Brand Extensions - Disney & ESPN Mobile Phones

Just how do you extend the brand? This is always a tough call. Let's look at Disney (DIS) and ESPN (part of Disney family via ABC).

Disney has introduced Disney Mobile. No debate here, this is what safety moms have been waiting for. The problem with the brand extension is that the value delivered in the service doesn't match the Disney name. Kids who are hard-core Disney fans are not to the age where parents need to have total control over the phone, let alone the kids even having regular phone conversations. Then, you have the tweens and teens. Aren't they already on IM 24/7? The key parent-friendly feature here is with GPS, so that kids can be tracked when they are out on their own. If I am a kid I would not be caught dead with the Disney phone and I would not want mom to know where I was. This feature will be much better put to use when kids who are on family plans through Cingular, Verizon (VZ) or Sprint/Nextel offer a similar program that lets parents use GPS to find their kids. And there we have the great compromise: kid has age/socially acceptable phone and mom/dad knows where kid is. How does this all relate to Disney: brand loser. Disney is not delivering and worthwhile content and they have a problem with the kids accepting the phone. Don't get me wrong, some kids would and that's fine. But how does ANY of this actually help Disney? At best I see this as an ad campaign that promotes disney wanting kids to be safe. They should have created a sepearate brand for the phone instead of Disney Mobile. Disney Mobile is pure lazy. Dizmo would have been better than Disney Mobile. It's all about getting over the social and for a kid on the phone, nothing matters more. Kudos to Disney for taking a chance.

Now for ESPN. ESPN loves its name. It puts it name on everything. ESPN The Magazine. ESPN2. ESPN News. The ESPN Zone. To a degree it is fine, as long as it stays within the bounds of extending ESPN's core value: getting sports into every ounce of your life. ESPN The Magazine is the only one that isn't worhty of the ESPN headliner. They should have named it something else. It's not up to the minute, so it isn't consistent with everything else ESPN promotes. Anyways, ESPN Mobile fits the bill. Every sports fan has been stranded to some degree without being able to access sports info they needed to have. And die hard sports fans NEED their info. The concept of the insane amount of sports data being pumped over that network is mind blowing. What is also mind blowing is that for what it is, its restrictive. Today, I don't see the ESPN phone in a family plan or the Mobile ESPN service being offered through standard phone outlets. If Dad or Junior could get a Samsung on Verizon's network featuring Mobile ESPN? Done and done. And with the move to converged handsets, I see the market for Mobile ESPN as single guys with 40 hour-per-week blue collar jobs who like to watch football at the bar. If that's the segment they are targeting, good for them. Love the concept, just wish it fit my profile a little better. The middle class loves the family plans because they don't have to spend twice as much to get the core function of a phone: the phone.

Disney should have co-marketed the features with the majors and ESPN should have figured out a way to effectively license the model. Maybe all of that is in the works.

Lesson to everyone: Disney got excited because of growth in the mobile phone market. Disney looked for major differentiation. Disney did not properly brand the concepts. Disney did not choose the best sales execution strategy (technically not branding but who cares). Disney will be under intense pressure to shut down the businesses within a year or change the model. If something is popular and your brand can add value to a concept, don't get carried away and let your brand be the concept because like Disney, the excitement will cloud the fact that the strategy is wrong. Disney's name is cuddly and safe. Disney is not a phone. ESPN is sports. Mobile ESPN shouldn't isolate a person from their family more than sports already do. ESPN would have won big if they found a way to make sports fit into the family.

For the small service business: stay focused on what makes your name valuable. If you absolutely need to get into a new business opportunity. Sleep on it. If you still must get in, you need a new name for that new business!!!! Nothing dilutes a brand like the jack of all trades. I know a guy who as a plumber and started his own business doing bathroom re-modeling. He does great at both. What does he do with the customers he helped with plumbing over the years? Sends them to someone else that he trusts. Why? Don't they have money too? Yes, but it's not bathroom re-modeling and therefore is not what he does. Obviously there is some plumbing involved in the business which puts his skills to work, but the brand intact.