Aesthetic Extensions

Lego keeps coming up with clever extensions. Hard on the heels of the Lego camera (covered in a prior post on this blog) comes the Lego Architecture series, featuring all the Lego you’ll need to recreate a Frank Lloyd Wright home or a scale model of the Guggenheim Museum. Rather than a gimmick, the product seems to be truly educational and fun. “Lego Architecture works to inspire future architects, engineers, and designers as well as architecture fans around the world with the Lego brick as a medium,” says the manufacturer.

Meanwhile, you could have visited the actual Guggenheim Museum to attend the world premier of another brand extension. French parfumier Christophe Laudamiel, creator of products for brands like Clinique and Ralph Lauren, commissioned an opera punctuated by 23 scents. The work, entitled Green Aria, will introduce olfactory stimuli to “tell the story of an epic struggle between nature and industry." Laudamiel is both innovative creator and smart businessman, the Wall Street Journal reports. The opera serves to drum up some publicity for his larger business of marketing a "new scent technology to hotels, movie theaters, videogame makers and other entertainment companies that want to pack a bigger sensory punch.” More here.

LoJack Now Finds Missing People

The company whose name became a byword in locating stolen vehicles is now extending into finding people. This February LoJack launched SafetyNet, a service for “tracking and rescuing people at risk of wandering,” including those with Alzheimer’s and autism.

“This offering is a natural extension of LoJack’s family of products and services and takes our solutions beyond ‘getting the bad guys’ off the streets to now protecting those afflicted with cognitive disorders by helping return them safely to their loved ones and caregivers,” said Ronald Walters, LoJack’s CEO.

LoJack SafetyNet consists of a “personal locator beacon” worn by the client, a search-and-rescue receiver for law enforcement, a database about the clients to assist in search and rescue, 24x7 emergency caregiver support and training for law-enforcement and public-safety agencies. LoJack plans to roll out the solution to 200 agencies over the next 12 months. Read more here.

Is this a logical extension for LoJack, or an extension where the brand has little to add? Your thoughts?

$6 Million Man Touts $200 Hearing Aid

The Web site says it all: “The Lee Majors Rechargeable Bionic Hearing Aid combines digital hearing aid technology with the ultra convenience of a rechargeable battery, so you can enjoy noticeable, digital quality hearing improvement without the hassles of traditional battery-operated hearing aids.”

The hearing aid is available for a one-month trial for $14.95; if you choose to keep it, it’s yours for an additional “three easy payments” of $66.65 (plus $7.95 shipping and handling).

A good or bad brand extension? On the one hand, it is an appropriate use of the word “bionic” (enhancing biological functions through technology); on the other, the device had better give bat-like hearing to humans to merit the moniker of Lee Majors. For the official site, click here.

Field of Dreams

Baseball fans’ fantasy of recreating a corner of Yankee Stadium in their own backyard can now literally become reality. Coming soon to a Home Depot near you are Yankees Sod and Yankees Grass Seed.

The extensions may at first seem like a stretch and divorced from the Yankee brand's core values. But there is a lot more to them than many brand extensions these days. Both products are produced by the family that has been supplying the Yankees with turf for almost 50 years.

David Andres, head of business development at DeLea Sod Farms, came up with the idea of licensing the Yankees’ brand; to exploit the idea, he helped found Stadium Associates to market the products.
Each bit of sod is delivered with a Major League authenticity certificate (“official grass of the New York Yankees”). The dirt doesn’t come cheap – five square feet will set you back $7.50.

For full coverage in the New York Times, click here.

The German Touch

While American hucksters wasted no time in cranking out the Obama T-shirts and memorabilia, it took a German company to come up with the questionable idea of marketing Obama-branded fried chicken.

German newsweekly Der Spiegel reports that frozen-foods firm Sprehe wanted to ride the wave of Obama-mania and nothing could appear more natural than chicken fingers (with curry sauce, by the way).

The magazine quotes the firm’s marketing manager, Judith Witting, who remarked that, “It was supposed to be an homage to the American lifestyle and the new US president.” When asked by the magazine whether they might be playing off traditional racial stereotypes, Ms. Witting remarked that the thought had never occurred to her. More here.

Don’t Mess With Our Icons!

Judging from the drubbing experienced by Tropicana’s new packaging, Main Street has limited appetite for radical rebranding in an economic downturn. (Tropicana announced that within weeks it will be bringing back the familiar cartons showing a drinking straw emanating from an orange.)

Just when consumers seem to be clamoring for the comfortable brands of their youth, another American icon is getting a makeover. In honor of the 50th birthday of Barbie, Mattel is trying to breathe new life into the brand with the launch of – we kid you not – “Totally Stylin' Tattoos Barbie.”

Some blogging parents, along with industry brand-watchers, are questioning whether this is the right approach for a dose of fresh vitality. The LA Times quotes Lin Burress, editor of the parenting blog Telling It Like It Is: "It's just one more thing being added to the pile of junk, like push-up bras and Bratz dolls, being marketed to these ridiculously young kids. These so-called toys just create a sense of rebellion."

The Times reminds us that Barbie is no stranger to controversy: Butterfly Art Barbie (vintage 1999) had a butterfly tattoo on her stomach. Sales of the new doll are beating projections, say the toymaker. More here.

Would You Buy a Watch From This Man?

A high-tech Swiss chronometer has just been launched – dubbed the "Aviator," it will cost from between $10,000 and $25,000, depending on whether you get the stainless steel or gold version. No ordinary timepiece, the Aviator is specifically meant for pilots, with features that assist in the case of instrumentation failure (it claims to be the first watch that calculates true airspeed, apparently something useful to know).

Why the inclusion in this blog, you ask? The chronometer’s inventor and marketer is the half brother of Osama bin Laden, a name best kept far from the cockpit and associated goods and services. Interviewed by Reuters, Yeslam Bin Ladin downplayed possible linkage between his lineage and market suitability: "I think that over time people have realized that these two things are completely unrelated. It has been many years (that) I have had nothing to do with it and I continue to carry on my life as normal." He is already in the business of selling perfume and handbags under the Yeslam label from his upscale store in Geneva, Switzerland. More here.

In a (very) separate development, the Vatican announced its launch of a new YouTube channel, www.youtube.com/vatican. Pope Benedict XVI, in his weekly blessing, said the use of new technologies could aid in the search for "the true, the good, and the beautiful." This extension of the Vatican brand ranks as downright mainstream compared with some of the Vatican Library's prior licensing efforts, which include collectibles, giftware, apparel, funeral urns, and jewelry (for previous coverage in this blog, click here).

Hard Rock Theme Park Shuttered

The Hard Rock theme park lived an intense, all-too-brief existence like one of its idols. It opened in Myrtle Beach this year, only to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy by year-end. Hard Rock International was apparently guaranteed an annual minimum of $2.5 million for its name; the park covered 55 acres and was built for $400 million. More coverage here. Visit the theme park’s site, while it lasts, at www.hardrockpark.com.

* * *

Burger King men’s apparel was one of the extensions which raised eyebrows in TippingSprung’s fifth-annual survey. Just after the survey results were released, another questionable Burger King extension made headlines, in case you missed it: Burger King cologne (titled "Flame"). The $3.99 stocking-stuffer, available over the holidays exclusively in New York City at novelty shop Ricky’s, sold out in the first three days. More here.

Zappos Extends Into “Insights”

We’ve seen some strange extensions of footwear brands (cf. our recent post on Reebok Monopoly-branded sneakers), but perhaps nothing is quite the conceptual stretch as Zappos getting into the training and management-consulting business.

Famed for its legendary customer service, the Las Vegas-based etailer has been a mecca for other firms’ executives seeking to learn about its innovative approach. CEO Tony Hsieh hopes to monetize that interest, and has just announced the launch of Zappos Insights, a subscription-based service that lets people pose questions which are answered in video format by Zappos team members.

"There are management consulting firms that charge really high rates," Hsieh was quoted by Adweek. "We wanted to come up with something that's accessible to almost any business." Hence the service's pricing model: $39.95 per month. More here.

Softwear from Microsoft

Now that we have rapper T-shirts from Kellogg’s, limited-edition sneakers from Hennessy, and boxer shorts from Burger King, it should come as no great surprise that Microsoft is getting into the clothing business.

Crispin Porter & Bogusky, Adage reports, is helping Microsoft design a line of "urban geek" T-shirts, slated to hit shelves this holiday season.

The line, which recalls features like the old MS-DOS font, “taps the nostalgia of when PCs were just starting to change our lives," Adage quotes Microsoft. The program ties into Crispin's "I’m a PC" campaign. The rapper Common contributed some of the featured designs. Read more here.