For any organization of any kind (or any individual/professional who takes their personal brand seriously), brand matters. The focus here is on branding for organizations, but the same can be applied to personal brands.

The traditional definition of a brand is that's a symbol or logo that distinctly identifies the company's products and services. This is a tactical definition of a brand.

But branding also has a hugely important strategic aspect. From the strategic angle, a brand is what your external target audience thinks of your organization when they're exposed to your brand name or logo.

An organization's skill at selecting, building and managing its brands makes all the difference between commercial success and irrelevance.

Let's briefly touch on how to create a valuable brand and how to organize a company's brands.

How to create a valuable brand

To create a valuable brand, your company must proactively design a specific customer service experience with multiple steps or stages as follow.

First, awareness

Attractive brand names, logos, and visuals that are used consistently get potential customers to pay attention.

Second, identity

Imbue the brand name with specific associations so customers will recognize what need category to place it in. For example, BMW is associated with luxury vehicles and placed alongside Mercedes and Audi.

Third, differentiation

Brands are customer choice units because customers can match their preferences to the brands available in the category as they search and compare (an important step in the buyer journey).

Fourth, performance

Once customers use your brand, it generates specific thoughts and feelings based on their experience. If their purchase and use experience exceeds or matches their expectations, the brand creates customer satisfaction. Customers that have high satisfaction with brands are likely to buy them again and recommend them to others.

Finally, loyalty

Successful brands generate brand loyalty. That's a relationship in which a customer relies on the brand in a habitual way while rejecting offers from other brands.

Remember, in that order:

 AIDPL Branding/Customer Service Experience Steps

How to organize a company's brands

Brand architecture is the number of brands you have and the relationship amongst them. It's an important choice you need to make in alignment with your go-to-market strategy.

Let's look at some of the most common brand architectures.

Umbrella Branded Companies (also known as Branded Houses)

These companies use a single brand to communicate a broad promise and also have an overarching marketing strategy that dictates many commercial decisions for their products and services. A typical example is Dyson.

House of Brands

These companies have different brand experiences and strategies for different products or service lines. A good example is LVMH which manages brands like Sephora, Tiffany & Co., Christian Dior, Moët & Chandon, and many others.

Umbrella-driven Hybrid

With this approach, there is a strong master brand and some sub-brands. An example of this would be Porsche Cayenne.

Sub-brand-driven Hybrid

With this approach, the product or service has a strong sub-brand, but also carries a corporate brand that endorses or provides additional value for the customer. For example, you might choose to stay at a Courtyard or Residence Inn for a different experience, but either way, you'll be getting loyalty points and a common baseline quality assurance from Marriot.

--

A brand is a go-to-market asset. Its value is determined by what customers think and feel when they see or experience it. When you create a go-to-market plan, the first question you want to ask yourself is, On behalf of what brand am I developing a strategy?

--

Next? Six-Box Positioning Tool - Articulating a Great Value Proposition

⏤

| ⎆Connect on LinkedIn | ☑︎ RSS feed

⏤