Brands We Lost In 2009

The year 2009 was remarkable for most businesses around the world. While some managed to escape the credit squeeze, others did not. Unfortunately, some of the ones that we lost were major brands. Joseph Ekeng writes.

2009 was dominated by the global financial meltdown. The media was awash with stories of how organizations and national economies battled to survive an economic upset that was clearly overwhelming. Unemployment figures got worse as the retail market plummeted and the stock market wobbled helplessly.  Many top brands were badly hit.
One major casualty was General Motors which lost its position as the world’s leading car manufacturer to Toyota and filed for bankruptcy shortly after. GM also offloaded some of its more popular brands like Hummer, Pontiac and Saturn.
The impact of the meltdown was not lost on Nigeria. The banks lost huge investments and underwent major reforms that threw out many top executives and left thousands jobless. Three airlines went under and similar tales of woes abounded in the other sectors of the economy.
While some analysts blamed the problems on the economic crisis, brand analysts maintain that the real problems with many Nigerian brands are not economic per se, but an inability to define and reinforce their uniqueness over other brands. They also say that many Nigerian brands do not inculcate dominant local cultures into their branding processes, asserting that the economic crisis simply magnified the branding crisis that already existed.
“A brand is a strategic culture. It means you must be strategic in the culture of the market you are in,” Kenny Badmus, a brand expert opines.  He continues that understanding the strategic culture of the market gives brands competitive advantage in positioning themselves in the customers’ minds not as a commodity but an experience that can survive even in tough times.

Bellview
One of the biggest losses of 2009 was Bellview Airlines, a major player in the aviation industry. With its demise, about 2,000 staff were thrown into the unemployment market. Indeed, many observers have traced the genesis of Bellview’s crisis to the fatal crash in Lisa Igbore village in Ogun State in 2005. A sampling of customers’ impressions of the airline shows that many of them were dissatisfied with its offerings. Their complaints ranged from late departures to the use of substandard aircrafts, shoddy customer relations, unimpressive in-flight entertainment, substandard meals and more. A former customer, Mary Edo, recounts, “I had a nasty experience in 2006 with Bellview from Accra and I felt so hurt I wrote a letter of complaint. To show how useless they are, there was not even an acknowledgement. Some colleagues also wrote them after similar wishy-washy services; no response. That’s when I made up my mind that they were beyond useless. Never let them deceive you with low fares; it’s just not worth it.”
Indeed, many of these challenges have become common features on Nigerian airlines but on international routes where strong competitors such as Virgin Atlantic, British Airways, Lufthansa, Emirates and Qatar Airlines operate, these short comings cannot be overlooked. Perhaps, the airline’s greatest undoing was its nonchalant attitude to customers’ complaints.
Badmus emphasizes that from its inception, Bellview lacked a brand identity that stood it out from the crowd even though it was one of the biggest indigenous operators in the industry. It was plagued with the same problems and complaints as other smaller operators like Afrijet and Capital Airlines both of whom also closed shop.

Virgin Nigeria
The coming of Virgin Nigeria into the Nigerian aviation market raised consumers’ hopes for improved services on the local route which was helplessly plagued with complaints of poor services. Unfortunately, this relief was short-lived as the airline was unable to import the widely applauded Virgin experience into its local operations. Virgin Nigeria was reputed to be only slightly better than the average Nigerian flight. There were several complaints of delayed departure compounded by poor counter and in-flight services among others.
Brand analysts believe that the problem was caused by poor training of company staff. “When Virgin came into Nigeria, some of the staff didn’t know what the brand represented. We didn’t see that Virgin experience,” Badmus explains. “This weakened the expectations of customers. Howbeit, the airline continued to operate until Richard Branson pulled out due to contractual conflicts with the Nigerian government over an initial agreement to allow it use the Murtala Mohammad International Airport for its operations.  Branson pulled out with his team of experts that had been redeployed to Virgin Nigeria and also returned the brand new aircraft he had just purchased. So, the former Virgin Nigeria is now Nigerian Eagle”.

Stimorol
Cadbury Nigeria has suffered some major setbacks both administratively and operationally in recent years. The brand, which used to be a market leader, was severely undermined when it became public knowledge that the Bunmi Oni led management of the company was involved in corporate governance malpractices. It soon rested popular brands like Eclairs and Bubble gum.
Surprisingly, last year, Cadbury lost another major brand, Stimorol, barely one year after it was launched in an elaborate campaign. Until Stimorol was pulled off the shelves, the company had expended over N80million to position it.  Ekanem Kufre, Corporate Affairs Manager, Cadbury Nigeria explains that the decision to rest Stimorol was taken  because the company wanted to focus on what it considers it major brands which are Bournvita, Tom Tom and Butter Mint. However, analysts defer adding that the gum market in Nigeria is growing and Stimorol could still have made a success if the marketing plan was right.
“Nigeria is vast, we have such vast opportunities. What experience were they coming to create?” questions Badmus. He emphasizes that if Cadbury had persevered and carefully studied the Nigerian chewing gum culture, they would have most likely succeeded. “Brand life expectancy can be increased through innovations and re-positioning”, he posits.  Other observers argue that what should have been uppermost to Cadbury was customers’ perceptions of its other brands. One analyst believes that the scrapping of Stimorol is not likely to enhance the brand loyalty of the few surviving ones like Bournvita, Tom Tom and Butter Mint.

Gulder Max
When Gulder Max was introduced to the Nigerian market, it was positioned as a tough and ‘muscular’ brand, so it had a unique bitter taste and more alcohol content than the parent brand, Gulder lager beer.
“A man was here,” the Gulder Max advert read, with the image of an empty cup presumably ‘downed’ by a consumer. The concept, though brilliant, left a fill-in-the-gap puzzle in the minds of consumers. “Where is the man?”, “Is he dead or can he be presumed dead?” If he is dead, what is the cause of death? The questions went on.
Another marketing flaw that some critics spotted was that Gulder Max lacked an independent marketing niche, even though the brewers insist that it was strategically positioned as a virile and masculine extension. But it appears the market did not buy this argument as the brand was unceremoniously sneaked out early last year, just about three years after its elaborate launch.
Brand analysts have argued that perhaps the brand could have survived if Nigerian Breweries Plc, the brewer, had taken more time to research the demography and lifestyle of consumers to ascertain the demand for a line extension.
Badmus says, “Gulder Max communicated strength; what kind of strength? Was it physical strength, mental strength or strength that has to do with libido? Precisely, what kind of strength were they talking about?”
Critics maintain that the positioning of Gulder Max as a brand for the strong could have weakened the brand equity of Gulder larger as it communicated triumph over the mother brand, portraying it as weak and effeminate.

Mirror Newspapers
It looked like Mirror was doomed to fail shortly after it took off. Although the publishers positioned it as a tabloid that came to fill a vacuum in the industry, there was nothing remarkable about the newspaper except for untidy pages, unimpressive stories and exaggerated headlines.
Despite these lapses, its strategic advertising and marketing campaign quickly pushed it into public consciousness. Yet, in a short-while Mirror slipped out of reckoning and joined the ranks of media houses without proper administrative structure. With a huge backlog of unpaid bills and massive stockpile of unsold publications, Mirror soon started losing some of its best hands and observers predicted that it was only a matter of time before the paper became history. And true to predictions, the publisher soon pulled out in what has been labelled the deal of the decade by selling the paper to billionaire entrepreneur, Jimoh Ibrahim, for a reported N1.6billion.
M2 gathers that Ibrahim may have been misled into over-valuing the paper which he only discovered after he took over the company. Other editorial and administrative decisions including relocating the company to Lekki, creating additional logistics challenges, created more problems and the new owner was forced to pull the paper out of the market in the guise of repackaging it.