Battle Of The Brands

 

Creating brand-name awareness is still more an art than an exact science. And even though some of the techniques are very well known -- market positioning, pricing, advertising -- there's a lot of room left for experimentation. Have you ever thought, for example, of getting yourself used by an even bigger brand name?

In the spring of 1981, Timberland was faced with a lawsuit by the Stride Rite Corp. of Cambridge, Mass. Timberland had just launched an advertising campaign for a shoe it said would "blow" a Stride Rite subsidiary "right out of the water." The name of the subsidiary, Sperry Top-Sider, was, in itself, a brand name so famous that it had become synonymous with a nifty little item also called the "boat shoe." In 1980, Sperry Top-Sider's sales reached $24 million, more than all of Timberland's product lines combined. It was obviously an attractive market for a company looking to offset the seasonal sales pattern of rugged, outdoor boots.

Point by point, the Timberland ads compared specific advantages of their boat shoe with specific deficiencies of the Sperry Top-Sider. Some industry observers were shocked by what they considered to be a pushy, comparative advertising campaign unsuited to the generally low-key and fraternal relationships of the shoe industry. "I agree that comparative advertising is a risky business," says Stanley Kravetz, Timberland's executive vice-president who engineered the introduction of the new shoe, "but when you have a superior product it can be very effective."

Naturally, Sperry Top-Sider uses other adjectives to describe the Timberland campaign. Says David J. Murphy, president of Sperry Top-Sider Inc.: "We are the largest manufacturer of boating shoes in the world. We've been making shoes for 45 years. To say that our leather cracks and eyelets rust is ludicrous. The whole thing's ludicrous."

After four months of legal wrangling, the two companies reached an out-of-court settlement. Timberland agreed, among other things, to revise its ad copy and Sperry Top-Sider agreed to drop the suit.

Some people in the industry suggest the legal battle may have given Timberland the kind of notoriety it could do without, but Kravetz strongly disagrees. "They made an error in suing us," he says. "It put us on the map and brought us a lot more recognition than we probably deserved." The Timberland boat shoes produced revenues of nearly $8 million in 1980.

Even though there are conflicting opinions over who actually won the battle, the war rages on. A month after the original suit was settled, Timberland turned around and sued Stride Rite. The suit claims that the Top-Sider boat-shoe sole had been falsely marked and advertised as patented when, in fact, the patents had expired. The suit says that this practice delayed Timberland's entry into the market and forced Timberland to "develop, at great cost, an alternative to the Sperry sole." The suit is still pending.