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Two articles popped up today that look at different aspects of extending a product line or a brand for the sake of novelty. This one from BrandChannel, looks at it from the branding perspective,
"With such a proliferation of products, it's getting worse all the time," says Alan Siegel, CEO and chairman of Siegel and Gale, a branding agency. "I think because there is so much noise in the marketplace, and it's so expensive to get brand recognition, many companies are trying to cut through this noise and confusion by using brand extensions (if they make sense) rather than create totally new brands."
while this one is a report from a market survey that shows too many product makeovers released too often annoy customers instead of encouraging them to try or buy.
"Redesigns are critically important, but at the same time, there's always the risk the customer may not find what they're trying to find," he said.
Most companies have design teams that "seem almost obsessed to periodically change things just to prove (the teams) exist," Beemer said.
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Comments
This sounds a little like the discussion on the forum surrounding the Zune. The argument being that making the Zune look like the iPod is bad - even though one can find previous comments about how excellent iPod functionality is. Should MS develop a less functional design for the sake of aesthetic differentiation? I guess so if the concern is showing the world that the ID team exists is valid... and ID is only about aesthetics. Some of the Zune functionality (e.g. peer-to-peer "sharing"), sounds like something a designer would suggest and an engineer would implement.
Hi, Core77,
I was a designer for Deskey Assoc in NYC and one of the many clients we had was Proctor & Gamble ("Tide").
The package changes were done for a few reasons. The most obvious was to convey something "new & improved " about the product. It was critical to appear that the product was as current as consumer whims,consumer information and trends.Often this would be accomplished with a "violator"- a small graphic device, usually one of those tacky, little starburst designs with text.
If a violator was not large or important enough to convey the new product benefits, an "evolutionary" package design was ordered. The most critical aspect of evolutionary packaging was to maintain what's called, "Product Equity". Product Equity is KING in package design. Product Equity translates into Consumer Loyalty to your product and also Immediate Consumer Recogntion of your product in an overstuffed market place. The real art & science of this is to change & update the package design while maintaining all of the most important graphic and physical characterisitics of the original package. After designing and producing up to 200 variations on a particular package design- Color, Logotypes, Proportions, Package Configuration and secondary graphics had to be thoroughly scrutinized by focus groups and test markets before any actual changes were made to the original design.
But today, the market is so rife with similar products in the same catagory, companies are now leaning towards, "Revolutionary" redesign of their flagship products. Product Equity is taking a somewhat smaller role in the redesign considerations. Revolutionary packaging can mean an entire re-design of the physical package and graphic elements. This drastic change would occur when the company feels that the consumers who had original brand loyalty are no longer crucial to keeping the market share and a new consumer who is unfamiliar with the original product is now the target customer.