Relaunches: new life or last gasps?

Marketing is not a forgiving profession, which makes it all the more surprising that companies try to revive failed brand launches with emergency revamps.

But as big money is at stake, relaunches continue to happen.

Nestlé Rowntree has spent millions of pounds on the launch of its Double Cream bar. The confectionery company is desperate not to let its premium chocolate brand fall by the wayside and is relaunching it as a mainstream product.

Nestlé is slashing the price of the chocolate bar, changing its packaging and introducing new variants – just over a year since its original launch (MW last week). The company has also pencilled in some £35m of marketing support for the brand over the next few years. The move comes despite the accolades that greeted the originally premium-priced product.

One buyer says: “Double Cream is neither mainstream enough nor premium enough to carve out its own market at the moment. But there have to be doubts about the longevity of a brand revamped so soon after launch.”

Another retail insider warns that Nestlé might find money is not always a guarantee of success. He points to Unilever’s now-defunct Birds Eye Enjoy! range, which failed to be resuscitated by a relaunch after 18 months and a marketing budget of about £15m a year. “Money could not help the fact that consumers did not like the food in the range,” he adds.

Unilever is now attempting to revive its Knorr Recipe Kits brand, which has only recouped about half of its £10m launch support after a year on the market. A Unilever spokesman claims a relaunch is a “natural evolution”, but industry pundits still have doubts about a brand needing to “evolve” so rapidly after launch.

Rival Heinz has exhibited a more ruthless streak with faltering brand launches. Less than a year after it appeared on the market, the company has scrapped the Heinz Bite Me frozen pizza snacks brand (MW this week). Indeed, Bite Me was a relaunch of the company’s previous frozen pizza excursions, San Marco and Pizza Pleasure, which were axed last year for “failing to meet expectations”. Despite a supposedly different “teenage” proposition, the new range faces the axe.

Another brand that has recently been ditched is Britvic’s Tango Strange Soda, a mix of fizzy milk, fruit and water (MW last week). The drink’s launch was beset by difficulties from the outset, having had to change its name twice – first from Freekin’ Soda to Freekee Soda and then to its final resting place under the Tango umbrella.

Britvic spent close to £10m on the various guises of the drink, but as one retail insider says: “Any amount of marketing money isn’t going to help people forget the taste. Ultimately, it was unlikely to be the major brand that Britvic wanted because it was an acquired taste.”

Nick Cloke, director of marketing consultancy Catalyst, agrees that no relaunch can salvage sales unless a product meets a definite need or satisfies a genuine desire. He says a relaunch can help communicate any brand benefits that were missed during the first marketing campaign. “But there needs to be something genuinely special to be promoted, otherwise its just more money wasted,” he adds.

One retail buyer says a relaunch can sometimes be the only recourse if the original brand is flawed. He points to the example of Garnier’s Fructis haircare brand. It was relaunched shortly after its introduction in 1998, owing to accusations by consumer watchdogs that products in the range damaged hair.

He says: “Garnier scrapped the Fructis launch position of a breakthrough in haircare technology and instead targeted younger consumers, who had missed the scandal, with funkier advertising. The brand was successfully revived because of it.”

Likewise, Procter & Gamble’s Sunny D (née Sunny Delight) was forced into a radical brand rethink. Shortly after its hugely successful launch in 1998, the product became a branding nightmare owing to a media assault on its claims to be a healthier children’s soft drink.

Matt Edwards, director of ad agency Lowe Worldwide, worked on the brand during his time with Saatchi & Saatchi. He says the relaunch communications ditched Sunny D’s original premise of healthiness to stress its taste improvement. “But, while that successfully stabilised sales, it could never restore the brand’s former glory,” he adds. The brand is now up for sale.

Interfocus head of strategic planning Stuart Leach points to Sunny D as an example of how difficult it is to relaunch a fledgling brand in the same market and successfully shed “baggage”.

One of the most successful relaunches in the recent past was of EMAP’s Heat. The publisher managed to revitalise the magazine by shifting its target readership. EMAP Entertainment managing director Louise Matthews was parachuted in to oversee the relaunch during the mid-Nineties. She admits the magazine, initially positioned as a serious entertainment title, was facing the axe prior to its last-gasp revamp. The relaunch ditched its largely male readership to target a younger, celebrity-obsessed female consumer.

Matthews says: “We felt the brand wasn’t tarnished with advertisers or the entertainment industry, so there was no need to change the name, just to widen the audience that bought the magazine by changing tack.”

She also admits that EMAP could not afford to let Heat fail. “We invested so much in the launch. Sometimes its just a question of how deep your pockets are,” she says.

There are also other considerations apart from the amount of money that has been invested in a launch. One advertising executive admits the reason for a brand relaunch can be as cynical as professional self-preservation. He says: “It can be worth more than a marketing person’s job to admit they wasted a great deal of money. So they try again and waste more.”

But ultimately, says Hugh Burkitt, chief executive of the Marketing Society, there will be doubts over the lifespan of a brand that has not managed to see its second birthday before it needs its first major overhaul.

Citing packaged goods brands in particular, Burkitt wonders why companies bother to attempt to revitalise a brand that has proven itself a failure. He says: “Most good marketing people abhor the word relaunch, as it suggests the brand has done something fairly grim the first time round.”