NEWS

Bad vision - another small business marketing lesson

Last week I wrote about brands "extending" themselves outside of the main scope of the real meaning of their brand. As a small business marketing consultant, I tell my clients that one brand needs to have one meaning...as consumers, we don't have the capacity to understand or remember more than that! Because I was on such a roll, and so are the big brands, I thought I'd continue writing about this bizarre work of brand line extensions.

This weeks example of a poor line extension is brought to you buy BIG W, it's called BIG W Vision, yes, Vision. BIG W now have optometrists inside some of their BIG W stores. Am I really going to go to BIG W to get my eyes checked and then buy of pair bifocals??

In doing some research on the recently advertised line extension brand, I turned to my friend Google, whose 5th ranked search was an entry from a website called "Not Good Enough" - a complaints site full of blogs talking about the terrible service people have received and the involvement of the Dept. of Fair Trading. It's no surprise, when you move away from your brands focus, there will be stumbling blocks, not just in the quality, but in the brand itself. From a recruitment perspective (and this is no disrespect to staff at BIG W, I shop there all the time) what qualified optometrist would want to work in a BIG W store?