Grow the Core: How to Focus on your Core Business for Brand Success

Chapter 11

Workouts 7 and 8: Extend the core

 Headlines

Core range extension grows the core by adding new versions of the core product or service. By offering benefits that support a premium price, core extension can deliver a ‘double whammy’ of increased penetration and superior profitability. A market map can be used to highlight opportunities to deliver new benefits or meet the needs of new occasions and user groups. Core range extension can then be executed through either new pack formats or new products.

Delivering a double whammy

Core range extension offers new versions of the core product or service, such as Dove bar introducing a Refreshing Green version. You are telling new chapters of the same core brand story. This is very different from brand stretch, where you move beyond the core into totally new markets, such as Dove launching deodorants.

Core extensions help grow the core by better covering the ‘market map’ of benefits, occasions and target audiences (Figure 11.1). A good place to start is to ensure you have such a market map, based on qualitative and quantitative research. You can then highlight areas where your brand ‘under-indexes’ with less than its fair share of certain user groups or occasions. For example, the Kit-Kat chocolate brand did this work and found ...