While there are many different models of designing brand architecture, this article will look at two approaches: House of Brands, and Branded House.

House of Brands

Most consumer product brands use the House of Brands strategy. That is, the product itself is the primary brand, rather than the company. Consider Pantene, Duracell, Nespresso and Uncle Toby’s. Most consumers would have trouble identifying them with companies that actually own them (Procter and Gamble, Nestle).

In the IT space consider the relationship between Google and Alphabet, Google’s newly created parent brand. Like Procter and Gamble, Alphabet is essentially a corporate holding company and never consumer facing – consumers won’t start ‘Alphabetting’ any time soon.

In a House of Brands model, individual products or companies can focus on what they each do best without limiting the broader group’s businesses growth trajectory. In the Alphabet example, Google will continue to operate in the search and analytics sphere which it knows best and YouTube can focus on video content, while smaller operations such as Nest Labs home appliances, Verily life sciences, Wing drone deliveries and GV, Alphabet’s venture capital business, will operate as individual companies in their own specialist areas. This opportunity for flexibility is a large part of the reason why a House of Brands model may be adopted.

Another example is General Motors. They make cars under a few brands, with Holden, Chevrolet and Opel each established brands in their own right. Underneath the Holden brand there are more brands still – Commodore, Barina, Astra and Colorado.

The risk here can be brand confusion. Brands that try to cast too wide a net risk ending up without a loyal following in any market or demographic.

Another risk is budget – organisations using a House of Brands structure will need to invest in building many brands, instead of being able to consolidate investment behind one master brand.

Branded House

A Branded House is where the company brand (or a main overarching brand) becomes the dominant source of identification and meaning.

ING Group is a great example of a Branded House approach. In Australia, ING offers banking, and is known as ING Direct. Their range of finance and everyday banking options also fall under the overall brand, such as ING Orange Everyday, ING Business Optimiser, ING Living Super and ING home loans.

Another example of a Branded House is Virgin. Their host of businesses are extremely diverse: wedding dresses, trains, credit cards, airlines, a music company, a health and fitness chain, and so on. All these companies draw their energy from a single brand identity: Virgin. This stymies the brands’ independence at the product level, but the energy of the brand overall pervades and strengthens each company despite the lack of shared product commonality.

A Hybrid Model

While the examples we shared use the one strategy, it is more common for companies and brands to use a mix of strategies with different roles for different types of brand extensions.

Westpac, for example, has a number of the brands that sit within their portfolio which fit neither the house of brands or branded house model.

The endorsed brand model has been adopted where the brands, like Xylo, are newer and require the support of the more established parent brand. This endorsement allows the brands to seem more credible, while the parent brand remains distant enough to reduce the risk to its image.

The Westpac Institutional Bank uses a sub-brand approach because there is equal equity between the two products or brands, but the institutional offer sits outside of the Westpac core offer of retail finance. This allows the sub-brand to retain its own specialty within its section of the market, while also demonstrating the parent brands’ breadth of expertise.

Choosing the appropriate Brand Architecture

When choosing between a Branded House and a House of Brands (and everything in between), there are multiple factors to take into consideration before embarking on either course.

First, building multiple brands is very resource-intensive. It takes time, money and energy to build a brand. Concentrating all resources into a singular brand can sometimes be the best course of action.

Your target audience also needs to be taken into account. It can be very hard for certain brands to move from one market to another. Consumers may be confused or even hostile to what they perceive as an unwarranted move into foreign market territory.

Additionally, moving into lower value or higher risk markets may cheapen perceptions of your brand and begin to reduce its value and credibility. Creating a new brand can help that transition.

A House of Brands can be an effective mitigation strategy. In a recent example, a number of Mars bars were found to contain plastic in Germany, and hundreds of thousands of the product were recalled. There was an understandable drop in sales for Mars, however, M&Ms, Skittles and many other Mars products remained unscathed due to the minimal brand association between Mars and these other brands.

Crafting the right brand architecture for your organisation is a strategic process. When designed correctly, it allows the business to improve the cost effectiveness of its brand and marketing investment, as well as align brand positioning and value propositions appropriately with market segments to improve clarity and consistency across your organisation. It also creates a clear decision making framework for launching new products, and updating existing products, allowing the organisation to be more nimble and dynamic.

Not sure what is the right architecture for your business? Or need to screen the architecture decision you have already taken? Contact us to discuss.

This article was originally produced by BrandMatters, an expert brand strategy, research and insights agency, which was acquired by Fuller in 2023. Find out more.

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However the devil is in the detail and beyond the visible changes, it is vital that the strategic intent of the rebrand is clear, both externally, to your customers and internally, to your employees.

Change can be daunting, especially for long serving employees and loyal customers who have developed an emotional connection with the existing brand and may be reluctant to embrace the change.

A rebrand can only be successful if each and every member of the organisation is on board and stands behind the rebrand. This includes the C-Suite right through to the front-line staff dealing directly with customers. A team that is part of the process and fully understands the journey of the rebrand will be more likely to embrace it and advocate it to customers.

A rebrand announcement needs to create excitement, but it also needs to be clear and consistent.

If a rebrand is well planned and executed, then the communication part should be a lot easier. Ensuring that all of the assets are up to date and internal stakeholders are fully briefed, with a clear understanding of the new brand and expectations, will smooth the roll out of the new brand externally to your customers.

There are 7 crucial steps in the communication process that your organisation should consider when explaining a rebrand.

1. Communicate the strategic intent behind the rebrand

It is important to explain the strategy behind the rebrand decision. It may be as a result of a merger or acquisition, consolidation within your brand portfolio, new strategic direction, new product/service offering or in response to a changing business environment. Explaining why a change has occurred is as important as explaining what is changing.

Some organisations like to showcase a before and after approach, so that consumers and the internal team can associate the old with the new and get an understanding of the strategy behind the rebrand.

2. Communicate what is changing

Brand changes can be confronting for both internal and external audiences, especially if there isn’t clarity around what is changing. Whether it is a proactive or reactive brand change, setting clear expectations about the role of brand in your organisation going forward and then providing reassurance throughout the change process is critical.

3. Explain the critical elements of your business and brand that won’t change

There are certain fundamentals of your business and brand that should very rarely change, such as your purpose and the reason why you exist for your employees and your customers. A rebrand signifies a significant change in your market positioning, but it shouldn’t change the intrinsic and enduring aspects of your organisation.

4. Acknowledge the relationship to date and thank them for their ongoing support

A brand change is a unique opportunity to thank your internal and external audiences for their ongoing commitment to your business. Brand changes represent a different direction for your business and their ongoing, enduring support through the process will be critical in the success of the launch.

5. Build the excitement and make a splash

A rebrand gives you a positive reason to communicate and they are often used to build renewed interest in your brand and to remind your customers of your offering and the benefit you bring. Why should your audiences be interested in this change? What is the underlying benefit that they receive from this change?

Often, this benefit is as simple as a renewed energy from employees, and for customers the sense of engagement with the brand they are choosing to align themselves with, which will positively influence their service experience.

6. Bring people on the journey

A rebrand is often one of the first elements in a changing strategic direction for your organisation. There are many more exciting things to follow on from the initial change, and this is an opportunity to keep them engaged by teasing for further exciting initiatives within your organisation down the track.

7. Monitor the response to the rebrand and track your brand health

Finally, your internal and external audiences will have questions (and potentially concerns) that must be answered. Being accessible is important and transparency from your business leaders in this period of change is essential. Once the rebrand is launched it is important to monitor the responses, not just immediately, but over time. Some brand measurement may also be required to determine how the rebrand has been received or whether you need to further tweak the messaging or ramp up the communication to have it embraced further.

When you are sick of saying it, your audiences are only just hearing it

A rebrand is a significant process and should not be taken lightly. It is critical to get the communication and messaging right in order to assure your customers that the pain of change will be minimal and that the attributes they value most will continue on.

It is also important to engage your employees in this process and ensure they are taken on the journey. They will act as advocates for the new brand if they understand and believe in the process and have been communicated throughout.

At Fuller, we understand that a rebrand process doesn’t end once the brand guidelines are handed over. Our experienced communications specialists specialise in supporting you to plan how to best communicate your rebrand to all of your key stakeholders – shareholders, customers and your employees.

If you would like to find out more about how Fuller can support your team to communicate change in your business, please contact us today.

This article was originally produced by BrandMatters, an expert brand strategy, research and insights agency, which was acquired by Fuller in 2023. Find out more.

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But what roles do business strategy, brand strategy and marketing strategy each play? And how do they interrelate? In this blog post, we explore the relationship between them.

Business Strategy

A business or organisational strategy details a firm’s vision, mission and long-term objectives. The organisational objectives form the heart of the strategy, which lays out specifically how the firm plans to achieve them and the resources that will be needed to deliver.

Business strategy considers many things, including market structure and competitors, entry and exit barriers, market segmentation, market trends, organisational scale, spread and structure, organisational agility, organisational culture, product/service portfolio, branding and differentiation, IP, business model, distribution channels, supply and demand, sources of revenue, cost structure, cash flow, technology, strategic partnerships and the keys to success.

The strategies proposed should reflect the organisation’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, as well as its competitors and the market.

Brand Strategy

Brand is the expression of the essence of an organisation, product, or service – its reason for being. It communicates the characteristics, values and attributes that the organisation or product stands for, how it is positioned differently to competitors, and why a customer would buy it.

The brand strategy exists to amplify this brand to enable, express and bring to life the business strategy.

It consists of the brand positioning- the unique, relevant, credible and sustainable position in the market that it owns – along with the brand story, values, personality and brand tone of voice.

It should also include the employee value proposition (EVP), which is closely linked to your brand.

If there are multiple brands, it may also include a brand architecture framework and brand portfolio strategy. And if there are multiple brand audiences, the brand strategy may also include customer value propositions (CVPs).

Marketing Strategy

Once an organisation has signed off its brand strategy, it will need to create a marketing strategy and a marketing plan.

Whereas branding is strategic, marketing is more tactical and focuses on actively promoting and selling a product or service. It’s about putting the right product/service in the right place, at the right price, at the right time. It unearths and activates buyers. All marketing initiatives and campaigns should reinforce and support the brand essence.

A marketing strategy typically answers the following questions for a product or service:

• Who are its customers?
• Who are its competitors?
• What makes it stand out in the market?
• Which market trends can be taken advantage of?
• What are its strengths and weaknesses and what are the opportunities and threats?
• What initiatives and programs can be used to promote it and take advantage of its strengths and the available opportunities, mitigate its weaknesses and minimise the threats?

The intersection of business, brand and marketing

As you can see, there are several points of intersection between business strategy, brand strategy and marketing strategy.

The competitive environment, market structure, market segments and target customers are fundamentally important to all of these strategies, and all three strategies must consider market trends to be viable in the long run.

Branding precedes and underlies marketing efforts, and so marketing initiatives and campaigns should reinforce and support the brand positioning.

To create effective integration between business, brand and marketing strategy, consider the sequencing of these strategic plans so that each plan can be informed by the plans gone before them. Business strategy comes first, closely followed by brand strategy, and then marketing strategy.

We consider these connection points and associated conundrums as part of our daily fare. If you’d like a point of view on how to resolve or reconcile any of the above, we’d love to hear from you – please contact us.

This article was originally produced by BrandMatters, an expert brand strategy, research and insights agency, which was acquired by Fuller in 2023. Find out more.

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The view was that the main driving force behind purchases was price and that the relationship between decision-makers, who are unmoved by emotional factors like brand, and sales representatives was the priority.

However, those views have changed, and most people now understand that branding is every bit as important for B2B businesses as for B2C businesses.

B2B buyers are people, and people are emotional beings who largely make decisions relying on their first impressions of stored memories, images and feelings. These emotions impact economic decision making.

In a sense, brands operate on an emotional level by stimulating that part of the brain that stores emotional reactions. By nurturing the right brand associations in your prospects’ minds, you can begin closing the deal before the selling has even started.

B2B businesses can benefit greatly from a strong brand that:

• gives customers a reason to choose your brand over competitors
• shortens the sales cycle
• empowers your brand to charge and sustain a price premium
• enables your brand to build trust with its key stakeholders – customers, employees, shareholders, distributors, partners, intermediaries etc.
• creates loyal customers, advocates, and even evangelists, out of those who buy
• lowers sensitivity to price increases
• attracts and retains the best employee talent

Because brand-influenced emotional reactions impact buyer decision making, companies with strong brands usually achieve better financial performance.

There are many great examples of B2B branding, but these organisations really stand out from the pack in more way than one:

Boeing

A global brand known around the world as the leading manufacturer of commercial aircraft, Boeing has successfully owned this positioning. However, from a B2B perspective, they are also leaders in manufacturing defence, space and security systems, with a vision to be the largest aerospace company with innovation at its core. Boeing’s focus on innovation attracts and retains the best talent, which is vital in a company that relies on the best and brightest to continually innovate in their industry.

MailChimp

The most recognised email marketing service provider, MailChimp has traditionally positioned themselves as the ‘lead in’ or ‘go-to’ email marketing tool for beginners or smaller businesses. Mailchimp has managed to grow the brand and its values into a more professional B2B offering that can scale as your business scales. Awareness, ease of use and technical integration abilities have driven larger companies to buy into the brand and remain loyal.

By targeting beginners to email marketing, MailChimp also wins loyalty from users who don’t have time to learn a new system as their business grows.

Adobe

Adobe showcases its superior products direct to the consumer by utilising the branded house approach with each of their product offerings – Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Cloud, Adobe Spark. This approach has increased the awareness of their brand to consumers.

Adobe has positioned the brand as the creative solutions partner for businesses, pitched squarely at ‘creatives’ who are seen as trendsetters or forward thinkers, and have thus altered their brand strategy.

Perpetual

Perpetual is an ASX-listed, diversified financial services company with three separate, yet connected lines of business – Perpetual Investments, Perpetual Private and Perpetual Corporate Trust. They are one of Australia’s largest and most awarded wealth managers, an expert adviser to high net worth individuals, families and businesses, and a leading provider of corporate trustee services.

It’s a brand that has a very positive culture and prides itself on building teams around its strong investment philosophy and process, rather than creating “rock star” fund managers. We’re proud to have assisted Perpetual across brand strategy development and see them as the most trusted financial services brand in Australia.

To find out more about how Fuller can help your B2B business brand make the right impression, please contact us.

This article was originally produced by BrandMatters, an expert brand strategy, research and insights agency, which was acquired by Fuller in 2023. Find out more.

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