld books sell even when they stink. Another example - Douglas Adams. Mostly Harmless sold a lot more and got a lot more press attention than either Dirk Gently book, even though they were (arguably) better. Hitch-Hiker's is the brand there, not Adams.

[Anon]

The useful thing about sodas is you can do blind studies on them and so get some useful information. Like coke doesn't taste as good as pepsi until you let people know what they're drinking.

This simply doesn't work for games so it's pointless to talk about C&C:Renigades or Duke.

I think as the Diet Coke sales figures shows there isn't an intrinsic problem with streching your brand, the problem is diluting the brands meaning, which doesn't have to follow from covering more products. DIY sellers can add as many tools as they like they're still selling tools so it's OK.

So if Blizzard want to push the company name as the brand then taking the focus off Warcraft or Starcraft (theres a 3rd person shooter isn't there?) sounds like a good plan to me.

[Anon]

World of Warcraft sold the most copies in a single day of any PC game ever. Yeah, big brand dilution mistake there.

Warcraft as a brand is a setting, not a genre. The personality of the setting is the strength of the brand, not its accomplishments as an RTS series. That's how it transcended its RTS trappings to blow a big hole in the rest of the MMORPG market.

It's the same thing Nintendo does with Mario. Mario Kart Double Dash was the 3rd biggest selling console title of 2003 despite being exclusive to the third place console. A Mario game has a certain personality. A Warcraft game has a certain personality.

Your analysis is narrow-minded and shows off how many books you've read and how little synthesis you're able to achieve with the concepts you've learned. You're trying to put a square peg in a round hole.

[Anon]

Don't really think the warcraft brand had a huge amount to do with its sucess, not heard anyone talk about it being a big pull. So not sure it really matters if people view Warcraft as a world or an RPG (An earlier poster mentioned HE thinks of Warcraft as an RPG btw)

That its a blizzard game, and totally rocks they're things people DO mention.

[Scott Miller]

Well, I agree with this post above this one, in that Blizzard itself IS draw enough. Blizzard has missed a chance to create a new, highly focused, valuable IP/brand. WoW could have easily been an all-new brand with no connection to Warcraft (yet, still have used essentially the same type and style of universe). Why not add to your list of powerhouse brands?

This is not only a missed opportunity, but it has the scary potential of hurting the focus of the Warcraft brand overall. There's simply no reason to take on this sort of risk, while missing the chance to invent a new brand that can stand on its own.

The one legitimate argument Blizzard can make is that they plan to transition the Warcraft brand away from the RTS category to the MMOG category. If that's their intent, then I salute them. Otherwise, it's a blunder.

[Anon]

Would've been harder for them to use all that artwork from WC3 then though :) And what with the hero's in WC3 I guess they are doing something to make WC3 their RPG brand and SC their RTS brand. SC was much better than WC3 anyway (well I think so :P)

[Justin]

I'm tempted to give Coke my idea for a new product line for them. It's an obvious way to expand their market share into really new territory.

Beer Coke

[Dean]

Last night I saw a commerical on TV for Diet Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper. The tag line was, "You'll get lost in it." They couldn't have said it any better...

[Patrick Johnson Jr.]

Scott,

It seems now matter how much you tell the captain that the ship's sinking, he thinks he's going to save the day somehow.

Analogies aside, Coke is rolling out ANOTHER variation of the brand... This time it's Coke Zero, the no calorie soda that's suppose to taste like real Coca-Cola. I thought this was the principle idea of C2.

[sarcasm] I bet this is going to be their best yet! [/sarcasm]

I guess even if you pointed it out to them that it's a not-so-good idea, they'll push ahead with it anyways.

The proof to your theories again get proven, again and again, time after time.

[Robert Howarth]

Coke Zero actually has a ring to it. :) Odds of it beating out Diet Coke however are slim.