Should we do Brand Extensions or Launch New Brands in New Spaces ?

Arindam Som shares his experience at GSK, where he used market research to answer the above question for many new innovations.

Arindam believes that the conventional approach is that we intend to maximize the usage of our current assets and current brands.

So one of the question for exploratory research while looking at innovation is whether we can use our current assets or we need completely new assets for launching brand innovations in new spaces. We try to answer a brand portfolio strategy question -Whether the current brands can work, or we need new brands ?

We already know that there is a lot of disruption going on in this country, readily embraced by consumers. Consumer choices are not limited anymore to the existing brands. Consumers are open to experimenting with new brands. We cannot assume that reviving a traditional brand or extending an existing brand will work in new spaces.

The hypothesis usually is that existing brands will bring in more credibility when we move into new spaces. However the quantitative research proved otherwise. It was proven that new brands, were actually more relevant. They were perceived to be unique, had higher credibility. So it was proven quantitatively that the old theory of marketing efficiency with old brands did not work when GSK moved into new spaces. In more than 80% of the innovations, GSK were experimenting with, the new brands had higher scores on credibility and relevance.

The existing brands carried a lot of baggage and consumers were not willing to give the license to the old brands to extend into a new space. Besides in these new spaces, the old brands were perceived to be boring .

The consumer looked forward to experimenting with new brand, new benefits, new tonalities. New spaces requires new kinds of interventions.

Listen to full conversation with Arindam on Evolving Market Research for Human Stories at Scale