Brand Differentiators: Lessons From The Past

By Author: martin well
Total Articles: 364
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Though simplicity in brand architecture should always be the rule of thumb, brands and sub-brands deserve more than simple descriptors, especially if they're to be differentiated. Two historical cases shed further light on the matter: Ivory Soap and Miller Lite.

Ivory Soap
In the mid-1800's, P&G didn't brand their soaps and candles. They went to market with generic names: Rosin Soap was made from rosin; Mottled German Soap was so named because its appearance was mottled and its hardness was characteristic of German soaps.

Ivory soap, launched in 1878, was the first P&G brand. It was the result of efforts to develop a totally new kind of soap. Gamble intended to call it P&G White Soap, but Procter insisted on a more distinctive name. It was christened Ivory when Procter ran across the word in a psalm.

Over a hundred years later, Ivory remains a strong brand, and P&G has branched out far beyond just candles and soaps. Of their roughly 100 brands, 26 have more than a billion dollars in net sales annually.

Miller Lite
Launched in 1973, Miller Lite was the first ...
... mainstream light beer. Previous, unsuccessful attempts were Tommer's Red Letter from the Piels Brewing Co. in 1964 and Gablinger's Diet Beer from 1967. Meister Brau Lite, from around the same time period, followed the Gablinger's light beer recipe until Meister Brau was eventually acquired by Miller. It was then that they reformulated and relaunched it as "Lite Beer from Miller."

It wasn't long before the beer became a success and competitors started introducing other beers with the differentiator "Light" or "Lite." Miller's legal team fought long and hard to protect "Lite." Maybe as an attempt to make the brand more protectable, Miller changed the name from "Lite Beer from Miller" to "Miller Lite" in the mid-eighties, but to no avail. "Lite" simply wasn't protectable.

The lesson: Miller could have used a branded differentiator to claim the light beer category as their own. Instead, Miller Lite is now just another in a long slew of light beer options.

As with the Big Mac, the Prius, and 501's, a strong sub-brand ultimately benefits the parent brand. And if the category extension is truly innovative, the first of its kind, it deserves a differentiated name.

Both of these cases underscore the critical importance of strategic planning throughout the brand name development process.

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