Negative Consequences of Brand Leveraging
My friend Ahmed Bilal wrote a very insightful article on brand leveraging by taking the recent Danica Patrick appearance in Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition and asking whether this in any way hurt the “Danica Patrick the racer” brand.
Ahmed points out that Danica Patrick clearly leveraged her “car racer” brand to get into SI Swimsuit magazine. But one has to wonder whether there will be any negative kickback from the appearance.
Why? Well, it’s arguable that the two brands conflict with each other a bit. As the AutoBlog puts it, it’s “difficult to take her seriously as a driver when she’s topless.”
The lesson to learn from this is that brand leveraging isn’t always a win-win situation. You need to think deeply about whether the positives outweigh the negatives. In Danica Patrick’s case, it depends on what she really wants to be known for. If her ultimate goal is to be recognized for her sexuality, then this is a very smart move. But if her ultimate goal is to be known for as a pure car racer, then maybe not.
Lesson: know exactly what you want to achieve and be aware that while you are moving closer to one thing, you may be moving further away from another.
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I am curious as to whether there have been male drivers who posed topless.
I don’t think it is really a matter of branding as it is really more of a matter of “sex sells”. As far as Auto Blog goes, you can argue one thing and someone will always argue the other. If NASCAR end up drawing more visitors to Dana’s races, maybe its Auto Blog that could be wrong.
Now what if Dana and other drivers, both male and female drivers, decided to tatoo NASCAR on their rear end? Is that branding or marketing?
By the way, I am curious, why would it be a kickback? I thought kickbacks are for money, drawbacks are for impact?