FLETCHER WEIR
BRAND ARCHITECTURE
WHEN THE PORTFOLIO HAS BECOME TOO COMPLICATED
Everything made sense when it was added.
But together, maybe not so much.
Businesses rarely set out to create complicated brand portfolios. They grow- or react - into them.
A new product gets a name. Services become brands. Businesses get acquired. Different markets do things differently. And people become attached to what they've built.
Before long, there are more brands, names and propositions than customers - or even employees - can make sense of.
But confusion is only part of the problem.
Investment gets spread too thin. Brands compete with each other. And the business misses opportunities to build the value of the organization behind them.
IT MIGHT LOOK LIKE
Even existing customers are no longer sure which brand or product is right for them.
New products keep being added, without any consistent logic for naming or branding them.
The individual brands are strong, but the parent organization is becoming almost invisible.
An acquired brand doesn't quite belong anywhere, and a force-fit won't work.
Different parts of the portfolio seem to be competing with each other.
Or everybody agrees the portfolio is too complicated - but every piece has someone willing to die on a hill for it.
THE PROBLEM MAY NOT BE THE NUMBER OF BRANDS
Sometimes the problem is simply that there are too many names and not enough logic. But sometimes the problem is more fundamental.
The business has not decided which brands should lead, which should support others, and which are no longer earning their keep. Or whether the corporate brand should be doing more of the heavy lifting.
Acquisitions have changed the shape of the business without anyone reconsidering how its brands fit together. Investment may be spread across the portfolio because nobody wants to make the difficult choices.
A brand architecture won't make those decisions for the business. But it will make them impossible to avoid.
WHAT WE LOOK AT
We look at the business, its ambitions and how the portfolio needs to support them.
We work out where the value sits — in the individual brands, the parent brand and the relationships between them.
We find out which brands customers recognize, trust and choose. And which ones are getting in the way.
We identify where brands have genuinely different roles, and where they're competing for the same customers or resources.
We challenge the assumptions, internal loyalties and historical decisions that have shaped the portfolio.
We consider what future acquisitions, new products and market expansion will demand of it.
And then we work out which brands should lead, which should support, and where the business should concentrate its investment.
WHAT THAT CAN LEAD TO
Sometimes, a simpler portfolio with fewer brands and a clearer role for each.
It might mean strengthening the parent brand, giving individual brands more independence, or changing how they work together.
It could mean a better way to accommodate acquisitions, launch new products or enter new markets.
Sometimes it means deciding where to invest, what to combine, what to retire and what to leave alone.
The answer isn't always fewer brands. It's a portfolio in which every brand has a reason to exist.
THE POINT
Brand architecture shouldn't just make a complicated portfolio easier to understand.
It should help the business decide where to build value, where to invest, and how to grow
CONTACT
Have a portfolio that's harder to explain than it should be?
Let's talk.
Brand architecture · Portfolio strategy · Brand Positioning · Naming Strategy · Value proposition