M5: Brand Extension

After reading fellow classmate, Christine Liang’s blog on Odwalla’s Promotion Strategy  I have realized an interesting thing. Companies like Kraft and Coca Cola extends their brand in a way that they use or still steak with a new name. Such as the Odwalla drink mentioned in Christine’s, or Dare by Kraft. Many companies extend their brand to increase brand awareness. Such companies try to create more images of their brand to increase their brand value and loyalty. But for Coca Cola, it doesn’t stamp its logo nice and big on Odwalla’s drinks. Why? I wondered and thought, perhaps, Coca Cola’s strategy target is not to give the “Coca Cola” brand more publicity, but to capture a new target market with a new brand image. The market of healthy drinks emerged and Coca Cola captured it by buying off Odwalla. Coke doesn’t advertise its logo but use the “Odwalla” logo. This way it decreases risk of the emerging market’s failure affecting the position of Coke itself, while still achieving extending its brand to capture more value in the market. The different ways and flexibility of implementing brand extension strategies in actual practice is an advantageous way of generating more money and value. It reminds us of thinking out of the box.