Off the Shelf: The Retail & CPG Blog

Ever wondered why most of the product lines from the stables of almost every major manufacturer, do not ever carry their parent company's name.

Walls, Slim Fast, Knorr, Lipton, Surf, Dove, AXA, and Vaseline, all are from Unilever, but it will be hard to find Unilever's name on these products. Similarly Braun, Gillette, Duracell, Downy and Gain are from P&G, but still none of them have their manufacturer's name associated with them. Toyota will never want the world to know the Lexus is its brand, and Saturn will always be the niche car, not the people car, unlike it's parent company, GM.

The reason is not hard to decipher.

Manufacturer's brand name has a certain image, and if individual products are associated with manufacturer name, then it will be difficult for brand to break away from manufacturer's image, which is usually manufacturer's original niche.

 E.g. if P&G is branded with Duracell, it might dilute Duracell brand. After all P&G's brand image is primarily associated with home goods. So end users might associate "P&G Duracell ", as a secondary digression of P&G, diluting "Duracell" brand in the process. So "Duracell" is better left alone, to fend for itself, in which it has excelled. After all Duracell, as a standalone brand, is the power cell.

The manufacturer name might cannibalize the brand, if associated too much with particular products. Tomorrow if Unilever wants to introduce another product, all it needs to do is to position it alone. And the new product need not be in traditional niche area of Unilever.

Manufacturers will want their labels to be brand in themselves, so that they can have a diversified and strong portfolio, often very much outside the original niche image of the manufacturer. The products line should not piggyback, on the manufacturer's name, as it goes against the rudimentary ethos of brand building.

Brand names have to be associated with the not so tangible image that wafts through consumers mind. All the marketing and the ad money is spent to ensure that brand captures a image, that is disassociated from the manufacturer's name.

When the product line is in its infancy, it needs every hand holding that is required, by riding on the manufacturer's name. But once the the product comes of age, it is usually high time, to let it go on it's own.

This is the reason why Bajaj has decided to remove the name Bajaj from its line of bikes in India. Bajaj definitely wants Pulsar to concoct a image of a masculine bike from this point onwards, far away from the effeminate effect of the name "Bajaj", that was so far emblazoned on it. So in a way Bajaj is trying to reposition the bike , this time on its own name.

Name matters after all. "Bajaj Pulsar" is very much different from "Pulsar".