By Princewill Ekwujuru
Brands that reflect, live and adapt, earn the right to survive over time. Brands that project themselves change the rules and the fitness landscape.

Managing brands direction requires connection that is purposeful to that idea. Purposeful in the sense that evolution allows a brand to adapt to changing wants and needs without losing its core relevance in movement forward.

That was why the company said it decided to come with the variants because consumers want a better life. That is what they are doing as a company and as a brand. We are now improving our brand for a better tomorrow.  Why we are doing this, is to bring health to the Nigerian consumer.”

Since Unilever Nigeria Plc took over the manufacture and sale of Knorr seasoning from Cadbury in 2005, there’s been overturn in the seasoning market.

Battle in the seasoning market had been fought and some seasonings losing a sizeable proportion of their market share, and some had continued to extend their brand portfolio and others only enjoyed generational value in the market.

According to Gamble in 1987, “Brands extension is on the increase. “When brands wish to enter markets from which they have been absent, (which is not the case with Unilever’s Knorr) companies use the name of one of their brands.”

The introduction of Knorr powder seasoning; Stew and Soup variants are a good example of brand extension, using the existing Knorr cube brand to drive sale for the new products or using it to hold a segment of the market.

According to Thabo Mabe, Managing Director of Unilever Nigeria Plc, at the unveiling of the brand in the front of a capacity Knorr consumers speaks the acceptability of the brand as he said that the company is unveiling the brand in a different way based on the strategic agenda of creating better life everyday and year

However, before the launching of the products, the company had a walk referred to as the ‘Green Walk’, which the Managing Director corroborates with the launching, which he said  was about  driving health and “most importantly  making consumers life easier.”

Mabe said  that cooking has been made easier with the new Knorr powder variants. Whilst stating that consumers can now enjoy cooking. “ We are now making life easier for everybody. We are bringing health credential as a corner stone of our brand.

Continuing, he said, “Whatever we do in our development, innovation, in our research is based on our consumers request. We do things to satisfy our consumers , we don’t do things to copy what other people are doing. We look at our consumers and we can proudly say we understand our consumers.”