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What Is Brand Architecture?

One of the corporate branding disciplines that we receive the highest number of inquiries about is brand architecture. We find that for many clients however, it’s hard to grasp what brand architecture really means. Some organizations think of it as market segmentation, others think of it in terms of rationalizing portfolios or acquisition strategy. These are all important concerns, but we think about it at a higher level. Brand architecture explains the degree of relationship that should exist between the corporate brand and its various product and service brands. Should they go with a monolithic Master Brand strategy, corral multiple brands into a “house of brands,” or some combination of the two? What is the strategic rationale for an approach? Without clarity on these issues, your brand promise can become unclear, which creates confusion and can even reflect a lack of confidence.

What is Brand Architecture?

Let’s First Understand The Root of Brand Complexity

Anything that is ever created, whether it’s an app, a product or a service, wants a brand. And why not? Every creator wants to draw attention to his or her creation. By this philosophy, however, one company could easily have numerous brands. Companies often revert to micro-market segmentation as a surrogate for brand architecture. Google, for instance, has set an unusual precedent. The tech giant has many independently moving parts (read: brands) within its organization, but the sum total of those parts doesn’t necessarily create a comprehensive sense of what is “Google.” This is the most common problem we see with brand architecture.

The 3 Questions That Lead to a Strong Brand Architecture

What you call your product and how you identify it is only a tiny percent of the brand experience. Brand meaning and value is based on the promise each product fulfills and how it delivers that promise. Creating a strong and sustainable brand architecture requires answering these three questions:

1. Do your various different offerings add up to fulfill a promise?
2. What does each offer say about you as a provider?
3. How does each one of those offerings help you build your audience, or deliver on your promise?

In our experience, when a new brand is created, there’s not much consideration for the greater whole until it’s too late. A number of tech companies have spent years and millions of dollars cleaning up their brand messes. For example, we saw Sony lose its position as a premium brand partly because its many sub-brands fragmented product teams and distracted consumers from Sony’s core promise. We look at Amazon’s recent purchase of WholeFoods and wonder how strongly Amazon will want to associate their technology and commerce brand with a brick and mortar grocer. Any obvious association is likely to change perceptions of both brands.

Relatively few companies make the hard decisions that we think are necessary to grow their brands responsibly. By doing so, companies can avoid wasted investments and confusion among their audiences.

Contact us to learn more about creating successful brand architectures.