The Brand Extension Checklist

When considering brand extensions ask yourself these yes or no questions:

•    Have you identified what your brand owns in the consumer’s mind?
•    Have you identified all areas in which the consumer gives your brand permission to operate?
•    Do you have a clear understanding of whether your brand is over or under extended?
•    Have you identified all the ways your brand and others in its category have made compromises with the consumer?  Have you found ways to redefine your business to break those compromises?
•    Have you identified new categories for growth?  Can you create new categories that meet previously unmet consumer needs?
•    Have you targeted new market segments to which you would like your brand to appeal?
•    Have you explored ways to make your brand more relevant to the next generation of consumers?
•    Do you know what must be done to ensure the parent brand maintains a relationship with the consumer throughout his or her life (cradle-to-grave marketing)?
•    Do you have a plan that specifies what categories your brand will enter next, in what order it will enter them and on what time frame?

•    Have you considered taking your brand global as an alternative growth strategy to brand extension?
•    Do you have a way to screen all new brand extension proposals for their congruence with the brand promise and impact on brand equity?
•    Are you sure that the brand’s positive associations will not become negative when associated with a new product category?
•    Have you thoroughly researched how proposed brand extensions might reposition the original brand in consumers’ minds?
•    Have you considered acquisition as a way to extend the brand?
•    Do you have a brand licensing department?  Does that department have strict guidelines for licensing your brands out in order to ensure brand image is not hurt and brand meaning is not diluted?
•    Have you developed decision criteria to determine whether an extension (a) uses an existing brand or (b) requires a new brand and, if (b), whether the new brand is (c) a sub-brand or (d) an endorsed brand?
•    Do you have organizational mechanisms to screen, test, and launch brand extensions?
•    Do you test each new product or service for its impact on your brand’s equity (quality, value, reinforcement of brand essence, promise and personality, etc.)?

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