Organize Your Brands for Clarity & Resource Efficiency
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Read time: 4 min
At a glance:
Quote: Simplicity gives way to what’s necessary
Lesson: How to organize your brands
Bonus: Healthcare brand architecture hot takes
Quote
"The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak."
Hans Hofmann
Lesson
In today’s issue, I will share a quick framework for you to determine a good way to organize your brands.
Whether you are launching a new brand, adding a brand to create a family of brands, or currently managing a portfolio of brands, it is critical to have a strategy.
The wrong step can be costly, not just in implementation, but in undoing the work later on and creating confusion in the market place. You don’t want BRAND PALOOZA!
When you’ve strategically thought through how to organize brands, it results in clarity, greater return and a decrease in the risk of jeopardizing a successful brand.
The problem is, most people aren’t educated even in the basics of brand architecture.
ARE THE BRANDS BETTER TOGETHER OR APART?
What is brand architecture?
It is the structure of brands within an organizational entity. It is the way brands within a company's portfolio are related to, and differentiated from, one another. It is a strategy, which means it is a decision the organization needs to make.
Ultimately the decision you are making is whether the brands you are launching are close or distant from each other.
An analogy I like to use: are they twins or are they from different families? As you move down the line, they are more and more different from each other.
Master Brand (Twins)
Sub-Brands (Siblings)
Endorsed Brand (Cousins)
House of Brands (Unrelated)
Instead of having you go through the academics of brand architecture, here are some principles and a list of questions to help you decide on how you should be thinking about your brands. This is not full proof, but it gives you a good start.
Principles:
Every brand is a mouth to feed: without resources to build brand equity long term, they become useless exercises
The closer the brands, the more similar they become: good or bad associations from one brand will rub off on the other
It’s not what YOU want to brand, it’s what brands your CUSTOMER want to buy: always remember to look at the portfolio from the customers perspective
Questions:
For startups
(1) Can you win with just one brand?
YES = Masterbrand
NO = Yes you can, answer the question again
( a little tongue and cheek here, but if you are a startup, you are better off dedicating your scare resources to one brand)
For companies with one brand, and now launching more
(1) Can you win with the current brand?
YES = Master Brand
NO = Next question
(2) Is the new brand for a similar market? Will the brand associations of the current brand help the new brand and vice versa?
YES = Subbrand
NO = Next question
(3) Do you have sufficient resources to launch an entirely new brand?
YES = House of brands
NO = Get resources OR consider Endorsed brand
For companies with many brands and are starting to confuse the customer.
In this case, instead of one brand architecture system, it typically requires a hybrid approach. Each question is an option to consider for a subset of brands.
(1) Are there brands you can retire?
YES = Phase out the brands and reduce SKUs.
(2) Are there brands that are not worth investing in but you still need the products in the portfolio?
YES = Masterbrand (convert them into masterbrands, use descriptors of the product)
(3) Are there brands that have unique visual identities, do not yet have strong brand equity and can benefit from the company brand?
YES = Subbrand (convert those brands into subbrands by leveraging more of the corporate brand)
(4) Are there brands that have unique visual identities, strong brand equity and can bolster the company brand?
YES = Endorsed brand (convert those few brands into endorsed brands through proximity)
Brand architecture can bring clarity to confusion. Before working with CSL, the large pharmaceutical company, their brand experience was not optimal. An example of that was in their recruitment process. A candidate would apply to a subsidiary Seqirus for a job, but when they got an email from HR, it could be from CSL, the parent company. Then when they arrived at a site for the interview, the name on the building could be CSL Behring. By helping to bring all the brands together under the CSL brand, it gave more clarity to the entire organization. Now, everyone who works there also has a CSL.com email address, where in the past customers or candidates could have received an email from different brands. Kudos to the organization for undertaking such a process to help bring clarity to their brand!
Conclusion
I hope this gives you a foundation to make some decisions, if not, I’m sure it gave you enough to engage in a fruitful discussion with your brand agency and strategist!
Bonus: Healthcare brand architecture hot takes
Pharma:
In the world of Pharmaceuticals, the brand architecture follows that of traditional CPG companies, partly due to legal and regulatory requirements where drug names have to be unique and not have the company names in them. However, let’s think about the recent COVID-19 vaccine. Instead of calling each vaccine by its product name. Do you even know the name of the Pfizer vaccine? It’s called Comirnaty. Not the easiest name to pronounce. They typically aren’t! But what if drugs start to be more linked up with their company brand? The reputation of Pfizer has definitely improved ever since this vaccine was introduced.
If your want associations with a certain disease category or area of specialization (eg. women’s health), you may want to consider starting to pull product and company or even division brands closer together so brand equity can start to flow more freely. How to avoid legal troubles? Simply by placing the brands close together and not hiding the company brand in 4 point font at the bottom of any communication.
Medtech:
In the Medtech world, Master Brand structures are typical. Medtronic, Abbott, Boston Scientific all utilize this structure. However, to keep things fresh, these companies continue to launch new products with new names, not necessarily new visual identities, but there are cases. My take is that these short term “brands” are not really moving the market as there is not enough time to build true brand value with the customers.
What if instead of focusing on products, they launched more longer term platforms or technologies? Using a Sub-Brand structure, this can bring continued positive associations to the parent brand and also distinguish it using the longer term platform or technology brand. Something to bring energy and freshness to the Master Brand. Checkout an example of this: www.NevroHFX.com
Ways I can help you:
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