Branding Rant #2: Sub-Branding

I feel like it’s a good time to revisit the lovely world of marketing, and what better way is there than sticking with the schizophrenic topic of food branding? Sometimes we see different marketing campaigns for the same product; other times we see the same marketing campaign for different formulations of a product. One thing is for sure – the game is about getting and keeping your attention. The kicker is, ‘getting’ and ‘keeping’ are two separate problems with many opposing solutions, sometimes with hilarious results.

Brand names are powerful. They stand for something. They keep you coming back because you enjoy and trust the brand. But they can get stale. Brands often undergo makeovers to keep things fresh, but sometimes companies want to sell something that is actually new but attach an old brand to it for instant recognition. This is where sub-branding comes in.

Let’s look at a simple example. When I mention Handi-Snacks, everyone will immediately think of one thing.

Handi-Snacks

Let’s ignore the cross-branding of including the word Ritz here. What you have is simple: the Kraft brand and the Handi-Snacks product. (Quick Aside: Note the labels of ‘Cheez’ and ‘Cheese Dip’, but never ‘Cheese’. That’s all legal maneuvering.) This is how it was in the beginning, but Handi-Snacks got too big for their own head and had to spill over into a new line.

Dunk 'Ems

That’s right. Now your favorite cheez snack is called Kraft Handi-Snacks Dunk ’ems, a horrible perversion of punctuation and plurals. Why the need to distinguish exactly what type of Handi-Snack this was?

Pudding

That’s right. For the pudding line. Which interestingly enough, doesn’t have a sub-brand of its own. One would think they would leave the old product alone and just give the sub-brand to the new one, but maybe that’s just Monday morning marketing. Hey, at least it was for a good cause.

Pudding Canceled

Son of a bitch!

Ok, let’s change brands then. How about Tropicana? First thing that pops into your head?

Tropicana

(Quick Aside #2: I’m gonna go somewhere else with this, but imagine this marketing meeting: “What can we do to give our Tropicana brand more of a ‘tropical’ sound?” …)

Tropicana Tropics

o_O …

Anyway, back to the point at hand. Tropicana is juice. How can that be leveraged into a cool new drink?

Twister

Yes! Two or three juices mixed together in a twisted flavor? I’m feeling that. I like it so far. Is that all you got?

Twister Soda

Tropicana Twister Soda? Oh, ok, I get it. Interesting. I wonder what kind of twisted soda flavors they can come up with-

Soda Flavors

What the- Grape? Strawberry? Orange? Am I missing something here? Could they not just make Tropicana Soda? Were they worried they might weaken the brand any more than Tropicana Twister Soda would? Or is this just a case of sub-branding gone out of control?

Last one up is a famous orange soda.

Orange Crush

The Crush line expanded into flavors other than orange, and they handled the change fairly well.

Crush Flavors

Well, mostly. You and I can only guess what this is…

Crush Cream Soda

Anyway, at some point someone must have come along and thought the multiple logos were hurting the Crush brand. And after several power meetings this is apparently what they came up with (new next to old).

Crush Grape Sodas

WTF? An orange slice on my grape soda? This actually caught me off guard and forced me to do an ingredient check to make sure I knew what I was drinking!

By the way, while I have your attention, let me show you someone who’s done it right.

Sunkist

Nice little leaf gets the point across. You can have designer pictures underneath without getting in the way of the logo. Looks like a win to me. Anyway, try the Cherry Limeade. It’s my favorite new soda of the year. It tastes like candy.

Public Enemies

Public EnemiesLots of factors can contribute to making a movie bad so in turn there are many different levels and types of ‘bad’. Public Enemies isn’t a horrible movie by most standards, even mine. The subject matter is compelling enough, Johnny Depp gives a good performance, true stories always pique interest, and Michael Mann is a great director. Where this film fails is in the Hollywood Treatment that is aggravatingly common in the industry.

Really, do you have to have a love story be the central motivation for John Dillinger’s last year of life? Because that’s what it was. The guy went crazy robbing banks for a year and hiding out until he was caught and killed. He wasn’t looking for one last score. And he certainly wasn’t madly in love with ‘Blackbird’. Try to sell me true love when the dude doesn’t ultimately get caught with a prostitute who was a regular of his. Maybe I might buy it then.

Last Words

Not enough sensationalism for you? How about Hollywood’s need to find meaning in death? Watch any true story about somebody famous who died, and I mean any one you want, and the character in question will always have an introspective moment before they go. Dillinger’s bank heist friend in the movie had a heartfelt realization when he tells John that he doesn’t think he’s gonna make it much longer. Of course he dies in the shootout that follows. And Dillinger himself had a zen epiphany watching his last movie. Now, I knew John Dillinger was going to die but I hadn’t read up on the facts of his life and I didn’t know exactly how, and these moments of the film actually ruined the story for me. It telegraphed what was going to happen before it happened so badly that it made the experience less interesting.

How else can this story be romanticized? Let’s make John a stand-up guy who never lets his buddies down. And as a contrast let’s toss in Baby Face Nelson and make him a complete dick. Granted, it’s true that Nelson was more reckless. And it’s true that Dillinger had some imaginative moments – he actually did escape from a jail in a sheriff’s car and robbed at least one bank pretending they were scouting locations for a bank robbery scene in a movie. But still, both Nelson and Dillinger were ruthless cop killers.

Pretty Boy Floyd and Baby Face Nelson both actually outlived John Dillinger. What gets me though is how bad they did Baby Face. This was one tough guy in real life. The day he died he was chased by two officers and his car flipped. There was a gun fight and he was hit in the side. Instead of running, Nelson got out of cover and walked straight at the two officers, yelling at them and shooting. He was shot a bit more in the process but killed them both before getting in a car and leaving to die later. Why the movie chose to skip this is obvious – they didn’t want to outshine Dillinger- but doesn’t this type of thing endlessly piss you off when watching “true stories?” What if you watched a movie about Baby Face next and Dillinger was the douchebag? If true stories don’t at least presume credibility then why not instead make a work of fiction? The idea of poaching real people for literary license doesn’t sit right with me.

Abe

So in the end, the movie isn’t that bad. It’s a bit entertaining and has some good actors involved. But if you were hoping for greatness or that timeless quality, well folks, it’s not here. This is just another script that was passed back and forth through Hollywood too much until it was regurgitated as every other movie you’ve ever seen.