Assignment 3. Brand Leveraging Strategies. Business & Marketing Essay

Brand Leveraging Strategies
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Go to a store that carries a wide variety of products (e.g., grocery store; Wal-Mart/Target; home improvement store, drug store). Find two examples of products using a brand leveraging strategy. For each of these products separately, answer the following questions:
Describe the product you selected: What is the brand? What is the product?
Bic Disposable Razors- The brand for this product is Bic™, a company that has many years of experience in the marketing of a number of disposable products such as the Bic pen. Bic™ was started in 1950 by Marcel Bich and Edouard Buffard in France. The company manufactures ball point pens named Bic ( Bic Website). As part of its brand leveraging strategy, in 2004, the company introduced the Bic disposable razors.
Oral-B oral Toothpaste- They are owned by Procter & Gamble (P & G). The company owns several brands across different categories from baby care, oral care, skin care and several other categories.
What was the original product associated with the brand name?
Bic™ was started in France in 1950. The original product manufactured by the company was the Bic ballpoint pens. The company started diversifying its product categories. It diversified into the production of stationery materials such as the graphite pencil. In 1975, it partnered with Violex, a manufacturer of razor blades to produce a unique one-sided razor blade. In 2004, the company introduced another product category that is men and women shaving disposable razor blades (Smith, 2016). Due to the high growth in the demand of the products, the company has been improving these disposable razor blades as a way of meeting the needs of the customer.
P & G original product was the soap. The company started in 1837 as a manufacturer of soap and candles which were frequently used during the civil war. In 1880, the company also introduced a new soaps known as Ivory that was inexpensive and floated on water. Due to the growth in the demand of their products, the company started diversifying their product categories and introduced other products such as cooking fat and oil known as Crisco in 1911 (Smith, 2016). Since then, the company has produced different product categories as a way of providing their customers with what they exactly want.
What specific type of brand leveraging strategy (we discussed four in class) is being used? Explain why it is this one.
Under Bic™, the branding strategy that is utilized by the company is brand extension. Brand extension is a leveraging strategy where the company extends an existing brand into new product categories. Bic is a manufacturer of stationer materials. In 2004, the company introduced a new product category where it started the production of disposable razor blades and pocket lighters. All these products had the name Bic on them. The company leveraged on its brand as a manufacturer of low-cost disposable products to introduce this new category of the disposable razor blades.
The brand leveraging strategy utilized by P & G multi-brandin...