Promoting products as symbols of a whole lifestyle

What springs to mind when you think of Coca-Cola? Is it thirst-quenching refreshment? Is it a brown-coloured beverage? Or is it thoughts of holidays and fun times with family and friends?

If holidays and fun times is your answer, the people at Coca-Cola headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, would be pleased. A lot of hard work goes in to making sure the brand is perceived as more than just another fizzy drink.

Companies with a strong brand identity know how important it is for their brand to communicate values that extend beyond the product being sold. A successful brand can be used on a wide variety of products and still lose none of its value.

An article in the current issue of Marketing News magazine suggests that a true brand transcends product format "and has a relationship with the consumer that has more to do with the beliefs the brand expresses than the product itself". Virgin is the example given, a brand which screams "fun" and stretches from music to railways, to airlines, to cosmetics and even financial services.

The author of the article argues that being one of the world's best-known names no longer guarantees success. It cites Levi Strauss (associated exclusively with denim jeans) and Kelloggs (a brand synonymous with cornflakes), as two product-based companies that had a drop in sales last year.

Success, it seems, is now the preserve of the "philosophy brand" that can be stretched into several areas. Brand consultant Ruth Kelleher, based in Dublin, says brand stretching, if done correctly, links a product with a lifestyle and allows it to be experienced by a wider audience.

"Essentially, stretching is used to provide an extra source of revenue. With just one product, a company is limiting its options; with a whole range of different products, they are linking their brand to a clear lifestyle and providing many more opportunities for the consumer to buy," she says.

Kate Wadell of Interbrand branding consultants in London agrees: "There are masses of brands who are realising that, as global standards rise, you can no longer compete just on quality, and they are looking at ways to exploit their brand equity."

She gives the example of Disney, a company that started out in cartoons, but now has its name on everything associated with fun and family - from clothing and toys to movies and music.

An Irish company which has had something of a brand evolution in recent years is Waterford Crystal, famed for glass products of exceptional quality that were bought to be admired but were rarely used in the home. The introduction of a line designed by John Rocha injected new life into the brand.

"Traditionally, crystal was used on special occasions, but with the launch of the John Rocha line, we were encouraging a more everyday image of Waterford Crystal where the products are both used and admired," he says. The brand has retained the strong and popular image of a company with a long Irish heritage while embracing more contemporary consumers of crystal.

Not long ago, many commentators heralded the "death of the brand", says John Casey, chief executive of the Irish Marketing Institute. Reasons given at the time included the growing power of retailers and the consumer's increasing sophistication.

"In the light of so much pessimism about the future role of branding, it is fascinating to observe how central the concept still is," he says. "It could be argued that it was too narrow a focus on the real power of the branding process that created the pessimism of a few years ago."

At Coca-Cola's US headquarters pessimism is a dirty word and the company has just released a line of clothing to add to the thousands of products already bearing the company logo. Susan McDermott of Coca-Cola says the new line is part of its licensing strategy that has become an important way for it to connect with consumers around the world.

Ms McDermott stresses that, as an organisation, Coca-Cola is extremely wary of putting its trademark on anything that strays too far from what the brand represents: "We would never, for example, produce Coca-Cola power tools. If the consumer has to struggle to make a link with the product and the brand then it would erode our relationship with them."

(The new clothing line - that Ms McDermott says reflects the casual comfortable apparel people might wear while having a Coke - has only been released in Mexico so far but is due in Ireland by 2000.)

John Casey echoes Ms McDermott's concerns about associating a brand with the right products. He says there is a lot more to brand-building than hype, advertising and promotion. He warns that when the principles of brand promotion are misapplied, they can have the same adverse impact as any failure to deliver a promise.

"Brands are a roadmap that lead customers to a desired destination. There is widespread evidence that a brand-driven strategy remains one of the most powerful means of achieving business success, but simply transferring the trappings of branding into a new sphere will not work if trust is not maintained as the fundamental cornerstone of consumer confidence," he said.