Marketing Communications

162 CHAPTER 5 OBJECTIVES

Existing brand attitudes can also be adapted to appeal to other and new target groups. For

instance, Wolverine World Wide, the American company behind Wolverine shoes for workers

and Hush Puppies, a brand of casual footwear, began building the Caterpillar footwear brand

in 1994 under licence from Caterpillar Inc., the heavy equipment and engine manufacturer.

Caterpillar boots and shoes are now sold in 100 countries on six continents, refl ecting the

original brand attitude of Caterpillar in a totally diff erent product category. In 1998, the com-

pany also acquired the licence from Harley-Davidson to transfer the legendary motorcycles’

brand image to shoes and boots; in 2000, Wolverine started to manufacture Stanley footwear,

positioned as footwear helping workers to ‘make something great’, bringing the slogan of the

well-known manufacturer of construction tools to life in a new category.

If there is a negative prior brand attitude, changing the attitude is necessary. Th is is a very

diffi cult objective to realise. It might be better – especially when the negative attitude is based

on negative experiences – to modify the brand attitude and reposition the brand by appealing

to diff erent buying motivations.^9 In January 2003, Christian Dior had to change major

elements of its advertising campaign for Dior Addict perfume and cosmetics. Th e TV spot

for the fragrance originally showed a bikini model dipping her fi nger into a substance on a

mirror and holding it up to her nose, then grabbing a bottle of Addict perfume while a voice

whispers ‘addict’ and ‘Will you admit it?’ Th e ad initiated the ‘Addiction is Not Fashionable’

protest campaign and boycott co-ordinated by Faces and Voices of Recovery and MOMStell,

a group of parents concerned with addiction and recovery issues. In response to this protest,

Dior stopped using the tagline ‘admit it’ in its marketing communications and altered the ads

to emphasise the full name of the product ‘Dior Addict’ instead of ‘addict’ as a single word.^10

Purchase intention

Th e intention of the buyer to purchase the brand or the product or take other buying-related

actions (going to the store, asking for more information) can also be enhanced. For low-

involvement buying situations (see Chapter 3 ), purchase intention should not be stressed in

communications. In this case, when a brand is known and a favourable brand attitude exists,

this will in many cases lead to buying behaviour whenever the need for a certain category is

Photo 5.3 Cool-Aid: national brand benefit

Source : Corbis: Henry Diltz.

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