Recently, Coca-Cola Company announced that it would stop producing its coconut water brand Jike due to the epidemic. In fact, the epidemic situation is not the only catalyst for the brand to implement the "slimming strategy". In recent years, many consumer goods giants are advancing the strategy of "brand optimization" step by step.

Recently, the Coca-Cola Company announced that it would stop producing its coconut water brand, Zico, and consider canceling some unpopular drinks of Coca-Cola and Diet Coke.

According to reports, Coca-Cola has 500 wholly-owned or partially owned brands around the world. The company has previously said that it plans to cut this number by more than half.

This is not the first time Coca-Cola has given up its brand. In the past two years, the company has been "identifying and eliminating zombies" brands, products, tastes and packaging, which are not as good as other products.

In the first half of 20 19, Coca-Cola cancelled more than 275 products.

A spokesman for Coca-Cola said that the company is now highly concerned about meeting the needs and requirements of consumers, and in this context, it has decided to stop producing Jike before the end of this year. The spokesman said that brands at risk now include Diet Coke Feisty Cherry, Coca Cola Life, Northern Neck Ginger Beer and Delaware Punch, all of which are under "review". The company is screening and streamlining the number of its brands, and will keep those brands that can do this on a large scale.

This move is also one of the extensive restructuring measures triggered by the COVID-19 epidemic, including layoffs and improved marketing strategies.

However, epidemic situation is not the only catalyst for brands to implement "slimming strategy". In fact, in recent years, Unilever, Procter & Gamble, Maotai and other consumer goods giants are gradually promoting the "brand optimization" strategy.

Nestle has also been shrinking its strategy in recent years, selling some businesses. In August this year, Nestle China Group Affairs Department publicly stated: "Nestle has begun to explore the best solution for the future of our water business in China, including the potential sale." In fact, since Schneider took office, Nestle has been divesting its non-core business and constantly slimming down. 2065438+2008 65438+ 10, Nestle sold the American candy business to Ferrero with a transaction amount of 2.8 billion US dollars (about19.6 billion yuan); 20/kloc-In May, 2009, Nestle sold its skin health department for about 654.38+003 billion Swiss francs (about 69.8 billion yuan). Prior to this, Quehuan Nest sold its Jiabao Life); The business is USD 654.38+0.55 billion (about RMB 654.38+0.08 billion). In February last year, Nestle sold its American ice cream business to Froneri for $4 billion. So far, Nestle has carried out more than 20 asset "slimming", covering a number of business sectors, with a total value of more than 654.38+00 billion yuan.

The businesses sold by Nestle are basically sectors with limited profits. For example, since 20 15, the performance of the silver heron being sold is not satisfactory, and even there has been a double-digit decline.

Behind the constant selling, Nestle is also constantly adding new business. In a short period of six months in 2020, Nestle will triple its investment in health science business.

Unilever operates in about 150 countries around the world, with as many as 1600 brands. It is one of the largest consumer goods companies in the world.

However, the internal audit of Unilever later found that more than 90% of the profits were created by the group's 400 brands, while most of the other 1200 brands were in a state of loss or meager profit. So from 1999, Unilever began to implement the spin-off strategy on a global scale.

First of all, I quit my non-main business and specialize in family and personal care products, food and beverage and other advantageous products; Secondly, 14 independent joint ventures were merged into four holding companies, and 55 planned factories were reduced, greatly reducing operating costs; Finally, in order to make the company focus more on the core brands, rather than the brands with low profits, Unilever slimmed down the brands, and finally selected and retained 400 core brands from 1600 brands.

Since 20 15, three-quarters of Unilever's transactions have been acquisitions in the field of beauty care. At the same time, it also sold 8 billion euros of assets, mainly some slow-growing food businesses, such as spreads and margarine.

Procter & Gamble has also been cutting its brands to cope with the changes in the FMCG market and ease the slow growth of its performance.

In recent years, the company has sold Fu Nan Battery, Duracell, Lams pet food and other brands, and packaged and sold 43 brands including Sassoon, Na Wei, Mi Si Buddha and perfume business to Huang Fengying Group at one time.

The number of brands under the company has decreased from more than 200 to less than 70 today.

While slimming down, P&G also launched more than a dozen new brands, such as SK-II, Oral B and Meta MUCIL. Many consumers don't know that they are P&G products, but these small and beautiful brands have contributed 80% to the growth of P&G.

Maotai Group also implemented brand contraction management, eliminated low-end products with poor image and compressed bar codes of existing products. Since 20 19, Maotai Group has implemented the brand "Double Five" plan, that is, the number of its brands has been reduced to about 5, and the total number of products has been controlled within 50.

The subsidiaries that stop using the group logo specifically include: Xijiu Company, Science and Technology Development Company, Health Wine Company, Health Industry Company, Wine Company, Ecological Agriculture Company, Maotai Liquor Company and other subsidiaries.

The same wine giant, Constellation Group's slimming plan is to open the "selling" mode and frequently divest its brands. In fact, this protracted "slimming plan" can be traced back to 12 years ago. In 2008, Constellation Group sold wine assets worth about $209 million to Eight Estates Fine Wines, LLC. In 20 16, the group also sold the Canadian wine business to the Ontario Teachers' Retirement Foundation at a price of about/kloc-0.03 billion Canadian dollars.

Brandy brand sold by Constellation Group

Frequent sales, on the one hand, are related to the rapid development of beer business, and the constellation needs to concentrate its resources on the beer sector in exchange for greater growth; On the other hand, it is also related to Constellation's own "high-end, high-quality" wine and spirits strategy.

Is the multi-brand strategy of "greed for perfection" invalid?

Almost all marketers dream of creating an explosion, but it is difficult to realize the dream of eating the whole world with only one product.

Because the customers faced by enterprises come from different regions and have different needs and purchasing preferences, it is objectively required that they must build a combination of products and servers that can make a variety of products organically structured, so as to effectively meet the needs of customers and maximize the company's income.

Therefore, many brands have implemented diversified brand strategies, and built a combination of products and services that can make a variety of products organically structured, thus effectively meeting customer needs.

There is nothing wrong with multi-brand strategy itself. The question is "how to make multi-brand strategy successful". Recognizing that multi-brand strategy is the development direction does not mean that enterprises can implement multi-brand strategy under any conditions, nor does it mean that adopting multi-brand strategy will definitely guarantee success.

Multi-brand construction is not as simple as registering a trademark. Many groups' multi-brand products are either high-priced and low-priced, and nobody cares about them, or they kill each other and fight with each other. Instead of cutting into the mid-to high-end market as planned, they wasted resources. Multi-brand operation is a game of the strong, which needs strength and resources, including funds and talents, and has little to do with the number of products.

Multi-brand strategy should be a gradual process. First improve the quality of the product itself, and then subdivide the product sequence and brand on the basis of attracting middle and high-end users. If this order is reversed, it will bring great negative effects. Multi-brand strategy should not be entered too early. Toyota launched its second sub-brand Lexus, a high-end luxury brand, 63 years after its brand was founded, and launched its third sub-brand Scion for the North American market 13 years later.

The key is to focus on the main business and cultivate a strong brand.

According to the function and value orientation of products, enterprises can divide the product portfolio into the following four categories.

Basic product: the most important core product in the product portfolio. For example, every cosmetics company will have a flagship product, which will cover the basic functions required by core customers, and the price is close to the people and can be accepted by the public.

Value-added products: This product is usually accompanied by some value-added services related to product functions. For example, Starbucks not only provides basic coffee and beverage services, but also provides value-added services such as office work, talks and music appreciation. It is the third space integrating study, work and life.

Enhanced products: Compared with value-added products, enhanced products do not provide much added value, but only enlarge and upgrade the core functions of the basic products. For example, a cosmetic has basic sunscreen function, and its SPF index may be 15. In some special cases, consumers may need sunscreen products with SPF over 50.

Extended products: These products are not directly related to the core products of enterprises, but closely related to the cultivation of brands, customers and customer relationships.

In order to break the bottleneck of "brand ceiling", many enterprises blindly start multi-brand strategy, resulting in heavy losses and forced to rationally shrink the front line. Here is a typical case. Ford was originally a practitioner of "multi-brand strategy"-in its heyday, it owned many automobile brands such as Ford, Mazda, Lincoln, Mercury, Volvo, Jaguar, Aston Martin and Land Rover. British luxury brands aston martin, Jaguar, Land Rover, Volvo and other European luxury car brands have all entered the high-end car group PAG owned by Ford. Before 2005 ~2006, Ford predicted that these high-end brands of PAG would bring them nearly 1/3 operating profit, but it turned out to be contrary to expectations, and PAG lost money year after year.

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Internal products and innovation system are the key to multi-brand strategy.

P&G can be said to be an excellent practitioner of "multi-brand strategy". P&G's multi-brand strategy is "one product, multiple brands" strategy. Specifically, P&G does not use Procter & Gamble's name to name and promote its own products, but operates with each type of products of different brands as the core. The first characteristic of this strategy of "one product with multiple brands" is its diversity. P&G's business scope includes many industries such as personal care, household cleaning and food. The second feature is that a product has many brands. For example, shampoos sold in China include five brands: Rejoice, Head & Shoulders, Pan Ting, Sassoon and clairol. P&G establishes brand differentiation with different functional characteristics, so that it can compete with specific competitor brands and meet different consumer needs.

Procter & Gamble has a unique brand management system to protect multi-brand strategy. More importantly, P&G has a market research system and a consumer database with rich consumer opinions. By passing them on to other production and operation departments, P&G can produce products that are more popular in China market.

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The brand management system that suits you is a compulsory course for multi-brand management enterprises.

For enterprises in China, brand building, especially multi-brand management, is an aspect to be improved. Enterprises in China should think about how to transform from China manufacturing to independent brands.

Here we can see an example of the failure of multi-brand strategy-"Wahaha". The failure of Wahaha's multi-brand strategy lies in that its multiple product brands do not have their unique market segments and customer groups. The brand positioning of some products is overlapping, if the apples in juice drinks, peaches C and oranges in carbonated drinks are very apples, peaches and sweet oranges; In Wahaha's "Yo Yo" series, five are milk tea and milk coffee, and the other two are lemon tea and citron tea. Such a failed market segmentation leads to the confusion of brand combination, and different sub-brands rob customers, which further confuses the corporate image and increases unnecessary losses.