The ordinary individual would probably be unable to identify Procter & Gamble if you asked them what it was prior to the 2012 London Olympics. A few people might remember something about hearing about a business with that name (you might have been informed it was some sort of legal agency by others).
Nonetheless, they would all be aware of Pampers, Duracell, and Tampax if you were to ask them about them.
This is because, prior to the Olympics, Procter & Gamble had demonstrated great success in applying the individual product brand strategy, in which its products became household names while its corporate brand received little to no attention.
This is unfortunate in a manner because their bizarre tale included, among other things, creating soap operas and providing soap and candles to the Union troops during the American Civil War. However, that is a tale for another time.
Our worry today is that Procter & Gamble, one of the three essential levels of branding, has historically been one of the most successful companies—possibly the most successful—that relies nearly entirely on individual product branding.
Architecture of Brands: The Symbol
Prior to delving into the specifics of brand architecture, it would be prudent to address the metaphor itself. Stated differently, why brand architecture?
The term “brand architecture” refers to the way businesses, typically big multimillion-dollar (and billion-dollar) enterprises, structure their brand in relation to their diverse product lines, brand teams, endorsed brands, sub-brands, and the countless connections among all of these.
Writing all of this out makes it clear that this is a separate entity with its own architecture, complete with the structural components of a structure, such as the roof, supports, windows that allow customers to see inside, and foundations.
Different approaches to brand design will have an impact on how a company launches new brands, acquires and integrates other companies, and develops a message for its partners, shareholders, customers, and even rival companies.
Three Crucial Branding Levels
To comprehend the various corporate approaches to their brand architecture, it is necessary to first recognize the three primary branding tiers.
Business Identity
Corporate branding comes first. Businesses who want to project a strong corporate identity that permeates everything they do utilize this kind of branding. The Virgin Group excels at this, as seen by the Virgin prefix attached to all of their ventures.
With this type of branding, new brands from the same firm are guaranteed to be recognized almost immediately as having similar characteristics to the other brands in the company. Marketing-wise, corporate branding also saves a ton of money because the same messaging can be applied to multiple company brands. Because they are constantly under the corporate brand’s shadow, brands may find it challenging to “make a name for themselves” while using this type of branding.
Approved and subsidiary brands
Endorsed and sub-branded brands are those that, unlike those introduced inside a corporate branding framework, combine elements of the corporate brand with their own identity to create a new brand that stands alone.
One excellent example of a sub-brand is Sony PlayStation. It is very clear that this is a brand that is, in a sense, “under Sony’s wing,” but it is also a stand-alone brand that is expected to succeed regardless of what or how Sony is doing at the time.
Although the corporate brand’s established status lends some support to the endorsed brand, endorsed brands depend on it less. Nestle’s Nescafe is a fantastic illustration of a brand endorsement.
It’s the ideal compromise—a new brand gets a lot of the humor from its parent company while still being distinctive enough to stand on its own. The primary drawback of these brands is the high bar that users must meet—the parent brand’s expectations being the first. Furthermore, even with the support of the parent company, a brand like this cannot succeed on its own if it does not offer real value to the consumer.
Specific product names
P&G’s success over the years can be attributed to their individual product brands. These are independent brands that don’t seem to be associated with their parent company. For instance, very few individuals are aware that P&G is the company behind the Pampers brand.
Product brands that are marketed independently must possess sufficient strength to carve out a niche for themselves in the market without relying too much on their corporate brand. In the event that they are acquired by another business, these brands can also be promoted more easily and with greater versatility.
House of brands versus the Branded House
When discussing brand architecture, it is impossible to overlook David Aaker, the legendary branding expert who has authored more articles on the subject and developed the Aaker Model, a model for assessing brand equity.
Aaker distinguishes between the branded house and the house of brands, two main forms of brand structures, among other brand architectural ideas.
A branded home architecture comprises a powerful master brand, the goods of which are dependent upon the strength of the master brand and lack their own identities. Virgin and Amazon are two excellent instances of this. Given that its masterbrand has grown in prominence over the past few years, Coca-Cola’s recent brand movements have also transformed the company into a more recognizable home architecture brand.
Procter & Gamble has been operating as a house of brands, letting individual brands stand on their own and compete without the masterbrand’s overt support. In the backdrop, the master brand informs investors and stockholders that these distinct brands, as it were, have substantial support.
The Significance of Brand Structure
It may appear that brand architecture is just a descriptive term used to describe how companies “grow into” a particular architecture, which is then mostly used to explain their internal operations, however this is simply untrue.
Large organizations can expand and build their brand portfolio in a controlled manner with the help of brand architecture. Put another way, they choose a particular style of brand architecture because they believe it will improve the performance of their recently created or acquired brands in the marketplace.
For instance, a company may purposefully decide to highlight its powerful corporate brand in order to lower its advertising expenses. You can promote your whole product line with one series of ads rather than one for each product when your corporate brand is really powerful and your individual brands are only vehicles for the master brand’s strength. Additionally, this lowers the price of manufacturing and shipping consistently successful promotional goods.
Conversely, a company that buys well-known brands on a regular basis will not have a strong corporate brand and will instead be more assertive when it comes to individual brands. We return once more to the P&G scenario, which has acquired countless brands over the years without brand customers ever realizing that the master brand has changed.
For instance, P&G purchased the well-known pet food firm Iams in 1999, and it owned the brand for a few years before selling it to Mars, Inc. (global) and Spectrum Brands (Europe) in 2014. During all these changes, some customers may have chosen to move to other pet food manufacturers if P&G had been a powerful and assertive corporate brand.
It should be noted that if P&G had been overly linked with their master brand, it would have been far more difficult for them to sell Iams and other brands they have sold over the years. For example, Virgin would find it very challenging to sell any of its brands because, in the absence of Virgin, they are essentially indistinguishable from the competitors.
In terms of marketing, businesses such as P&G are afforded greater latitude in terms of establishing their identities. They can be significantly more daring than, say, Coca-Cola, whose brand identifiers are so well-known and expected, and they do not have to maintain a visual identity across their brand spectrum.
Large organizations also take great care when it comes to brand architecture, as executing it correctly allows them to provide customers with a very clear and concise manner to view all of their items. Furthermore, by building a strong brand architecture, businesses may ensure that multiple sub-brands do not wind up vying for the same market, preventing them from becoming their own competitors.
In addition to all of this, brand architecture will undoubtedly impact the company’s interactions with its shareholders and investors.
Learning more about brand architecture can reveal some incredibly fascinating insights into how the largest companies are managing the big picture issues. It is a significant component of the corporate ecosystem. You will learn a great deal about branding at the highest level and uncover connections you were unaware of.
