Warburtons have just announced that they are due to launch two separate sub-brands in an assault on the savoury snack category. It makes intutitive sense for Warburtons to extend the brand in this way and will no doubt build a strong base of incremental sales to its core bakery product portfolio.

The typical snacker profile tends to be much younger than the supermarket shopper profile and this is reflected in how Warburtons have crafted the snack propositions and their sub-brand expressions. Whilst the Warburtons parent brand remains as an umbrella endorsement, the two brands ‘ChippidyDooDaa’ and ‘Snackadoodle’ are both prominently used as the primary on pack branding and the tonality of the pack design combined with the flavours appear to have been created to appeal to a young adult (male) audience.

As part of the mix, they have also developed brand characters for each which are highly visible on pack and this looks to be an interesting move given that such characters are usually deployed in this way to appeal to young children (especially so within this category). Warburtons do not explicitly mention ‘kids’ as one of the core target audiences in the launch announcement although I would predict that the characters will indeed prompt interest with tweens and teens. Furthermore, their potential popularity will be strengthend with this ‘aspirational’ audience largely because of the absence of any other kids branding cues.

Despite this potential interest from tweens and teens however, the presence of the characters may work against the success of the snack products in that they may serve to limit interest amongst older adults (who may be existing brand loyalists) or else risk overall confusion as they sit alongside the core Warburtons brand…

Thursday’s tragic news about Lee McQueen taking his own life got me thinking over the weekend about the link between the originator of a brand and the potential for that brand to thrive after their death. In the fashion world, of course, there are plenty of examples of well established brands continuing to enjoy good health long after their founders have moved on to the great catwalk in the sky, but with a brand as relatively young as that of Alexander McQueen, I wonder how that longevity will be achieved.

No doubt there will be a strong upsurge in sales now, as collectors and speculators rush to grab the last remaining items of his retail stock (there are currently 879 items being offered on eBay, compared to only 10 for Stella McCartney goods) but what happens next? Certainly, with the stepping up of Donatella Versace to the role of Creative Director, the Versace brand has survived, as has the Moschino brand, but these were both brands with very strong identities and a back catalogue of visual equities that could easily be replicated by a talented team of designers. Will life be so easy for the successors at McQueen?

By all accounts he drove the look and feel of his collections with an obsessive attention to detail and incredible level of personal involvement, constantly reinventing his style with each collection. Once the sadness surrounding his tragic death has had time to pass, and his team review the future of the brand, there are a few key issues they will need to consider before proceeding:

• Who are the core audience for McQueen clothes and how can they be nurtured and kept close to the brand during this period and beyond?
• What visual, design and other ‘ownable’ equities exist within the Alexander McQueen brand and back catalogue?
• To what extent can the brand be scaled / extended … can the brand punch above its weight by strategically leveraging the equities it has and keeping the ‘spirit’ of McQueen alive (possibly through alliances with charities or other causes that he supported – Battersea Dogs Home springs to mind)

Personally, I’d hate to see the brand wither on the vine – I might have never been able to afford (or been thin enough to wear!) his clothes, but I’d love to think I’d be able to in the future … must get on the treadmill!

I’m in Milan, just after Christmas. Via Monte Napoleone  is full of fashionable stores and even more fashionable shoppers – even at dusk.

The lights are lit, even on the trees lining the road.

The difference is that the trees are growing from creamy white Fiat Cinquecentos – new style of course (and moulded from immaculate plastic).

Volkswagen Beetles – eat your hearts out. All you had was that dinky flower vase. This is on a grander scale. But, alas not so easily translated from design show feature to real life – it’s not yet one of the configuration options!

Fiat claim to have set up the world’s longest one model traffic jam at 3 km. A fleet of Cinquecentos parading the street and blocking the parking and makes a much sharper style statement…