Brand Architecture

BRAND ARCHITECTURE AND BRAND STRATEGY

1    COMPARE THE BRAND STRATEGIES AND ARCHITECTURES OF DIFFERENT COMPANIES. HOW AND WHY ARE THEY DIFFERENT?


A. BRANDED HOUSE (MONOLITHIC BRAND)
In this model, the firm is the brand. Services and market sectors (or practice areas) are subsets of that primary brand and are not formally branded. Apple or Google are globally known for this model. Under Apple’s primary brand comes many subset brands: Mac, iTunes, iPhone.

In professional services, the branded house approach is also known as a one-firm brand strategy. The firm has a single brand: logo mark, marketplace positioning and messaging. The subordinate service offerings share these brand elements but contain their own unique messaging points. (Harr 2018.)

B. HOUSE OF BRANDS (ENDORSED BRAND)
The branding is focused on the subset brands. The primary brand gets little or no attention. A house of brands approach requires significant investment in dedicated resources because each brand operates as its own company in terms of brand elements and messaging. (Harr 2018.)

C. BLENDED HOUSE (HYBRID BRAND)
The “House Blend” This is an architecture based on the development of sub-brands with the added credibility of the existing parent brand. Google, for example, started as a search engine then continued to establish the primary brand through offerings such as Gmail, Calendar and Maps. Eventually, they began to acquire other, smaller tech companies such as Blogger, Picasa and YouTube. These acquisitions maintained their existing brands but gained credibility through the primary brand of Google. (Caputo & Pletcher 2013.)


2    WHAT BRAND ARCHITECTURE MODELS DO COMPANIES YOU KNOW USE?

A. BRANDED HOUSE (MONOLITHIC BRAND)

FedEx is one example of branded house. FedEx Express, Ground, Freight are all examples of sub-brands within the corporation. Each brand extension is clearly FedEx first before any other sub-brand, as demonstrated by the logos below. FedEx is always in large font, with the name of the sub-brand underneath in smaller text. (Brown, 2018)
 

Apple has several products; however, the iPhone, MacBook, and iPad never differentiate from their master-brand. Apple keeps its branding running through all of its sub-brands. Note Apple’s logo located on the back of all the products. (Brown, 2018)

A company that recently changed the brand architecture of its flagship brand, moving it closer to a branded house is Coca-Cola. Following several years of having its drinks marketed individually, last year it announced the “One Brand” strategy, resulting in Diet Coke, Coca-Cola Zero Sugar and Coca-Cola Life all being advertised under the main Coca-Cola umbrella, turning the three sub-brands into variants of the main brand. (Harr, 2018 )

B. HOUSE OF BRANDS

General Motors and Procter & Gamble: Everyone talks about Chevrolet and Opel as different brands. They would even choose Vauxhall over Opel, even though all these brands are under General Motors. (Harr, 2018)
P&G: P&G is a pretty well-known brand on its own, but it’s the sub-brands that are the most easily identifiable. Some of P&G’s most well-known sub-brands include: Tide, Charmin, Bounty, Pampers, and Dawn. (Brown, 2018)

 

C. BLENDED HOUSE (HYBRID BRAND)

Pepsi-Co, like Coca-Cola, is most well-known for its primary product, Pepsi, but has expanded its product offerings. Pepsi moved beyond sodas and into snacks. Each of Pepsi’s many products has a distinct sub-brand.
Amazon is best known as ecommerce giant Amazon.com, but the company includes many other major web presences. Each of these sub-brands is distinctly different from the primary and very loosely associated with the main brand. Many Amazon sub-brands were acquisitions.


3    WHICH BRAND ARCHITECTURES ARE GOOD FOR DIFFERENT PRODUCTS AND SERVICES?

A branded house architecture works when a company targets a similar audience with different products, and wants to build the same proposition and the same associations for different offerings. It’s also a suitable solution when an organisation has a limited marketing budget, as it’s understandably cheaper to build awareness of just one brand as opposed to several. Finally, it should be used when reputation risk related to different products is low, as one wrong move could affect the whole company. (Adamska, 2016.)
A house of brands structure is recommended when an organisation targets different audiences with the same product categories (for example three shampoo brands for three different target groups) and wants to build different propositions and new associations for different products (e.g. a value for money shampoo, a mid-range shampoo solving a concrete hair problem like dandruff and a premium hair salon shampoo). (Adamska, 2016.) Groups of products and services within a Category that help customer find relevant offerings. They can be organized around products, applicaMons or customer segments. (Phillips & Hopelain, 2015.)


4    ANALYSE THE BRAND STRATEGY AND ARCHITECTURE OF A CHOSEN COMPANY.

Sony chooses a single-minded, powerful, and yet flexible architecture and leverages their corporate brand in many different ways. Sony plays mulMple roles in its porRolio due to the needs of the business. Some offerings have stand-alone brands that do not feature the Sony name at all.



(Phillips & Hopelain, 2015)

references

Adamska, M., 2016.. Brand Architecture Part 1: The difference between branded house and house of brands. URL: https://brandstruck.co/blog-post/brand-architecture-part-1-difference-branded-house-house-brands. Accessed: 03 February 2018.
Brown, N., 2018. Branded House or House of Brands?.
URL: http://www.ideasbig.com/blog/branded-house-house-brands. Accessed: 03 February 2018.
Caputo, F. & Pletcher, K., 2013.. Emotion In Branding. S.l.:Jacobs Agency, Inc..
Harr, E., 2018 . Best Brand Strategy: Branded House or House of Brands URL: https://hingemarketing.com/blog/story/the-best-brand-strategy-build-one-or-many. Accessed: 03 February 2018.
Phillips, C. & Hopelain, J., 2015. Brand Architecture: Designing Your Brand Portfolio For Success. Accessed: 03 February 2018.



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