darrenbarefoot.com

I have a friend who’s done some writing work for a company that makes brass bars, poles and fittings. I’m keeping everybody anonymous, just to be on the safe side.

I guess this company’s core business was selling poles and railings to strip bars (insert polishing joke here). They were doing all right, but had recently expanded into a new market sector. They were convinced they could just keep one website, and sell to both markets from the same place online.

My friend lobbied really hard for the fact that they needed to launch a second brand and website to accommodate the new market. I was shocked at how much persuading the brass company executives needed. You’ve probably guessed what the second market was…

Brass fittings and railings for church pews.

There is an obvious lesson about branding here. But the real lesson might be about how it’s easy to get tunnel vision when you’re too close to your products.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 24th, 2008 at 3:32 am and is filed under PR and Marketing. Tag Testing Project: brands, brass, church pews, stripper poles, subbrands. Photo by Duncan C. You can skip to the end and leave a response, or trackback from your own site. If you don't see your comment within a day or so, drop me an email. Sometimes my comment spam filter gets overly zealous.