The trend toward multibranding

The company formerly known as Kraft (now Mondelez) is aggressively pursuing multibranding among its billion-dollar brands, such as by creating a chocolate bar combining its Oreo brand and its Cadbury brand. A Mondelez marketing director states: "Combining these two extremely popular brands to create Cadbury Dairy Milk with Oreo seemed like a natural fit and offers an exciting opportunity for retailers to help boost sales and capitalise on the phenomenal reputation of each brand individually."

Multibranding is also common among brands that aren't owned by the same parent company. For instance, Hindustan Lever is working with Future Group to create a cobranded line of baked goods for certain Big Bazaar stores in Mumbai.

This multibranding trend helps the brand owners build on image, recognition and loyalty to launch new products in the increasingly crowded marketplace. The brands may also combine financial and marketing resources to develop and launch new products, adding to their potential strengths. Finally, multibranding can help a new product attract the attention and support of retailers or other channel members, giving it a boost during introduction and beyond.