In designing a lifestyle brand, you have to know more than just designing clothes.
Brands have nowadays become associated with high status, high prices and no more than 1._ quality. For that reason, many customers feel there isn’t much good in them. However, what motivated companies to establish such functions as brand management was the 2._ of putting an 3._ high value on products that did not cost much to develop. It seems that the times when this function was looked 4._ upon are long gone. The reasons are obvious: a well-established brand with a favourable image will allow companies to put more than generous 5._ on their products. A little more investment into maintaining this brand 6._ and there seems to be nothing in the way to long-lived business prosperity.
What is more, experts on branding have noticed that a strong brand name can be successfully used to launch a new product. By association with a name that has become synonymous with quality and class, a new product will 7._ a better chance of gaining a 8._ on the market with a minimum of marketing expenses. This practice of brand stretching has become widespread in fashion industry where one brand is frequently stretched to include a heterogeneous product range from clothes and accessories to perfumes, toiletries and soft drinks. It is therefore no wonder that brands have become a very valuable asset in their own 9.___.
Companies should, nonetheless, 10._ caution in applying this method to avoid the destiny of the most famous brand stretching example, that of the Virgin Group. As a result of the group’s diversification into selling trans-Atlantic flights, records, cola, lingerie, electricity, train tickets, concerts, holidays and mobile phones, the brand message has weakened and its image has suffered as a result. The Virgin brand used to have the image of a rebel, 11._ with the consumer in the face of bureaucracy and monopoly, but it has lost it with Virgin Trains and Virgin Credit Card.
