Brand Architecture or Management?

Brand architecture is not the same topic as Brand Management, though their structures may reflect one another. It is quite normal (outside consumer goods industries) to use branding with brand architectures and the rest, but NOT to follow the business system / organisation model called Brand Management.

Branding Topics

Apple's Branding Strategy
(case study)

Virgin's Brand

Trade Marks

Brand Identity

Megabrands and
masterbrands

Brand Architecture

Brand architecture refers to the structure a business chooses to give to its brand properties. Choosing the right brand architecture enables a business to improve:

The cost-effectiveness of its brand and marketing investments.
- Brand architecture can improve marketing ROI by helping ensure brand positioning and value propositions are properly aligned to specific markets and segments.
The scale of branding and marketing investment needed.
The ease with which individual products can be updated, to keep pace with competitive and market changes, without discarding previous marketing investments.
- Generally speaking, marketing a large number of brands requires more investment in time and money than a small number of brands will consume.
Alignment with internal organisational structures

Brand Architecture Alternatives

There are many differences in approach when businesses are deciding what brands to market, and one of the most crucial is deciding exactly what scope a brand should have.

Single Brand Strategies

A simple business may only have one brand, for example, based on the company's name. It could have many different products, but all promotion would develop the single brand identity. This is often a good choice for businesses where:

Products change or are updated quickly (brands can be made more permanent than product lines).
The reputation and identity of the company products are bought from is a major consideration for customers.
There is some consistency among the business' products even if there are a great many of them (eg they solve similar problems, are focused around a single market or broad segment).

Multi-Brand Strategies

For more complex customer markets or more diverse product solutions, a multiple brands and possibly sub-brands may be needed. It is for these multi-brand strategies that brand architecture is most imporant.

Brand Architecture Explored

Brand architecture refers to the way a company chooses to embed (and structure) branding across its businesses.

In this example, the product names are really just confirmation as to what engines the oil can be used in. Packaging would reflect the brand personality and carry the brand identity, but could vary perhaps in shape or size of bottle and other features as best fits the intended application. The oil itself may or may not be different.

Over time, it may become clear to our fictional company, Octan, that there are really two separate markets for its products: a consumer market for OutboardMotor, MotorScooter, and Mower oils; and a business market for Pump, Generator, and Forklift oils. In our fictional example, let's say this has been highlighted by sales of consumer products growing much faster than business products, growth in consumer and business consumption of oil is growing at similar rates, the competitive landscape is similar in both markets, and research confirms that consumers are responding more positively to the Octan brand than are businesses.

In these circumstances, Octan may decide that its brand identity is appealing well to consumers, but the image with businesses needs improving. One course of action would be to create a separate brand for business (let's call it "Protane"). Alternatively separate subsidiary brands may be the best decision (let's call them "Octan Home" and "Octan Pro").

The decision to split the brand might be the right one if sales of business products were poor and it had been found, for example, that generator and forklift users thought it simply didn't seem right to use the same type of oil in their valuable equipment as is used in lawn mowers and motor scooters. Splitting the brand would be a major decision, because little brand equity would be carried forward into "Protane" and there is weakened association with the company name.

On the other hand, if Octane Oils had developed an excellent reputation, creating sub-brands could present the opportunity to leverage this but still indicate that the business products were specially designed for business applications and to establish further business-relevant differentiation, all staying within and building on the brand image of Octan Oils.

The right decision may depend on what management has planned in the future.

For example, if the plan was to extend the line with consumer cleaning products followed by storage covers and then perhaps mobile product service franchises, this may be taking the sub-brand down an equipment maintenance dimension that would work well for consumers, but could be at odds with business needs such as for value for money and lowering exhaust emissions.

In general, it is dangerous to spread a brand across too many promises to too many people. The more focused and targeted it is to each, the stronger it will be in the marketplace. When you create sub-brands you are not building the brand - you are spreading it more thinly. The tradeoff is that you can save on the investment (at least in part) of establishing a completely new brand in the market, so the economics may make sense - just beware of the limitations.

Choice of brand architecture is a long term decision. The key to making the right decisions is to understand what the brand means from the customers' perspective - both the current ones and ones you have your eye on.

Types of Brand Identity

Depending on the market a company competes in and the nature of it's business, there are three principle "identity" types that can be followed. These are: "monolithic," like that of Apple, British Airways, HP, IBM, Oracle, PricewaterhouseCoopers, and Sony; and "endorsed," like that of Virgin, General Electric, General Motors and BMW; and "branded", like that of Proctor & Gamble, Diageo, Unilever, and Kellogg's. Most of the discussion (and thought-leadership) on branding emanates from the Proctor & Gamble's of the world and their suppliers.

With monolithic identities, the emphasis is on branding the company, rather than individual product lines. Customers' attitudes and emotions towards the company will generally swamp their feelings about individual product lines of the company.

Endorsed identities are a combination. The company image plays a major part in the attracting customers to the brand with promises of consistent values on top of the specific brand identities of individual business areas.

Megabrands and Masterbrands

Occasionally companies will refer either to their company name or something in-between the company name and brands as "mega brands" or "master brands".

The idea is that just as the image and reputation of the company which owns, supplies or makes a branded product impacts the customers' perceptions about that brand, so a megabrand can shape customers' feelings about its subsidiary brands. In practice this is rarely effective. Customers usually do not understand megabrands, which often have more to do with organizational design (i.e. Brand Management structure) than customer segments or needs.

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