Which came first? While you’re pondering that one, here’s another conundrum – which comes first, the brand or the product?

This dilemma was neatly demonstrated in the recent final of The Apprentice. Our local girl Yasmina had to outsmart challenger Kate by creating a new brand of chocolates. And she succeeded in winning with a box of inedible chocs she branded “Electric”, beating Kate’s “Choc Amour” box of delicious confectionery. Why? Because Kate started with the product, and was then forced to charge a fortune for her box to cover her costs of the expensive ingredients, thus pricing it out of the mass market. Yasmina started with the market and worked backwards, fixing her low price first, and selecting the ingredients to suit. Which error would be easier to fix in reality? The recipe of the chocolates, of course.

You could argue they both succeeded in creating new brands on paper. It’s just that one would be doomed to failure from the start. Do you agree? Oh, and apparently the egg came first.

Please leave a comment to give us your opinion.

Tags: Brand

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 1st, 2009 at 9:00 am and is filed under Brand, Branding, Touchpoint. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.