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1. All students are required
to complete the below assignment on an individual basis (50 points). Think ‘big
picture’ (cultural, environmental factors, etc.) when answering the question. The deadline for
submission is April 18th through Turnitin. Paper should be at least
4 pages, double-spaced; more detailed answers are preferred so don’t feel
limited by a page count.
2. Choose one of the following
failed brand extensions that have been marketed or positioned poorly in the
past. Create a new strategy to revitalize the marketing of this product to the
same target market or an alternative one. Elements of target marketing,
repositioning, product management, promotion, distribution, and price need to
be addressed.
Cosmopolitan yogurt
Bic underwear
Diet Coke Plus
BenGay aspirin
Coors Rocky Mountain Spring water
Cheetos lip balm
Please make
sure to use Critical Thinking Rubric below as a guide for your submission.
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Not Proficient
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Some Proficiency
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Proficient
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Highly Proficient
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Points Received
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Identified &
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Fails to identify,
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Identifies main issues
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Successfully identifies
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Clearly identifies and
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Explained
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summarize, or
explain
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but does not
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and summarizes the
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summarizes main
issues and
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Issues
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the main problem
or
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summarize or
explain
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main issues, but does
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successfully
explains why/how
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question, or
represents
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them clearly or
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not explain why/how
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they are
problems or questions
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the issues
inaccurately
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sufficiently.
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they are
problems or
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and identifies
embedded or
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or inappropriately.
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create questions.
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implicit issues, addressing their
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relationship to each other.
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Recognizes
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Fails to accurately
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Shows some general
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Correctly identified all
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Not only correctly identifies all
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Stakeholders
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identify and explain any
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understanding of
the
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the empirical
and
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the empirical and theoretical
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& Contexts
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empirical or
theoretical
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influences of
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most of the
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contexts relevant to all the main
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context for the issues
or
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empirical and
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theoretical
contexts
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stakeholders,
but also finds
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presents
problems as
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theoretical contexts
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relevant to all the
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minor stakeholders and contexts
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having no connections
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on stakeholders, but
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main stakeholders in
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and shows the tension
or
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to other
conditions or
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does not
identify any
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the situation.
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conflicts of
interests among
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contexts.
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specific ones
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them.
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relevant to
situation
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at hand.
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Takes
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Intellectual
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Stays strictly within the
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Considers new
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Incorporates new
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Actively seeks out and
follows
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Risks
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guidelines of the
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directions or
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directions or
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through on untested and
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assignment.
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approaches without
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approaches to the
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potentially risky
directions or
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going beyond the
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assignment in the
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approaches to the assignment in
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guidelines of the
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final product.
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the final product.
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assignment.
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Evaluates
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Fails to identify and
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Identifies some of
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Identifies and
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Not only identifies and evaluates
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Assumptions
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evaluate any of
the
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the most
important
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evaluates all the
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all the important assumptions,
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important
assumptions
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assumptions, but
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important
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but also some of the more
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behind the claims and
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does not evaluate
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assumptions, but not
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hidden, more abstract ones.
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recommendations
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them for
plausibility
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the ones deeper in
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made.
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or clarity.
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the
background—the
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more abstract
ones.
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Innovative
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Merely restates existing
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Experiments with
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Actually creates a
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Extends a novel or unique
idea,
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Thinking
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ideas.
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creating a novel or
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novel or unique idea,
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question, format, or
product to
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unique idea, format,
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identifies a new void,
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create new knowledge or
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or product.
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or proposes a new
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knowledge that crosses
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product.
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boundaries.
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Solution
REPOSITIONING FAILED BRAND
“COSMOPOLITAN YOGURT”
STUDENT
NAME
STUDENT
ID
COURSE
Table of Contents
Introduction:
The
strongest positioning strategy is based on simplistic ideas that can be summed
up in a word easy. For example, FedEX revolutionized package delivery so is
associated with Speed; Volvo is built on reputation of Safety and Apple is
known for Innovation. The more one simplify the positioning, the more it
becomes powerful but it is not always as simple as it looks. The process of
Branding was developed as a safeguard for the businesses to protect their
products from failures. It enforces ownership and creates differentiation as
the concept goes back to 1500’s when unique marks were made on cattle to define
their ownership.
Brand/Product Failure:
Those
days are long gone when people used to buy products, now brands dominate as
they are the ones now that are making purchase decision easier for the
customers. People buy what offers them different and better solution to their
needs and problems. The success and failure of a brand depends on
brand-consumer bond, brand positioning, promise and image. As customers decide
the fate of brand, manufacturers must make sure brands are carefully launched
so that the positive emotions and perceptions must be attached to the brand.
The distortion of such perception may affect the competition and reputation of
the company.
FAILED BRAND: COSMOPOLITAN
YOUGURT
Who
does not know Cosmopolitan; “A popular magazine that caters all day to day
issues of women related to fashion and lifestyle”. The magazine is distributed
in more than 100 countries around the world. In 1999, Cosmopolitan decided to
extend its brand with a new product “yogurt”. The yogurt was launched as a
joint venture with MD Foods, with variety of range (low fat, fruits and cheese)
for the extension of brand into healthy food sector (Marketing Week , 2001 ) . That extension only
came out to be a weird marketing leap.
Reasons for Cosmopolitan
Yogurt product Failure & its Repositioning strategies
Failure 1: No Connection
with main brand:
Too
much diversity can be dangerous and same happened with cosmopolitan. They made
an extension that seemed to make zero sense with their parent brand “Magazine”.
Such randomness cost the company millions as the yogurt was off the shelves
within 18 months. It’s not just about being different as relevancy with the
main brand is far more important and people simply were unable to relate the
two together.
REPOSITIONING STRATEGY 1
Re-launch
product under different head:
For
cosmopolitan to achieve better results what could be done was launching such a
diverse product under entirely different brand name where they could target all
the consumers without specifically going for only one that is women.
Failure 2: Zero market
research:
Whenever
a new product is launched prior to that from planning to manufacturing and
delivery time an extensive amount of research is conducted in advance to see
whether the product will be a success or not. Failure of cosmopolitan yogurt
made it clear that company had no prior research over it.
REPOSITIONING STRATEGY 2
Research and development centers:
Cosmopolitan
has already R&D centers that keep updating them about new ideas and markets
are responding to their stories. But keeping the systems same for every product
is not justifiable as every product has her own uniqueness and requires own set
of skills and techniques to be catered.
Failure 3: Target Market:
Even
the target market of the extended product was entirely different. The original
target market of cosmopolitan is exclusively “Women” between the age group 17
to 35. By keeping their need for healthy and fit lifestyle cosmopolitan
launched a nutritious product “yogurt” but they were missing a lot of other
things. The actual target market for yogurt is very diverse as it include both
men and women along with children and elderly who are the consumers of this
brand so couldn’t be sold out to women only. So, there target market clearly
did not match the real one.
REPOSITIONING STRATEGY 3
Environment analysis:
Before
the launch of any new brand it is important to note that what market thinks and
says about it and to find that company needs to know what is the consumption
pattern of yogurt and consumed majorly by what category. According to one
research in low fat yogurt category the consumption pattern varies among men
and women with women came out to be more consumers but men are slightly less in
this consumption pattern ratio. But interestingly brand is a leader in children
segment where cosmopolitan resides nowhere near.
Failure 4: Barely any
Promotion:
Too
much overconfidence can be drastic. Cosmopolitan seemed to make assumptions
when it launched a realistic product “Yogurt”. The company thought its own name
will be sufficient enough to convince consumers to buy their new brand but it
all came out to be a random product also known as piggybacking marketing
technique (Jensen, 2013) . The product was rejected in no time
before the company could even thought of investing on its promotion. There was
only one tagline: “Read your cosmopolitan mag with your cosmopolitan yogurt”
without realizing that whether such associated will place the company in a
risky spot.
Failure 5: Lack of
experience in Distribution
Switching
to an entirely different channel of distribution was itself a new game for
cosmopolitan as for their magazines there was a less worry but the product was
not sensitive like yogurt and was limited to shops. For yogurt they had to
depend on a chain of distribution channels that would make sure the product is
easily and timely placed in Various Superstores. Even the mismanagement clearly
depicted that cosmopolitan has no experience in food industry.
Failure 6: Unrealistic
Pricing:
Cosmopolitan
yogurt presents a biggest lesson for other brands is that one must first
understand the true customer’s needs, wants and behaviors before jumping into
the competitive market. Cosmopolitan’s one of another bold move was pricing the
yogurt at much higher than the competition by simply justifying their new
product as sophisticated and aspirational. It presented the image that
cosmopolitan believes it can sell everything but the consumers reaction clearly
throw them a clear indication that they got it all wrong (Carter, 2016) .
REPOSITIONING STRATEGY 4 for
failure 4-5-6
Association with brand:
Cosmopolitan
needed to first start associating itself as the health conscious programs to
aware the customers that they are also dealing in health sector. The creation
of an environment is necessary step to follow before going for any new idea as
they can cost more than they can benefit if implemented in an ill manner.
There
needs to be an innovative strategy that reinvigorate company’s brand and take
it to an entirely new level. This section suggests the use of automated systems
from production to marketing and delivery as it is what boosts the booming of
brands even in the toughest markets. Customer loyalty gets skyrocketed. In case
of cosmopolitan yogurt there was no use of digitalization and automatic
techniques that could label the product as a success.
Realistic pricing:
Both
Too much low and too much high pricing can affect the product selling. It has
to be properly research to see where the competition is lying and then setting
of pricing should be done to remain realistic.
Conclusion
Repositioning
strategy is effective for the brand whose awareness level is not that high as
it would become easy for the company to re-launch the product with entirely
different and effective strategies so that mistakes may not be repeated. In
cosmopolitan yogurt case, there were many mistakes at the end of the company
because of the significant lack in research and development section as it is
important to first match the idea with the existing consumer needs and then
decision to upgrade the brand must be made. In repositioning every step is
redefined in an entirely new way which will help in identifying sales
opportunities by giving the correct idea of right target markets, allows the
company to bring differentiation in their product and strengthen their
competitive level by reminding the consumers of their credible reputation.
Bibliography
1. Carter, L. (2016, July 12). Brand Flops: 5 Lessons Brand
Managers Can Learn From Epic Brand Failures. Retrieved from Persona
Design: https://www.personadesign.ie/brand-flops-5-lessons-brand-managers-can-learn-epic-brand-failures/
2. Jensen. (2013, November 1 ). Freaky Fresh Marketing,
#FAILFriday: Cosmopolitan Yogurt,. Retrieved from Cosmopolitan: https://kirstiecrotty.wordpress.com/2014/03/16/read-your-cosmopolitan-mag-with-your-cosmopolitan-yogurt/
3. Marketing Week . (2001 , February 22). NatMags and MD
pull out of Cosmo yogurts. Retrieved from
https://www.marketingweek.com/2001/02/22/natmags-and-md-pull-out-of-cosmo-yogurts/
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