I haven't had any Special K in awhile. Usually for breakfast,I have an egg and toast, or more likely, a Promax bar on the way out the door. But I'm on vacation right now, and my mother-in-law offered me Special K Blueberry Cereal, so I poured a bowl.
While I ate, I read the back of the box, and was surprised to read about their new, broader product line. Special K has done something really smart–they've expanding their product line to be a broad range of diet-foods, and integrated them into a "Special K Challenge" diet–much more than just eating Special K for breakfast.
What they did, was to understand the deepest reason people eat Special K Cereal–to lose weight–and broaden the company's ability to deliver on that brand promise. Many companies do similar things–Intuit is broadening its offerings to small businesses to go well beyond accounting for example, while Oracle continues to innovate and acquire to extend its ability to deliver on anything relating to data management.
Too many companies either limit how they will deliver on their brand promise (where would railroads be if they saw their brand promise as "transportation" instead of "trains on tracks"?) or start expanding on their products before they've credibly delivered on the brand promise at all. This second issue is a huge problem with start-ups that want to change the world, but in boiling the ocean, fail to change anything at all.
We can all learn from Special K. First, we need to make sure we know what specific value we are delivering to our customers–and then, only after we've really nailed it, should we expand to find more ways to deliver on that same compelling promise.
