The Homa Files

New Life from Tired Brands
Excerpted from Booz & Co., Startegy+Business

Punch line: Sometimes, it’s easier and less costly to leverage the residual awareness of an archived brand than to launch a new brand from scratch.  Key is assessing the legacy brand’s actionable equity.

The story:

The Ford Taurus was the #1 US car model in the early 1990s.  Ford diluted the brand by chasing fleet volume (companies & rental cars).  Eventually, Ford decided to shelve the brand name and introduce the Ford 500 brand — a costly failure.  Ford subsequently phased out the 500,  and revived the Taurus name.  Why? Very hgh brand awareness with manageable negatives.

Booz says that you can determine if a brand has the foundation for a new life via a 4-part “tool” called BVA — Brand Vitality Assessment:

1. Purchase Funnel Assessment (PFA) — how do prospects convert from awareness to trial to repurchase?

2. Brand Equity Review — what are customer perceptions of strengths & weaknesses?

3. Competitive Dynamics Assessment — why did the brand fell off the radar?

4. Value Proposition Check — differentiating benefits worth the price?

                                        * * * * *
Observations: 

1. Nothing new re: analyses (we cover them all at MSB), but they’re nicely bundled and put in a useful context. 

2. May inspire some situations which have brands on the shelf that may be revivable.

3. For MSBers, should bring back memories of Markstrat.

4. Worth reading to brush up on the 4 analyses.

For full article:
http://www.strategy-business.com/resiliencereport/resilience/rr00060

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This entry was posted on July 14, 2008 at 9:18 am and is filed under Mktg - General, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.