Question

Unilever owns both Breyers (a mass-market, medium quality ice cream brand) and Ben & Jerry’s (a specialty high-quality ice cream brand with a counter-culture, healthy image). Despite Breyers having a much higher sales level, Unilever decided not to co-brand Ben & Jerry’s with Breyers (that is rename Ben & Jerry’s as either Breyers, Ben & Jerry’s or Ben & Jerry’s by Breyers). Explain.

Answer 1

Although Unilever owns both Breyers and Ben & Jerry's , but the target customers and positioning of both the brands are different. The target market for Breyers is mass market and it has an image of medium quality ice cream brand. On the other hand, Ben & Jerry has a healthy image and a specialty high quality ice cream brand targeting the premium health conscious customers.

As the positioning of both the brands are different, co-branding both of them would create confusion in the minds of the minds of the customers. This would ultimately lead to reduced sales of both the brands as the customers are not able to distinguish between the two brands. Due to this confusion, the customers would not be purchasing any of the brands. Thus in order to protect the cannibalization of one brand by the other, Unilever decided not to co-brand Ben & Jerry's with Breyers.