By M. Isi Eromosele

Brand Architecture enables a corporation to better manage its assortment of brands within its business portfolios, facilitating its ability to apply its strategic vision for each brand. This creates a more reliable brand management scheme that fosters the implementation of specific plans for each individual brand.

In today’s highly competitive business environment, the development of a brand architecture by many companies is flawed in execution because of the following:

• They fail to define brand roles
• They apply inconsistent brand building practices
• Brands are structured to meet only short-term strategic goals
• The process used does not include customer perceptions of the brand
• The failure to use relevant customer data as a basis for making branding decisions

Successful brand architecture starts with taking a holistic approach in managing brand portfolios, identifying the cohesive elements of each brand in an effort to increase their collective brand equity. Brand architecture should be used more as a strategic tool for enhancing the perceptions of its brands by customers.

The role of customers in the success or failure of brands is the foremost issue in managing brand architecture. Customer experience with brands does occur in interwoven ways where they tend to compare one brand to another, even if both brands are from the same company. As such, efficient brand architecture should be based on documented customer brand experience.

After developing relationship with brands through user experience, customers form perceptions of those brands based on their experience as well as comparable experiences with other relative brands.

To keep customers in the fold, companies need to identify the synergies between the brands in their business portfolios. Identifying these synergies will provide an immense opportunity to increase the value of individual brands, even as the company seeks to enlarge the complete portfolio value.

A company with several brands under its umbrella business portfolio must find the dormant synergies that exist among those brands to help increase its market share. The next step is to discern how these synergies will benefit the target customers. How much business value can be obtained from them? Furthermore, there is a need to gain better understanding of the equity and significance of every brand in their respective portfolios - quality, traits, brand associations, brand personalities and brand image.

Brand relationship mapping is crucial in discovering possible chances for adding value to each brand portfolio. Precisely, there is a need to recognize the instruments to use in creating brand value.

Options to be considered towards achieving increased brand value include consolidation of brands, leveraging strong brands, redeveloping weak brands, implementing rebranding strategies and developing new brands. The strongest brands offer the best option for creating added brand value. These brands are instantly associated with the solid image of the company, they are easily associated with high quality brand image of the company and they enjoy high brand personality perception from consumers.

To extend the growth of brand portfolios, two brand building approaches need to be implemented. These are brand pooling and brand trading.

Brand pooling involves addressing conflicting consumer needs by offering them a pooled collection of brands in a concentrated effort to win their business. This enables the brand portfolio to serve a broader market while achieving multiple category customer benefits and taking advantage of cross-selling opportunities.

When there is a need to serve alike customer segments with divergent needs, brand trading is applied. This necessitates the creation of sub-brands of a master brand to accomplish being able to meet the different needs of the customer segment.

The brands offered are complimentary to as well as trade off each other’s strengths in a way that is more than the sum of one brand.

Efficient brand architecture facilitates a company’s ability to leverage the synergies among its individual brands in meeting the divergent needs of its customers. The company increases the value of its brand portfolio by utilizing a collective approach to managing its portfolio of brands, helping it to achieve sustained growth.

M. Isi Eromosele is the President | Chief Executive Officer | Executive Creative Director of Oseme Group - Oseme Creative | Oseme Consulting | Oseme Finance

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