Brand obsolescence: depth versus breadth in marketing strategy

Brands cannot be expected to last forever versus "There is no reason for a brand to become obsolete"

This article begins with an overview of Kotler & Keller's (2006) definition of a brand and of marketing, that brands are at their core essence, symbols, and marketing is a way of communicating that symbolism to the public. Of course, symbols are powerful entities, having conceptual resonances far beyond the product's intrinsic merits, and especially given the shortened product life cycle of today's marketing environment, branding is an essential part of developing a secure market base. Brand loyalty is developed by minimizing buyer regret, and encouraging brand identification between the consumer's desire for a good or service and the brand.

The real problem with the article is that it does not definitively answer the question of the inevitability of brand death. It does have a discussion of brand awareness in terms of "depth" and "breadth" and touches upon the idea that brands can have such a narrow association that brand extinction may occur, through the natural product life cycle, if the brand's association is quite unique and/or narrow. It suggests extension can be avoided through improved marketing strategy and consumer research, and thus a more flexible branding strategy. However, although logically, a broad branding strategy would seem to avoid extinction by targeting many market segments, and thus stretch a brand's product life cycle through many different changes in the wider business environment, in fact: "The normative model of brand image management suggests that marketers should base their images on a single set of consumer needs (depth strategy), rather than multiple sets of needs (breadth strategy)"for fear of diluting the brand associations. (Martin 1992:1).