All Brands & Ads Are Not Created Equal(ine)

Albertson’s recently unveiled Equaline, it's private label health & beauty brand. Design firm Anthem Worldwide, San Franciso, CA, helped Albertson’s, the second largest U.S. supermarket chain, create and launch its new OTC and health and beauty private label brand, Equaline.



According to information located online, "Equaline was created by Anthem as a single, comprehensive OTC, health and beauty brand to house all pharmacy, health and beauty offerings sold under Albertsons five grocery store banners (Albertson’s, Acme, Jewel, Shaws, Star Markets) and two pharmacy banners (Sav-On and OSCO.) The brand architecture for Equaline was created to reference national brand equivalents, while establishing a differentiated, ownable brand. Equaline enables Albertson’s to unlock the potential of 1,240 SKUs in seven categories in 25,000 stores across 37 states."

My two cents on this launch:

- Searches on both sites using the new brand name generated '0 results,' as of Nov.5, 2005 = Poor integrated launch execution
- Design + Packaging = ugly
- Positioning & Messaging = awful! I drove by a billboard on I-5 North tonight heading back to Los Angeles from Orange County, and the ad stated (not verbatim) something along the lines of "Introducing Equaline, Its Our Brand so Why Wouldn't We?"....a super ego-centric advertisement that does nothing to own a unique brand position or special place in consumers' minds/hearts. Likely, this brand will do nothing more than to ultimately compete on price and point-of-purchase convenience with branding, positioning, and messaging like this.
- Branding = the quintessential issue with most generic brands...branding multiple products for multiple and very different audiences makes your brand just that, generic.