Students often ask for examples of successful PR campaigns and I am pleased to provide this information...
Japanese Car Victories: Toyota, Honda, and Nissan wanted to move up the food chain from small entry-level cars to larger, more expensive cars. All three introduced NEW BRANDS Lexus, Acura, and Infiniti.
All three new brands benefited from favorable publicity at the time of their launch and all three new brands became successful in the U.S. market. Lexus is the largest-selling luxury automobile brand in America, outselling Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Lincoln, and Cadillac. Consequently, selecting the right name for your "branding" leads to favorable publicity and favorable consumer perceptions.
To an editor or reporter, a line extension sounds like a me-too product. The media is not interested in your version of somebody else's breakthrough product. The media is interested only if you have a breakthrough product yourself. Some examples:
- Palm, the first handheld computer
- Blackberry, the first wireless email device
- Zip Drive, the first high-capacity external storage system for PCs
All three of these "firsts" produced a flood of publicity, which helped establish the three brands as leaders in their field.
Contrast Fat Free Fig Newtons with SnackWell's, the first fat-free cookie. Both were introduced in 1992 by Nabisco, but SnackWell's spawned a sea of publicity while Fat Free Fig Newtons, the line extension, was virtually ignored by the media.
All these examples point to the importance of NEW news to launch a successful public relations campaign.
