Optimise your brand architecture to build kickass

brand
What is brand architecture?
Brand Architecture is the system that organizes brands, products, and services to
help an audience access and relate to a brand.It is the way in which the brands in
the company portfolio are related to or differentiated from one another. The
architecture must define the hierarchies within an organization: how the corporate
brand works in synergy with the sub-brands; how they support one another; how
the sub-brands strengthen the strategic objectives of the corporate brand
This is an important guide for brand extensions, sub-brands, and development of
new products. It also provides a roadmap for Brand Identity development and
design and reminds consumers of the value proposition. It also provides the
maximum brand value by fully leveraging both corporate and sub-brands

Types of Brand Architecture:

There are three most common types of Brand Architecture:
1. Branded House

A Branded House is where the company brand becomes the dominant source of
identification and meaning. ING Group is an excellent example of this approach.
They offer banking services known as ING Direct. They have individual product
brands for the range of finance and everyday banking such as ING Orange Every
day, ING Business Optimiser, ING Living Super and ING home loans. In this
example, ING is the sole brand, and the product names serve as descriptors.
Another example of a Branded House is Virgin. They have extremely diverse
businesses: trains, airlines, credit cards, a music company, a health, wedding
dresses, and fitness change, and so on. All these companies draw their inspiration
from a single brand identity: Virgin. There is a lack of brand independence at the
product level, but the energy of the parent brand strengthens each company despite
the lack of shared product commonality.
2.House of Brands

Most consumer product brands use this strategy. That is, the product itself becomes
the primary brand rather than the company. Take for example the following
products: Pantene, Duracell. Most consumers would have trouble identifying them
with companies that actually own them (Procter and Gamble,
Nestle).
In a House of Brands model,
individual companies can focus on what they each do best without worrying about

the broader group's businesses growth trajectory. Hence this offers a lot of
flexibility.
Another example is General Motors. They make cars under a few brands: Holden,
Chevrolet, Opel etc., each of which is strong brands in themselves.
The risk here is brand confusion. Brands that try to cast too wide a net risk ending
up without loyal customers in any market or demographic. Another risk is the lack
of budget .This Model needs investment in building many brands, instead of being
able to consolidate investment behind one master brand.
3. A Hybrid Model
Many companies and brands use a mix of strategies with different roles for
different types of brand extensions.
Consider, for example, Westpac. Westpac has a number of brands. These fit
neither the house of brands or branded house model. The endorsed brand model is
used where the brands are newer and require the support of the more established
parent brand, e.g, Xylo. This allows the brands to seem more credible, while the
parent brand remains distant enough to reduce the risk. In Case of The Westpac
Institutional Bank, there is a sub-brand approach because there is equal equity
between the two products or brands. This helps the sub-brand to retain its own
specialty within its section of the market, while also demonstrating the parent
brands' breadth of expertise.
Brand architecture strategy
Brand architecture is key to your entire brand strategy . Your brand architecture
sets the groundwork for all the brand components and aligns your brand
personality, your brand promise, your brand story and your visual and operational
requirements into a single unified structure. Brand architecture should uncover the
specific emotions around which you have built your brand.
5 Steps to Brand Architecture Strategy:
1.List each of your product/service features. List the benefits of each.
A feature is basically of what something does or what it is. For example, features
of a car may include a UBS and an upgraded stereo system.Benefit is the result that
that is derived from the feature
2.Now List down the benefits. For each benefit, determine whether it's functional
or emotional.

A functional benefit is something that is derived from the functionality of the

feature. Example: A high-Quality stereo provides higher-quality sound.
An emotional benefit is the feeling that is being evoked by functional feature.
Example: The high-Quality stereo might make the user feel like a rock star.
3.Review each feature & benefit & and determine its importance level to the
market. Every benefit should be assigned between below three categories.
Basic & Expected: These are very basic ones; buying of the product won't happen
without these features or benefits. Every product/service in this category needs to
offer these features.
Adds value: These add differentiation to the product from that of competition. This
is not a basic feature. This is not expected feature, but most customers probably
won't purchase based on this factor alone.
Will buy: This is most critical & will result in customer buying the product
4.Now, features and benefits need to be ranked.
Emotional benefits results in buying & popular brands are built on emotions.
Use this ranking system:
Basic expected Feature = 1
Features that add value = 2
Features that will buy = 3
Functional benefits that are expected = 4
Functional benefits that add value = 5
Functional benefits that will buy = 6
Emotional benefits that are expected = 7
Emotional benefits that add value = 8
Emotional benefits that will buy = 9
Few brand architectures are built around features, but by including them in the
rankings, we will focus on benefits and, more specifically, emotional benefits that
cause people to desire your offering on a visceral level.

5.The final thing that needs to be done is to identify the emotional benefits that will
become the core of your brand strategy.
We will focus on those which have got a ranking of 6 or higher to be included in
brand architecture. We will need to include a few functional benefits with the
emotional benefits.
Steps to Design Brand Architecture:
1. Understand your primary audiences.
Do you have a national or global audience? What does each need to be
communicated for the audience to positively engage with your organization? For
example:

Consumers need to appreciate the depth and breadth of your company's

offerings so they are more likely to increase their relationship
Employees need to appreciate your organization better, to be more
productive, become promoters and socialize its value within their
professional or social communities
The financial community needs to recognize the value of your organization
to give it the proper attention and valuation
Business partners need to better grasp the breadth of what your company
does so they can bring added value and opportunities to you
Media need gets a good perception of your company to communicate
favorably amongst their audiences.

2. Have a clear business vision.

Have a strong business rationale is needed to have Successful architecture. First,
we need to figure out the long-term vision of the company (e.g., acquisition,
organic growth, sale or IPO). Will the company might increase its product lines or
geographic coverage.
3. Study the equity of your existing product/service brands.
Brand Architecture demonstrates how your corporate brand and sub-brands relate
to and support each other. Determine whether a brand in your portfolio will benefit
or harm the corporate brand. If you have a strong sub-brand, it can even become an
umbrella brand for a whole family of product extensions.
4. Assess the value of co-branded relationships.
Co-branding offers brand exposure in a product class that would be hard to enter
on its own and can provide additional brand equity to support a business. It can
also have long-term downsides, such as audience confusion from conflicting brand

messages or damage to both brands if one has a problem. Consider very carefully
whether two or more brands should be used to support a product,service or venture
or whether there would be any benefit to endorsing one or more of your brands
with another brand.
5. Determine what scale of the marketing budget is available.
A Masterbrand Architecture is the best cost-efficient arrangement from a
marketing investment perspective because every marketing dollar spent gives
benefit to all of the brands. A Portfolio Brand Architecture is most expensive
architecture because here each individual brand needs investment. Therefore, when
developing a Brand Architecture, it is essential to know the resource requirements
to support your brands.
6. Understand legal or tax implications.
Certain brand architectures may have some legal or tax implications. For example,
use of a brand owned by a different company or legal entity within the parent
organization will often require inter-company license agreements. Furthermore, in
an international context, a group that wants to use a brand may need to license it in
different tax jurisdictions. Co-branding strategy is more likely to call for an
allocation of licensing costs across companies.
7. Make a plan and timeline to announce your Brand Architecture.
Once the best Brand Architecture for your company is determined, it is imperative
to develop a visual system to introduce and support it. For example, if you are
executing a master brand structure, then it will be necessary to adapt visual
branding to pull everything together. On the other hand, if you decide that having
separate sub-brands, you will need an identity system to support that architecture.
Importantly, if you plan to evolve from one architecture to another, there are
various "migration strategies" to consider that can enable this process without
being too detrimental brand equity along the way.
8. Create a decision tree to maintain your Brand Architecture.
Once you have put your Brand Architecture in place, the best tools you have is a
decision tree that will answer all specific questions leading to recommendations &
will be consistent with the company's overall brand strategy. A formal decision tree
will help you confront future decisions you may face when confronted with
branding issues resulting due to acquisitions, internal product/brand development,
internal readjustment, etc.