So I sat at their board table and said,
“We know the brand works really well over here because we know what one thing is most important to the customers over here and we’ve honed and communicated the brand consistently for years to stand for that one thing. Over there, we know that what matters most to customers is completely different to what matters most to customers over here. So if we go over there and say what matters most to customers over here, to the customers over there, they won’t want us. And if we go over there and say something different on the subject of what matters most to our customers, the customers over here will become uncertain about us because we’re being inconsistent, and we will become weak and untrusted both over here and over there, undoing all the great work we did over here, because no great brand can say that what is most important to them is one thing over here, and an entirely different thing over there.”
I really should have just said that Brand Extension is hard. And that, done wrong, it can (and does) kill even the strongest brand.
I’ll remember that next time.