What do Justin Bieber and Donald Trump have in common? Besides mops of hair! Both guys (we can’t really call 17 year-old Bieber a man yet) are driving major brand extensions – they’re own.

The Donald’s brand may have started in real estate, with office buildings and hotels littering several metropolitan areas. But the Trump name now appears on vodka, health products, mattresses, furniture, cuff links, shirts, ties, and even a seminar company. Trump’s most recent extension pursuit is golf courses, as he is building a billion dollar golf course in Scotland to add to the nine golf properties he already owns.

Justin Bieber’s aspirations seem to be just as ambitious. He’s released his own line of headphones, nail polish, and even scented dog tags (no, I’m not making this up.) Current rumors suggest he is planning to launch his own retail store as well as a line of Snack Pak pudding cups.

On one level you could lump Trump’s and Bieber’s brand extension pursuits together and chalk them up as the sort of hubris and greed that seems to come with celebrity territory. They are simply joining the ranks of others stars who have built business empires by trading off of their names.

But there are important insights to be learned from them about brand extensions. Actually it’s the differences between the two guys’ approaches that is most revealing:

Motivations — Trump seems to be pursuing brand extensions as an exploitation of his brand, while Bieber’s moves seem to more of an expression of his.

In a BusinessWeek article, Trump explains the success of his endeavors saying, “[My] name is hotter than ever…it’s been hot as a pistol.” The piece reports, “After taking a break to greet Kate Gosselin, star of the onetime reality show Jon & Kate Plus 8, Trump says: ‘If Trump wasn’t doing well, the stars don’t come up and kiss my ass.’” Trump clearly recognizes the value of his name and he’s using it as leverage for business deals.

Bieber, on the other hand, seems to view extensions as an expression of himself. In a video introducing his new headphones, he explains their purple color saying, “It’s my favorite color. I just think it represents me the best.” And the colors of his nail polish collection are reportedly inspired by his songs: Me + Blue is dark blue and One Less Lonely Girl is a girly lavender.

Guardrails – The primary judgment call of any brand extension is whether or not the new product or category is appropriate for the brand. Effective brand managers apply guardrails to delineate what is appropriate and what is not.

In Trump’s case, the guardrail he applies is brand-based. In a 2006 blog post, he wrote: “I’ve worked hard to make sure the Trump name is found only on buildings of the highest caliber and products of the finest quality. I won’t even consider giving my approval to anything unless I know it’s the top of the line because when people see or hear Trump, they expect the best.” To Trump, the quality his brand is associated with is the primary guardrail within which an extension must lie.

Bieber’s guardrail is fan-based. His statement in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine — “I don’t think of myself as powerful. If anything, my fans are powerful. It’s all in their hands.” – reads like an overall philosophy as well as his approach to brand extensions.

With teen girls and the products they love as his guide, decisions about what is appropriate come easily for him. That’s why it doesn’t seem odd that a male celebrity would develop a female product like nail polish. David Reeder of talent agency Green Light observed in a Brandweek article that Bieber’s extensions “make sense to his core audience, so there’s nothing completely off-brand for him.”

Business relationships – For Trump, brand extensions are a solo endeavor. Most of his deals are acquisitions or development plays. It’s the traditional real estate approach – there is a buyer and a seller, and after the transaction closes, there is a single owner. He may work with another entity to develop a product, as he did with Talbott Teas to create new tea blends or with PVH to create his clothing line, but the end product is always branded Trump.

But Bieber is all about partnerships. It’s an approach he first employed with his career. He started out by taking on Usher as a mentor and released early hits with him and Ludacris. More recently he’s collaborated with musicians like Kanye West. His brand extensions reflect a similar collaborative approach.

The aforementioned headphones were developed in partnership with Monster and Dr. Dre and are branded “Just Beats.”  The nail polish line is a result of a collaboration with Nicole by OPI and is called the One Less Lonely Girl collection.  Bieber is mentioned in promotional materials but his name doesn’t appear on the product.

They’re two entirely different approaches to brand extensions – neither is right or wrong – just different. Trump has taken the tact that most companies do with brand extensions. Most companies look to brand extensions to leverage the value of a brand name in multiple categories, so they take an approach that exploits the existing brand equity, uses the brand as the filter for decisions about appropriateness, and asserts the brand in the end product.

Bieber’s approach is less conventional and not without downsides. Allowing appropriateness decisions to be driven by your customers vs. the brand has the potential to take your brand off course. And by doing co-brands or partnerships, your brand may derive less value from the extensions. But the Bieber approach may resonate more with your target audience, as it conveys more humility and flexibility.

I love how brand insights can be derived from a 66 year old business tycoon and a 17 year old pop star alike!

other posts about brand extensions:

• garden fresh restaurants practice fresh business principles
• brand-building: yohn on ries
• underwear that’s fun to wear

Last week’s Ad Age featured a column by brand luminary Al Ries that I just can’t let go without comment.  Ries’s main thesis is that brands must remain narrowly focused in order to dominate their categories.

Having grown up as a brand enthusiast, studying the seminal texts of Trout & Ries and forming my understanding of brand strategy by their insights and edicts, I find myself in the interesting position of taking issue with several points in Ries’s column.  But I feel I must raise some questions.

By stating that “you can’t dominate a category if you expand your brand into many other categories,” Ries seems to be lobbying for limits on businesses that are unacceptable in today’s marketplace.  It’s true, businesses in narrow categories can well afford to keep their brands focused and resist the temptation to expand into new categories.  There are only a certain number of uses of facial tissues, after all, and no shareholder is expecting the Kleenex brand to become a multi billion dollar business.  But in most cases, shouldn’t a company that wants to remain viable not only grow its share of its existing category, but also look for new growth outside of it?  And wouldn’t a smart brand architecture (e.g., the use of endorser or sub-brands) can help strengthen the brand as it grows into new areas?

Ries argues the most reliable measure of the power of a brand is market share.  Really?  Can’t brands prop their share up through promotions and incentives without actually growing?  And isn’t the channel playing an increasingly powerful role in balancing out competing brands, such that market share is less a measure of value to the customer and more a result of purchasing clout (or lack thereof)?  And what about brands that are big but not necessarily strong?  McDonald’s has been the fast feeder market share leader for decades, but only in the last several years have they been able to derive their strength from something more than sizable brand distribution.

Which leads me to my last question – how are we defining “building a brand” here?  Ries points to market share leaders like TurboTax and Taco Bell and praises them for being dominant.  He then flips to Coca-Cola and Nike and uses their value according to Interbrand’s list of 100 most-valuable global brands to prove their strength.  While these measures have their merit, I question whether they are the best bellwethers for brand power.  If a brand is, as Ries states, “a word that stands for something in the mind of prospects,” then shouldn’t brand strength be evaluated on how strongly it stands for that something?  Or how strong of a connection it has with its prospects?

In the end, Ries seems to be saying that building a business is at odds with building a brand.  I guess I simply disagree.   I advocate a “brand as business” approach – that is, applying brand understanding to business decision-making about which categories to enter and how.

Care to weigh in?

The verdict from brand marketers on the worst brand extensions of 2008 is out — Burger King underwear, Kellogg’s hip-hop street wear, and Allstate Green insurance were named the worst offenders.

The annual survey, conducted by TippingSprung a marketing consultancy, reports on the opinions of Brandweek magazine readers and other marketing pros — so it’s definitely not the most scientifically-reliable test of brand extension value, but it makes for good conversation, and that’s exactly where I want to jump in.

Asked to comment in Brandweek magazine on the selection of Burger King underwear as the most inappropriate extension (by 45.5% of the those polled), Laura Ries of Ries & Ries said, “Marketers are so in love with their brands that they think consumers are as well and will go to the lengths of wearing their brand name on their underwear…While people love the Whopper, they don’t want to parade around in underwear that says, ‘This is where my big, fat ass came from.‘”  (Great quote, huh?!)

Bill Cross from Broadstreet Licensing Group, the agency that inked the deal, responded in kind, “It’s a fit for the predominantly male 18-24 target.  People who are buying it aren’t reading Brandweek and don’t care anyway.  BK likes things to be a little edgy. Their CMO, Russ Klein, loves stuff that’s a little weird.”

I want to interject into this tit-for-tat that I don’t think the issue with the extension is that it’s underwear — I get that some people like to wear underwear that’s fun to wear (long live Underoos!) and clearly some people want to wear branded underwear (long live Joe Boxer!)  So I am willing to concede that Burger King branded underwear might be an appropriate new way for its target to experience the brand.

The problem with this extension is the design on the underwear. The artwork features a large image of the creepy Burger King character, a large logo, and the Have It Your Way tagline, all superimposed over sketches of various Whopper ingredients (block of cheese, tomato, you get the idea.)  It looks like they took one of their packaging designs and slapped it on the boxers.

It seems to me there are far more creative, “edgy,” and “weird” designs they could have used.  For starters, “Have It Your Way” makes for great sexual innuendo, doesn’t it? — might clever use of the word “King” and some arrows do the trick?  Surely people with more perverted, er, I mean, creative minds could come up with something more appropriate for the brand and more appealing to the brand’s target (and the women they’re trying to impress.)

In case you’re wondering, this is not a gag post — I’m serious.  If a brand is going to do a brand extension, then they should really do one — and do it well.  Simply pasting your logo on different products is not a brand extension.

Brand extensions should reveal more of the story of your brand.  To explain, a brand identity is like a character in a movie — it must captivate its audience’s imagination and subsequent incarnations (that is, sequels for movies and extensions for brands) should feed on its audience’s desire to know more about it or to experience it in new ways.  Marketing Management, the monthly publication from the American Marketing Association, published an article of mine on this topic earlier this year.

So if BK had been more brand-driven in their underwear licensing deal, they might have had a better response — at least among the brand extension survey respondents and commentators.  And I hope this provides a (slightly) more thoughtful analysis of the results.

Bond is back!  Quantum of Solace

will launch in theaters beginning this Friday, 11.14.08.  While my, um, affections for the “spy who loved me” are generally pretty visceral, I do believe there are some important lessons for marketers to learn from the famed movie franchise.

In fact, I wrote an article a few years back providing insights and ideas about brand extensions that brand managers can learn from entertainment “brands” like  James Bond.  In honor of the upcoming release, I thought I’d resurrect the piece — I think the points are still as relevant today and may actually explain, at least in part, the success of Casino Royale the last Bond blockbuster.

Hope you enjoy the article, the movie, and Daniel Craig!