Brand architecture defines and structures the role of each brand in the organization’s service portfolio in coherence with business development strategies.
Why do we need it?Brand architecture is a simple way to optimize the brands that are under a company's management. It allows them to find new ways of innovation and business development, to discover conceptual conflicts between brands, to create visual and verbal lines of expression for each one and therefore, to obtain clear positioning for their respective brands, etc.
What’s more, it allows us to expand the product portfolio in an effective way, as we can study how they fit into the architecture and facilitate the association of meanings to be inserted in the new market in which we participate. If we are not clear about this architecture, we could end up confusing the target with totally contradictory or diverse positioning in brands of the same company, or dilute the positioning of the mother brand...
Typologies
There are four types of brand architecture:
A single strong brand for all its products and markets.
A corporate brand that develops independent brands unrelated to the ‘mother brand’.
A corporate brand helps a commercial brand and provides its brand assets to strengthen and gain reputation.
Large multinationals opt for a model that combines endorsed brands with independent brands and/or monolithic branding.
What does it consist of?
Complete review of the entire portfolio of all brands that the organization manages.
Brands are subdivided. They can be organized according to the audiences they target, the territories they occupy or the needs they cover – it all depends on each project and specific case.
Strategic decisions are made that will affect the brand architecture: deciding the degree of presence of the ‘mother brand’ in the sub-brands, the visual and verbal lines that each brand will follow in order to be consistent with its hierarchy within the architecture and the creation or elimination of brands to avoid conflicts or seize opportunities.
Once these strategic decisions have been made, we proceed to draw up a map in order to get a clear and visual idea of the final structure.
FAQs
Brand architecture is a way of implementing a brand strategy from its roots, with a global company perspective. Brands, references and product lines are organized and hierarchized, and new brands are created to fulfil functions that were previously uncovered by the consumer.
Brand architecture must always be subordinate to a company’s strategic planning work. Knowledge of the industry, target audience and business development objectives are fundamental to developing an efficient brand architecture that is beneficial to the company in the long term.
Brands that are not associated in any way with the parent brand or trademark. They fall under the house of brands architecture type, and in some cases the mixed model.
