BRAND HEALTH CHECK: Lara Croft - Lara embarks on Eidos' biggest brand mission

But neither has lived up to its past glories. Games publisher Eidos eventually released Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness in July - eight months late and ridden with technical glitches.

Eidos' chief executive admitted sales would be up to one million less than hoped, at about 2.5 million.

Released last month, the film Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life has been panned by critics for being dull, plotless and lacking in warmth.

While the original grossed more than £200m in the UK, the follow-up has brought in a third of receipts in a comparable period.

Croft took video gaming into mainstream society. Firms including Seat and Marks & Spencer have attempted to cash in on her appeal. But GlaxoSmithKline, which has used Lara to promote Lucozade, has just announced it is shifting advertising focus for the energy drink away from the character.

The next Lara game will have a key difference. In response to Angel of Darkness' shortcomings, Eidos has moved development out of Derby's Core Design, the team that invented the series, into Crystal Dynamics in the US. Once a lynchpin for Cool Britannia, an Americanised Lara may now be on the cards.

Despite Lara's decline, the performance of Eidos' other titles helped it to a £17.4m pre-tax profit for the year to the end of June, up from a £15.3m loss the previous year.

So what can Eidos do to woo back the masses to Lara Croft? We asked John Parkes, marketing director at games publisher Ubi Soft, whose franchises include Splinter Cell, and Phil Gault, managing director of Odiorne Wilde Narraway & Partners, which holds the ad account for games publisher Electronic Arts.

VITAL SIGNS
Eidos          2003*       2002**      2001***      2000***      1999***
financials    pounds       pounds       pounds       pounds       pounds
Turnover 151,534,000  128,938,000  147,254,000  194,801,000  226,284,000
Profit    19,205,000  -30,711,000  -97,329,000   25,203,000   24,250,000
after tax
Source: Eidos. *12 months to end June; **15 months to end June; ***12
months to end March.

DIAGNOSIS

JOHN PARKES

Lara Croft is one of the biggest video games in the world in terms of both sales and brand awareness.

It is the only game to truly reach a mass-market audience, transcending the youth audience to also appeal to an older population.

It is also the only example of a successful video game brand that has been made into a successful movie. Others, such as Mortal Kombat, have tried but with minimal success.

The success of the brand depends not only on developing great games, but also on developing Lara Croft as a character and making her into a cyberbabe.

It's this attribute that has provided the hook to enter other markets as a desirable item, such as the tie-up with GlaxoSmithKline's Lucozade.

But Eidos needs to focus on the core business and heritage of the brand.

It has to ensure before anything else that it continues the Tomb Raider tradition of developing brilliant, genre-breaking games. The Lara Croft character is now much bigger than Tomb Raider, so the brand strategy needs to be focused squarely on her.

PHIL GAULT

Is it the original Lara, that high-kicking, pistol-packing, supercharged bunch of pixels? Is it the new Lara, dynamic sales person for Seat, Ericsson and (most notably) Lucozade? Or is it Angelina Jolie, with her famous dad, famous ex-husband, adopted child and roving role with the UN?

Any brand needs a strong and consistent narrative. Particularly when it's talking to audiences as sensitised and fickle as Lara's. To me, the brand seems diffuse. If you like, it's quite literally lost the plot.

You could say 'It's the product, stupid'. A cursory trawl of reviews of the latest game and the latest film reveals an interesting range of critical adjectives: unplayable, dull, tedious, a dirge, totally devoid of charm and so on.

Oh dear.

Even if you're Coca-Cola, a sub-standard product is going to hurt you.

If you're competing in today's speed-of-light entertainment industry, two sub-standard products on the trot are likely to kill you.

Let's face it - there's no shortage of alternatives. The Lara brand has never been short of bounce.

I very much hope it can bounce back from these recent setbacks.

TREATMENT

- Focus on the core business and brand heritage by developing top-quality video games. The quickest way to damage a brand in this market is to compromise on quality.

- Evolve Lara Croft as a character to make her cool, desirable and relevant again to the core youth target audience.

- Continue to develop the brand into other sectors to generate fresh revenue streams.

- Go back to basics. What the franchise needs now is a killer video game that has a genuine 'wow' factor. By moving development studios, it looks like Eidos has recognised this.

- New technology demands new solutions. In the video gaming market, with the growth of next-generation consoles and the experiential opportunities they afford, consumers won't accept re-treads.