Alex Woodruff Biz Buzz

MBAs - on day 2 of Marketing Management be prepared for a question about this brand…
Germany’s No1 shampoo brand used to have a complete dog’s breakfast of a portfolio. Too many variants, too many individual lines. I know because I got the list from their old website, before they spent nearly 18 months relaunching [...]

I had my suspicions about Unilever moving towards corporate branding (see gradual packaging changes here). Well it looks like my hunch was right.

Unilever declares its identity
The first brand I’ve noticed publicly outing its Unilever owner - ie, showing the new logo on TV - is Lynx (Axe outside the UK). It’s taken what I call [...]

Well, for years people have been secretly spreading the word about Marlboro’s supposed “involvement in foods and drinks markets”. Few end consumers knew that the owner, Philip Morris, which had often reaped criticism for promoting its tabacco products, also marketed household favourites as varied as Milka chocolate, Jacobs Krönung coffee and Toblerone in Germany, and [...]

Portfolio management and long-term planning is crucial when you grow a business. One of the biggest issues from a marketing point of view is: do you stretch the brand and extend it into new markets, or do you launch new ones? This was obviously the issue tackled by Jägermeister, a cult brand that has already [...]

It’s intriguing to see major internationals revamping their product portfolios - which often involves the three R’s (redesign, relaunch and then resign - the last bit being the brand manager who realises it didn’t work).
I notice that Sprite in the States has redesigned its pack. But why only in the States? Is the brand name [...]

Condoms? Mini-CDs? Or…
The websites I’ve visited in the States criticise this product for not looking like what it is, for trying to be “too cool” and setting up all the wrong signals for what is basically just the latest type of chewing gum. I’m not one to judge it, neither being American nor at [...]

Pepsico obviously takes a different tack to international brands than its arch enemy Coca-Cola. Coke is drinks, through and through. Pepsico, owner of the Frito-Lay brand, is also into snacks. But to achieve fast growth internationally it has gone for non-organic growth in many markets - ie, it buys up locals. So then you [...]

Nivea hand cream (source for all images: Nivea website)

Carefully controlled
Being the cynic and corporate sceptic I am, it’s rare for me to praise a monolithic, slow, plodding German giant. But Beiersdorf gets the “hats off” from me for its management of the Nivea brand. Maybe taking ages has its merits sometimes - especially when [...]

Nestlé and its ice cream brands. A continuing saga. I stumbled across their UK logo:

Now hang on, we had something else in Switzerland:

And in Spain (take your pick - the last time I was in Spain they had two logos running in parallel, or was it three):

It strikes me that Nestlé’s problem is that [...]

Some years ago Mars decided its international brands were now streamlined enough for the same names to be used in different countries. They had the big brand Mars, but also Snickers & Marathon (one and the same product, the chocolate bar with peanuts) and Twix & Raider (also the same product, two thin bars with [...]