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As you can see from my last post about Zippo Fragrance. It's a bad idea to brand your product with a failing concept and/or product. It's kind of like drilling more holes in a sinking ship let the water out. Quite simply a bad idea.

Zippo is a proud company with proud and noble history. Being able light a cigarettes while on manoeuvres or on post may not seem like much until you are put in that situation for weeks or months at a time. Zippo has had a an amazing following world wide, but now that smoking is becoming something that less and less people want to be associated with, the lighter is falling short. There will still be a following for the lighters and some may even like the new fragrance, but that market segment is getting smaller with each and every passing year.

I love the idea of Zippo Fragrance, just not the way it's being marketed. I think Zippo would be better off making a new offshoot brand for itself like Proctor & Gamble as done. Rather than having one cool branding that is loosing favour with the public, have a new brand campaign for the new product that is not necessarily associated with the other brand especially the failing one. The Fragrance doesn't have to come in a bottle the shape of lighter, it could have come in any other shape conceivable.

I believe that Zippo got lazy on this one. Instead of taking the time and effort to re-brand it's self to a new consumer market, it just tried to live off  the old name and concept. My grandmother used to say, perfume is a stink to cover up a stink unless you don't notice it. Its ironic that Zippo is trying to cover up the stink with a new stink.

I do like the writing instruments, and the candle lighters, very nice and very classing. It's okay to retool and re-brand. Some people may not know this, but Nokia started out as Gum-Boot manufacture. Gum-Boots to TVs to Cellphones is quite a tale of growth and metamorphosis.