Brands Stretch to Reach Niche Markets

Influx had an interesting post this week on the concept of "brand stretching." While there's nothing new about leveraging brand assets to develop new products for broader market penetration, today's media environment provides opportunities for brand stretching like none before. Some of the examples provided include Casio's watch brand stretching to a new wireless handset, Westin Hotels moving into the bed biz, Disney developing a "virtual" Magic Kingdom. The list goes on.

Today's AdAge provides examples of how radio is stretching to take advantage of new channels, and new markets:

"Next week, Clear Channel Radio will offer podcasts of Phone Tap, a popular sketch that airs on New York’s Z100 morning show... Clear Channel’s Z100 initiative is the first in what it hopes to be a national podcasting strategy that allows listeners to download snippets of popular programming, either individually as an MP3 file or as part of an RSS stream... The podcasts, free to consumers, will be ad-supported and the company is reportedly shopping 15-second spots to advertisers."

Some radio stations are now spinning off all-podcast stations, and leveraging consumer generated media as branded community programming. For example, Infinity has completely changed the format of its San Francisco KYCY-AM station. Now it compiles programming content directly from podcasts submitted by listeners to its website.

Brands will continue to stretch to new markets and media as it becomes increasingly feasible to capitalize on aggregate demand and revenues from niche communities.