Marketers are Smart

As summers have begun to heat the nature, marketers have come up with ways to combat the latter. This summer witnessed the launch of several brands of lemon drinks including 7UP Nimbooz by PepsiCo and LMN by ParleAgro. 

Let us look at the branding strategy of 7UP Nimbooz. When Pepsico decided to go for line extension, there weren't any players in lime category and  as such, there was an opportunity to get first-mover advantage for this category.

The big question is whether it is apt for Pepsico to extend the brand name of 7UP to Nimbooz. Well, the technicality of issue depicts that it is a right move by Pepsico to leverage the brand image of 7UP to Nimbooz. The reasons attributed to this action are:

1. 7UP is quite close to a lemon drink in terms of taste. 

2. Lime drinks is a not an established category till date. As such, consumers do not discrminate stimuli for the category. Rather, there will be stimulus generalization, wherein consumers would percieve Nimbooz close to 7UP, which has strong brand equity. As such, consumers are expected to form favorable attitude towards Nimbooz, similar to that for 7UP.

This is a smart strategy to keep a sister brand in shadow of master brand (that is 7UP), rather than launching an entirely new brand.