Brand Egos

Do brands have egos??? Yes they do...if you recall in the early nineties when Coke entered India, they bought the brand ThumsUP( a well established indian soft drink brand) to get a foothold in the market. Soon they wanted to kill this home grown brand to convert all its franchise into Coke.But some times Brand equities overcome Brand egos. Coke realized the fact that it is very hard to kill ThumsUp and instead invested more into ThumsUP brand and rest is history.

I was reading an interesting story of how AT&T after the buy out of the Cingular brand, AT&T is planning to kill the Cingular brand. Another episode of Brand Ego. While AT&T is a well estblished brand, it is seen to very old and monolithic. While Cingular is more young, with it and has a geeky feel to it. Hope somebody in AT&T will give a call to Coke India to learn from their ThumsUP experience.