Question

MARKETNG: KOOL-AID

1. How does Kool-Aid packaging and branding contribute to yhe core customer values and how do you know?

2. its stage in the product life cycle and how you know?

3. Its strategies for keeping the product alive and how do you know this?

Answer 1

The legal owner of a brand is generally the individual or entity in whose name the legal registration has been filed. Operationally speaking, brand ownership should be the responsibility of an organization’s management and employees. Brand ownership is about building and maintaining a brand that reflects your principles and values. Brand building is about effectively persuading customers to believe in and purchase your product or service. Iconic brands, such as Apple and Disney, often have a history of visionary leaders who champion the brand, evangelize about it, and build it into the organizational culture and operations.

When an organization truly owns its brand, its efforts are unified around a common symbol of the value it provides to customers. These organizations use their resources wisely to produce marketing that is targeted and effective because they have a sophisticated understanding of the marketplace; they know how their brand and offerings fit into it, which audiences they are targeting, and they have a strategy for successful growth. These advantages lead to disciplined and effective brand management, which enables these organizations to remain relevant in a rapidly changing and often saturated marketplace.

1. With the “house of brands” strategy, a company invests in building out a variety of individual, product-level brands. Each of these brands has a separate name and may not be associated with the parent company name at all. These brands may even be in de facto competition with other brands from the same company. For example, Kool-Aid and Tang are two powdered beverage products, both owned by Kraft Foods. The “house of brands” strategy is well suited to companies that operate across many product categories at the same time. It allows greater flexibility to introduce a variety of different products, of differing quality, to be sold without confusing the consumer’s perception of what business the company is in or diluting brand perceptions about products that target different tiers or types of consumers within the same product category.

2. After the growth stage, sales continue to mount—but at a decreasing rate. This is the maturity stage. Most products that have been on the market for a long time are in this stage. Thus, most marketing strategies are designed for mature products. One such strategy is to bring out several variations of a basic product (line extension). Kool-Aid, for instance, was originally offered in six flavors. Today there are more than 50, as well as sweetened and unsweetened varieties.

3. While some aspects of a brand can remain the same, such as the iconic Kool-Aid man, other components should be updated to address new generations of fans. Adam Butler, Category Head of Beverages and Snack Nuts, shares how Kool-Aid has learned how to stay relevant and continues to win customers from different generations.

This past May, Kool-Aid unveiled its latest creative campaign for a new product called Kool-Aid Sparklers. The beverage product is for older kids and teens. This new product combines the traditional flavors of Kool-Aid with bubbles in a sleek can.

To reach teens, a new audience segment for the brand, the campaign creative leverages popular teen content trends. These trends include unboxing videos and drones to get the attention of this social-obsessed audience.