CONJOINED BRANDS
CONJOINED BRANDS
Monday, 04 June 2007 08:44
Amy Kayun sheds some light on the pros and cons of brands coming together in uneasy alliances.
By Amy Kayun
Regional marriages between brands have been taking place with pomp and ceremony. I just wonder about their benefit to the brands in question.
Let’s see there’s been British Airways-Regional Air, Safaricom-MTN-Vodacom, Mobil-Innscor and a few others. Coming together for the sake of convenience, efficiency, cost-cutting or value adds, these brands have all entered into alliances that are supposed to benefit the end-user, namely, you. The question is; do they really help the brands in question in the long run? We all know how the BA-Regional marriage ended, not so happy. With both names coming away with a rather unpleasant taste in their mouths, and consumers not too impressed by both labels.
The Mobil-Innscor alliance that brought together the ExxonMobil Corporation and Innscor Africa creating a destination for all with ‘food, fuel and fun’ has had an interesting result, with more people flooding the sites, but for what? In the race for your undying devotion, who is the ultimate winner Nando’s, Chicken Inn or Mobil fuel? Happy customers of the fuel side do not necessarily walk away with a smile on their face when they find a crowded forecourt making movement difficult, or getting accosted by ill-mannered drunk revelers on a Saturday night doesn’t make for ‘food, fuel and fun’ at the end of the day for customers of both sides.
Interesting to note, ExxonMobil have pulled out of Kenya leaving Innscor and the brands which were to benefit from the alliance with Mobil a little shell-shocked. How do you protect your brand if a larger more powerful brand decides to walk off? I often wonder how well people understand the idea of what the marketer is trying to achieve by conjoining brands and whether they feel a stronger affinity to one or all or none of the brands that have been banded together.
Are new brands created or are our consumers more confused than ever? In the case of poor service delivery, and therefore the breaking of the promise the brand represents, which could happen to one of the brands in the mobile phone alliance named above, which brand gets hurt more, and what recourse do they have in the eye of the loyal consumer if that takes place? In the desire to win over more customers to our brands as quickly as possible, do we hurt our brand image, more than we help it? The whole idea of conjoining our brands needs to be approached with extreme caution and a long-term perspective, some of the alliances rarely last beyond 5 years, but the damage to a poorly-linked pair can last long after that.
