When Brand Extensions Go Wrong
So what do you think of when you hear the name, Bayer? If you didn’t say Aspirin, you either work for the company or you are a geeky chemist that knows way too much about Bayer’s subdivisions in Healthcare, Nutrition and Material Science.
OK, so Bayer is a huge company with roughly 75,000 employees and many, many important products that probably make our lives better. In fact, its tagline is “Science for a Better Life.” What could be clearer than that?
But, please Bayer marketing people, I beg you to have some consideration for the sensibilities of an innocent, unsuspecting TV watcher (me). I was watching one evening when I started paying attention to a particularly disturbing commercial that showed a vast lawn with a cross-section of the ground beneath teeming with squirmy grubs.
(View the commercial at http://www.bayeradvanced.com/advertising/ Click on ‘Season Long Grub Control’ under TV Commercials in the right-hand column)
It kind of made me sick and I was thinking, “Does one need to be so graphic to sell lawn care pesticides?” But then, as if the visuals weren’t enough, the branding message penetrated my throbbing brain and I realized that the same company who was serving up these writhing insects, ( in high def, no less) was the very same Bayer that made the miracle drug, Aspirin. OMG! I put their stuff in my mouth!
Well, OK. The logical branding consultant in me understands quite well that Bayer Healthcare and Bayer “Other Stuff” are really not the same company. One is a healthcare powerhouse and the other…well, let’s just say, their chemists are focused elsewhere. But nobody watching television is thinking that hard, nor are they making excuses for poorly conceived brand extensions.
My advice? Bayer Advanced, get another name and don’t make the Bayer Aspirin brand manager hold you responsible for otherwise inexplicable tanking sales figures next quarter.
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Posted by: Andrea Fitting in: Advertising, Other People's Branding Campaigns (Our 2 cents) at: 2:00 pm Keywords: Advertising, aspirin, Bayer, Bayer Advanced, brand, brand extensions, chemical companies, chemistry, grubs, healthcare, pesticides |
This article reminds me of the time I spent waiting in the lobby of Pfizer’s midtown office building. While waiting for my appointment I glanced up to see two enormous backlit photo-murlas of microbes being attacked by some strange blue fluid. It did make me feel as if I had fallen into a bad sci-fi movie. It did not fill me with enthusiasm for either their work or their products. In fact, I was so uncomfortable, I moved the meeting to a coffee shop down the street.