There is a reason branded products look like they do, and the market will reassert itself when the shit blows over.
Yeah, it's in marketing DNA. But that these ancient proud brands are to be torn down just baffles me.
But I don't know how much any of that marketing crap works, anyway... I think the symbols do. The things that make an item unique and identifiable in order to be picked...
I am partial to Betty Crocker... Nothing at all against Duncan Hines or the others, whoever and whatever they are. I don't care to try them out - I have always had a good time with ol Betty, and you can bet the if I am in the baking aisle, I am looking for a red box, and that Betty Crocker signature.
Now, do all their commercials and specials and couponing, and everything they do matter in welding me to that product? Yes, very probably. Brand recognition is very likely what caused me to try that brand at the first moment of decision. But that's all. the rest is a loyalty born of normalcy. As long as ol Betty works for me, I will keep using it... entirely. All they can do to mess that up is crank the price enough or mess up the product expectation enough to cause me to look for otherwise.
But it is the symbolism that causes me to FIND ol betty on the shelf. THAT is what they are messing with... If I were into prepared pancake stuff, three things are in my mind... Bisquick, Aunt Jamima, and Mrs. Butterworth... I know what all those look like and could find them on the shelf. Their brands would likely be held higher in my decision making, because I know them.
Not that I do, mind you - I think there may be an old box of Bisquick in the house, but none of the rest are here. Like any redneck boy, I scratch build pancakes, and being as close as I am to Canada, of course my tastes run toward REAL maple syrup, and will have no other.
But altering that brand is just crazy. They are top names in their field BECAUSE of those brands. How will people find them afterward?
