How would you categorize your brands? Where do each of the brands of your portfolio fit in? Have you reconsidered their role due to their crisis? Are you facing a dramatic change in their positioning? Have you realizad that some of them could eventually be destroying value to your company?

These are questions that the Marketing Manager or even the General Manager should be asking themselves all the time. Specially  during a economic recession, that fosters changes in perception, habits and behaviors. In this context, I woud like to bring your attention to the fighter brands, and the role that could be playing in managed unproperly.

A fighter brand is a lower priced offering launched by a company to take on, and ideally take out, specific competitors that are attempting to under-price them. Unlike traditional brands that are designed with target consumers in mind, fighter brands are specifically created to combat a competitor that is threatening to steal market share away from a company’s main brand.

It’s one of the oldest strategies in branding – tracing its history back to the 19th Century and cigarette marketing. Its a strategy that usually proves more common during tough economic times .

Some classic examples would be:

• Australia: Qantas launching JetStar to take on Virgin Blu
• UK: British Airways launch GO to take on Ryanair and EasyJet
• USA: GM launches Saturn to take on Japanese imports into America.
• Japan: Matsuhit acquired JVC to completent the Panasonic brand and be able to address low-end segments.
• Russia: Philip Morris launching Bond Street to take on local brands and Project.

Seems to be very reasonable and, as a matter of fact, many companies are actually implementing them. But the other day, the following question came to my mind: WHAT IF YOUR FIGHTER BRANDS BECOME ALL THE SUDDEN KILLER BRANDS? The thought came to me when visiting a well-known European retailer and asked for a premium washing machine. I did not ask for price; I insisted that I was looking for quality and was not so much concerned with price as for performance. And what happened really stuck me: The salesperson showed to me to premium models from AEG and Siemens and then explained that the manufacturers of those brands had two fighter brands (Electrolux and Bosch) that offered exactly the same performance, used the same technology but had a price that was 30% cheaper! And finally got me, a customer looking for quality and not sensitive to price, purchasing one fighting brand instead of the premium ones.

Undesired switch for the manufacturer for it stops selling a premium brand, and gets a potential customer moved to the fighting ones. Fighting Brands that, when acquiring price unsensitive customers from the premium brands of the manufacturer, work as  Killer Brands that destroy value and brand equity.

Thus watch out how your brands are really positioned (not how you think they are!), understand in depth the role they play, and make sure that your marketing mix is placing them where they are meant to. If not, you might find that your real enemies are not your historic competitors brands, but your fighter brands that have become all the sudden, uncontrolled terminators….

THINK DIFFERENT!!!

Ignacio Gafo