Branding 101 – The Law of Expansion
Posted on January 18th, 2008
Since reading The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding I have seen many bad branding mistakes. The Law of Expansion says you should not expand out of your current market place because it dilutes your brand and is detrimental to your long term success of your business. Many businesses do expand into other markets because it brings a short term increase in sales but long term brand can suffer.
A good example of this is the Kodak printer which was highlighted on the Celebrity Apprentice. Kodak is known for making high quality film. If you want to capture a good picture on film the majority of people would say to use Kodak. If you were to ask those same people who make a great printer I bet that none of them would say Kodak.
Kodak does not make a great printer. They make an average printer. The only separator they have is based on price. So now they are in to a highly competitive market and are only competing on price. As I am sure you would agree that is a recipe for failure.
What product comes to mind when you think of Kodak?
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Related Topics:
Branding 101 – The Law of ExpansionBranding 101 – ExampleMarketing 101: Less is More, More or Less?Branding 101 – The Law of ChangeBranding 101 – Law of Advertising
3 Comments
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When I think of Kodak, I think of film as well as the actual photo prints that have the Kodak name stamped on the back of the paper.
I really need to spend some time thinking about my own brand – whether I try to create a brand around one blog, all three blogs together, or each individually and what that brand should even be.
Kodak was known for its film, but because everyone has gone digital, the company has been forced to adapt. These days, I associate Kodak with budget cameras.
Some odd glossy-type strips of paper in a metal enclosure, people tell me that it was used in camera’s a long time ago to record low-res, non-digital pictures.
:P
In all seriousness though, I associate Kodak with film (I thought they were going to stop making it?) and crappy, slow, bulky, cheap, ugly, low-end digital cameras.
I didn’t even know they made printers… :P