• Fast Company, Wednesday, September 30, 2009 10:39 AM

Kevin Randall, director of brand strategy & research at Movéo Integrated Branding and Fast Company blogger, convened a virtual panel of 11 experts to advise Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos on how to make sure that its new private label line succeeds the way that "Intel Inside' did and avoids cheapening the brand name.

Most of the experts approve of the Amazon Basics strategy. "The Amazon brand is trusted and, just like Sears-branded Kenmore appliances, Amazon may be able to do the same," says John Quelch, professor of marketing at Harvard Business School. Scott Davis, senior partner at Prophet, warns that "the supplier community is going to have to figure out how to play nice with Amazon or they could risk getting totally boxed out if this business takes off for Amazon, which I suspect it will."

But a few of the panelists think that Amazon is making a big blunder in a variety of ways. Says Martyn Straw, former president of Interbrand: "If Amazon has plans to call their entire line of white label products -- current and future -- 'Basics' they have made a giant mistake: I would never consider an HDTV a basic."

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