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Some of the most meaningful, transformational brand extensions came to fruition as a result of companies tapping into intangible yet salient aspects of their brand positioning. Like many other components of branding and brand strategy, successful extensions first require a shift in mindset.

Is your brand positioned in consumers’ minds against competitors in a meaningful way? Today, too many brand strategies lack strategic differentiation. Instead, they fall back on traditional differentiators like price points, product features, and customer service. Brands that rely on such ho-hum differentiators lose in the long run for three reasons:

Brand extension is one of the most common ways for an established brand to achieve meaningful growth. In our last post, The important Role of Demand in Successful Brand Extension, we described three factors and their collective contributions to successful brand extensions—demand, solution, and brand relevance. We spoke in great detail about the demand and importance of identifying an unmet need or desire in brand extension (or, if one doesn’t exist, the brand must first find a way to create the need or want—a more difficult, but viable path). Here we will focus on the second factor, the solution.