Branding Strategy Insider

Brand Architecture Defined

Today, another question from the BSI Emailbag. Anton, a marketing major/future marketer from Manila, Philippines asks:

"Brad, I am a daily reader of Branding Strategy Insider and have a question about brand architecture. Is there a hierarchy or structure you can share? I appreciate your advice."

Anton, thanks for asking. As you probably know, brand architecture describes how a family of brands relate to one another. It indicates how many levels of branding there are (hopefully, no more than two or three), which brands are at each level, which brands relate as brand/sub-brand, which relate as endorsed brand/endorsing brand and which remain independent of one another. It also addresses which brand's identity systems are dominant in different situations or contexts. And it addresses the type of names used at each level (coined, associative descriptive or generic descriptors). There are no absolute rules that apply in all situations, however here are some simple rules of thumb:

•    The simpler the system the better
•    Ideally, there are no more than two levels of hierarchy
•    The system should be flexible enough to address all current and anticipated branding situations
•    The dominant brand should be the one you most intend to build over time

Merging on the Ridiculous

The chaotic situation in the financial sector is creating a branding headache for banks' marketers.

My wife comes from Tasmania, a weird and wonderful island off the southern tip of Australia. It has some of the slackest planning provisions in the Southern Hemisphere. As a result, when her friends there build their houses, they invariably do so without the input of an architect or interior designer.

The results are inevitably awful. You have staircases in the wrong places, and, in one drastic case, a downstairs lavatory off the main dining room. This house has had a lot of money spent on it; both the bathroom and dining room have been beautifully done. It's just hard to enjoy dinner when you know someone only a thin layer of plasterboard away is on the crapper. An architect would have ensured that these lovely rooms would stay far enough apart to avoid either impinging on the other.

This is why brand architecture is such an important topic for marketers. It is not related to the strength or weakness of individual brands in a portfolio, it's about how they can be best combined, or kept apart, to ensure maximum impact on the market and maximum value to the organisation.

With all the shenanigans in banking at the moment, brand architecture is set to become an even more important topic. If the cavalcade of distressed banks are not nationalised, they are absorbed by rivals. As brand acquires brand, the challenge of maintaining a strategically sensible brand architecture becomes more difficult. Santander, for example, now has to find a place for Bradford & Bingley's savings business and branches next to Abbey and Alliance & Leicester within its group. Meanwhile, Barclays has to absorb the bits of Lehman Brothers it picked up in the garage sale caused by the US investment bank's collapse late last year.