

Ask HN: have you ever marketed the same product under two different names? - Timothee

I remember that, a few years ago, two French smog check companies had ad campaigns explicitely comparing each other, even though they were actually owned by the same group and were providing the same service, just under two different brands.<p>The goal was to raise awareness of both brands at the same time and make each other look like a leader in the market: if company A is comparing itself to company B, it <i>must</i> be because company B is a leader. (didn't Fedex do something like that by presenting itself as #2?)<p>I can find plenty of reasons why it would be a terrible idea: brand dilution, distraction from actually building the product, extra work…<p>But I can also think of reasons why it <i>might</i> work: you're effectively A/B testing your whole branding; if you create a market, having two "players" makes it look more important; in some cases, people want to be able to compare, even if the products end up being the same thing, etc.<p>What do you think? Have you done it? Do you have examples of successes or failures with that?
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jdietrich
Yes - it works _spectacularly_ well for a lot of software. Spolsky said that
most customers only use 10% of any program's features, just not the same 10%.
This presents you with a real marketing problem. Selling the same product
under different names allows you to tailor the marketing messages to
particular verticals or use-cases.

I did some work recently for a company doing SaaS for small businesses. Their
product was quite easy to use but difficult to sell, with a huge number of
pre-sales enquiries about whether the product would suit a particular
business. A lot of work went into improving the website to answer that kind of
question, but nobody really bothered reading any of it.

Eventually, they bought a couple of hundred domain names and wrote unique copy
for each, emphasising benefits and savings specific to a particular business.
The product itself was identical across all the branded sites. Sales
skyrocketed, covering the cost of that work within a matter of hours. Every
part of the funnel improved substantially - more search traffic, better ad
click-through, cheaper clicks, lower bounce rate, better conversion.
Curiously, there was also a marked improvement in retention.

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russell
This is done in consumerland. I remember 30 years ago when my first child was
born, I looked into diaper services. There were dozens, but when I dug deeper
they were all fronts for one or two firms. If you look at laundry detergent,
they all come from a small number of firms.

It might even work on the consumer side of the internet, e.g. generic dating
site, dating site for jews, christians, academics, CS (good for girls looking
for intelligent hard working husbands, not so good for guys ;-).

However it wouldnt work so well for technical/business products. Can you
imagine doing a technical evaluation for several products only to find the
only difference among them was the logos.

~~~
Timothee
Good point about laundry detergent. I remember in particular Procter&Gamble
who was marketing Ariel and Vizir at the same time (in France). Similar
packaging, same base product, similar pricing.

One thing I remember now is that they had (in the 80s-90s) introduced a little
ball in which to pour your liquid detergent to put in the middle of your
laundry. Both brands had it obviously, so I imagine that made the _other_
brands look like they were lacking something.

Instead of having brand A with new unknown feature X, competing with brand B
without X feature, you have two brands A1 and A2 with that feature and B
without. I'd expect consumer to start thinking "well these two brands have it,
so that must be good". Instead of comparing A and B, they're now comparing A1
and A2 instead.

Clever.

I'm not sure either how well two brands could work for tech/business products,
but I wouldn't be surprised if the above example with the specific feature
could work a bit: if you're trying a different approach to a problem but bring
it through two brands, in a way it validates the approach. (if you don't know
better)

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cpeterso
> _I can find plenty of reasons why it would be a terrible idea: brand
> dilution_

If you are trying to pitch the same product to two different markets, creating
a second branch would _prevent_ brand dilution.

I highly recommend Ries and Trout's book _Positioning: The Battle for Your
Mind_ (and _Marketing Warfare_ ). They argue strongly against "brand
extension" (e.g. Coke, Diet Coke, Coke Zero).

~~~
shaggyfrog
> They argue strongly against "brand extension" (e.g. Coke, Diet Coke, Coke
> Zero).

What a strange example to use in that case, namely because it's successful.
Diet Coke was marketed to the calorie-conscious, and later when they
discovered that "Diet" didn't sell well to men, they came up with Coke Zero.
Sure, there's some cannibalization, but also more market share. All of that
doesn't look like it's hurt the Coke brand in the least.

~~~
andyking
Brand extension has worked well in starting to transition the UK across to
digital radio, too, as argued (by someone other than me) in this blog post:
<http://james.cridland.net/blog/its-all-in-the-brand/>

Rather than filling the dial with unknown names, like "The Groove", "BBC 7"
and "Liquid" as they tried (and failed) in the early 2000s, broadcasters have
transitioned to using extensions of familiar names.

If you already know and enjoy Absolute Radio, or BBC Radio 4, on your FM
radio, you're more likely to try out Absolute Classic Rock, or Radio 4 Extra
on your shiny new digital set. Good, well-targeted extensions can only help
widen the reach of any particular brand rather than dilute it.

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cvdamme
We've never tried it before, but we've thought about it. We've decided not to
do this, because it would be too expensive, and take too much time. This means
you'll spend 2X money and time on marketing for the same product with
different names. It already takes quite some time and money to build product
awareness for one product with one product name.

In my opinion, this is something you should do in case you're a big company
and have a lot of money.

I think if you want to do A/B testing you just have to create different
landings pages that discuss a different problem. On each landing page you
explain how your product solves a specific problem.

Is there a specific reason why you want to do this?

~~~
Timothee
I'm currently trying to decide between two names and tried a little AdWords
campaign to see if there was a significant difference in click-through rate
just based on the name. (result so far: there's a little one but not huge)

I started to wonder what effects launching both names could have. But I'm by
myself for now, so this is pretty much out of the question.

I also realize that a name doesn't make or break a product/company. But since
I need to pick a name, I started to think about that.

~~~
alexchamberlain
Of course, it has the significant advantage that the code has to be designed
to accommodate 2 names.

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Mizza
It's pretty easy to reskin an app.. I'll usually at least add an extra feature
or something though.

(Kind of related/fun fact: Most sunglasses are made by the same company:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luxottica> )

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mjs00
For something you are marketing/selling directly, it is not effective to hedge
with two names to the same market/consumer. Even if each name pulls slightly
better in different ways, you are losing a potentially larger market that
needs to be hit with an exposure threshold to your brand before they buy
(lookup 'advertising rule of seven'). Also _very_ confusing when customers who
reference each other as part of purchase process are using different named
versions.

In almost all cases, better to have a single brand, then test different
marketing or solution approaches to placing that brand.

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raquo
Related: brand proliferation, when one company creates many (somewhat
different) products in one niche and invests heavily in advertising. (example:
Cereals). This increases the barrier for entry for new players onto this
market by effectively saturating the market with a wide variety of products.
Economies of scale also help – e.g. if you're one big company it's easier to
negotiate with retailers. Usually done by FMCG companies.

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jaddison
I've known companies to do this to get around Google slap issues with
products, yes. Typically, in the affiliate world.

In that space, once you've found a winning product (ie. tons of sales), it
makes sense to replicate under a different brand/imagery - not to compete, but
to actually advertise on Adsense (for example) without 'duplicate content'
penalties.

I don't have to like it, but it is a winning strategy in that space.

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gujk
My ex's father ran a catering company in a small city with 3 different names.
One was kosher, and the other two were just different brands.

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ThomPete
No, but I am about to.

I recently launched my already a niche product and found a possible niche of
that. It caters to a completely different market (one being designers, the
other being disabled people)

you can read about my first month here <http://www.000fff.org/incomereport>

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glimcat
Your graphs need work.

What you've got is a series of linear ranges at different orders of magnitude.
The peak in the middle of the x range is probably smaller than the Forrst
peak, while the area under the HN peak is probably larger than everything else
together. The graph does not communicate any of this clearly.

If you want to do pseudolog, use 1-2-5-10. But if you're using Excel, you can
just right click on the axis, choose format axis, and tick "logarithmic
scale."

~~~
ThomPete
thnx!

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bond
I remember a story about a business man who imported one quality of socks from
China. He then branded one product as a high quality(expensive) and the other
as a low quality(cheap) product. Then he would sell both batches to
supermarket chains across the country, making millions....

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davidhansen
Yes, we do this right now. Three of our web properties sell effectively the
same collection of products, but with different branding, somewhat different
pricing, and different target demographics. Most of our efforts target just a
few main properties, so the marginal resources allocated to the "lesser"
properties don't negatively impact our focus to a notable degree.

