How many brand extensions are too many?

Brand strategists and marketers know about these issues, yet high profile brand extensions still roll out every single day. 

Why is this?

We’ve helped dozens of breweries position, brand and launch extensions. So we can say with first hand experience that when you have a great selling brand, the pressure to extend it can be immense. Retailers, distributors, consultants, trade media, internal team members and even your fans can clamor for it.  

Add in a dash of FOMO from watching your competition grabbing headlines with their extensions and this pressure can be so intense that it may seem imprudent to not throw your concerns and intuition out the window on this matter.

For those keeping score, Bud Light Seltzer Hard Soda would be a Brand Extension of a Brand Extension of a Line Extension. It's extensions all the way down.


Where does CODO fall on this issue?

For as much as we harp on the importance of positioning, we're not as stalwartly anti-line (or brand) extension as you might think. Yes, we're always cautious about the impact a new product can have on an overarching brand (and have, more than once, been a dissenting voice in strategy meetings).

But we also think that Trout and Ries’ line of thinking is more applicable to the zero sum world of international conglomerate brands who can genuinely vie for that first or second “slot” in consumers’ minds more so than a localized industry like craft beer (where a major driving force behind craft's growth has always been diversity and brand promiscuity itself).

This idea coupled with fragmenting consumer tastes (beer > seltzer > kombucha > RTDs > Lo&No…), generational shifts (Gen Z becoming a buying force) and the still-not-yet-entirely-realized impact that the DTC trend will have on the industry, leads us to believe that a few well conceived extensions can actually enhance a brewery’s overall brand and portfolio by offering options that their fans are already buying from someone else. 

The hang up is that the extension has to make sense. You can’t leverage your parent brand into another category just because it’s well known. And you shouldn't line extend just to make a quick buck either.

There has to be an intuitive link between your parent brand and the extension. The extension should not only build its own brand, but reinforce the parent brand's story and values and good will as well. 

Can a popular brewery make a great RTD cocktail? Sure, maybe. Can that same brewery make a great frozen lasagna meal?

If you’re dead set on launching a brand extension, here are a few quick guidelines to keep you from having to later cut a commercial to directly address how confusing it is that your brewery’s name is also on a hard seltzer can for some reason. 

Less is more

One or two extensions can work well if the subsequent releases reinforce the parent brand's positioning and value props (Blue Moon > Blue Moon Light Sky is a great example here because it brings a seasonal flair to the mix). More than one or two and you stand the risk of making the entire lineup too convoluted for your fans to follow, particularly if you start layering in line extensions on top of those brand extensions. (peep that Budweiser extension-mania image above for reference. "yeah, gimme a Bud Light… Lemonade Seltzer Soda, please?")

How to avoid this issue altogether 

If you’ve determined that a brand extension does not make sense, this doesn’t mean you can’t launch the product. It just means you have to explore another brand architecture strategy for bringing it to market—e.g. a subtly-endorsed brand, some sort of shadow endorsement or even a standalone brand if you have the capacity to properly manage it.  

The most important question

Does this new product naturally align with your parent brand’s values and value props? Is this something your brewery would launch? Does it make sense at a gut level? 

If there’s any doubt, then you need to be extremely careful with putting your brewery’s name on that product. Yes, you could possibly see a short term bump in sales by leveraging your parent brand’s equity of the gate, but it likely won’t last beyond the honey moon phase. And it could end up doing far more damage to your positioning in the long run.