Don't make a Colgate Lasagna!
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Did you know?
In 1982, in the well-known toothpaste company Colgate, they had a really bizarre idea: to create a new line of products to be added to those of oral hygiene and to unexpectedly enter a new marketplace, that of frozen food.
Legend says that this idea was born from the company's confidence of being able to fill the mouths of its customers with something else, compared to just toothpaste.
This is how, together with vegetable dinners and Swedish meatballs, the packaging of the legendary Lasagna Colgate came to life, which would have had the clear task of accompanying customers from the table ... to the bathroom.
The idea, as expected, didn't work and the unsold products of Colgate's frozen meals, as soon as they entered an already saturated market, disappeared at the same speed.
Why did such a thing happen? It is easy to understand it; as the product could be completely valid and tasty, as you can deduce from the promotional image, the reasoning of the customers did not follow that of the marketing experts: not only they weren't seduced by the trust they had for Colgate, but rather they deliberately avoided the product because they didn't believe that a company specialized in oral hygiene could also be able to do well with food.
And surely someone must've thought: "Who would ever want to eat lasagna that smears of toothpaste?".
The Colgate Lasagne packaging is now on display at the "Museum of Innovation Failure" in Hollywood.
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Making "Brand Extension" (extend the brand's production in an adjacent or distant marketplace) is a more difficult thing than it seems, and it takes very little to make a resounding failure.
A brand, when it becomes famous, is closely linked to its context of use and it is very difficult to get away from an idea sedimented in the minds of consumers.
Colgate's mistake was therefore not to extend production, but to do so manifestly and with their main trademark, without creating a new brand that, as soon as it was born, would at least be immediately combined with the world of frozen foods.
The danger, in addition to failing to launch a new product, is also to dilute and lose the effectiveness of the main brand, and therefore lose reputation and a lot of money!
So you never make "Lasagna Colgate"!
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