What's up brand builders! Stephen Houraghan here of BrandMasterAcademy.com and in
this video you're gonna learn what brand architecture is so you can leverage this
brand strategy to provide the structure that will support your brand growth.
now if you're new to the channel and you want actionable brand strategy tips and
techniques well you're in luck because this channel is full of them but also
hit that subscribe button and hit the notification bell as well and it'll let
you know when we've got new videos coming out now the term brand
architecture sounds very corporate and I remember when I was learning about brand
strategy I saw this term come up time and again and I avoided learning what it
was because I really didn't think that it applied to me I was helping smaller
businesses with their brand strategies and I believed that brand architecture
was something for the top 0.001 percent of all brands really the giant brands
with 400 sub-brands under their belt but when I did take the time to learn about
it I understood a little bit more about how that could be applied to small
business as well and when you think about the word architecture it's just
another word for structure so when you think of brand architecture is just
brand structure and it doesn't just apply to brands with multiple sub-brands
it applies to much more than that so I want to show you how big brands use
brand architecture and I also want to show you how smaller brands can use
brand architecture for their own structure so what is brand architecture
well it's a technique the brand strategists use to provide structure but
where is this structure being provided well it starts on an entry level with
products and services moving up from there you'll have divisions and sectors
and moving up from there again you'll have entire companies so how does this
play out in the real world well let's imagine for a second that you own a
small business now let's say that you provide services and over time your
business grows and therefore your services grow as well you start to offer
more services now if you continue to grow from that point and you have
multiple services you might decide to break those
services up into separate divisions if your brand continues to grow from that
point and your divisions grow with that you might then decide to break those
divisions up into multiple companies now you don't need to wait until you get to
a point where you have multiple companies to leverage the benefits of
brand architecture each one of these entities is a possible brand whether
it's a company whether it's a division whether it is a service so how does this
play out practically well let's say for example you offer brand strategy
services and you offer rebranding services now instead of calling your
services just rebranding services you might decide to call it your five-step
brand revive program now in this case what you've done is you've branded a
service and in doing that you've already raised the value perception in the mind
of your audience because it's branded as its own product it's got its own brand
it's got its own message it's got its own specific audience and it's gonna
build its own brand equity as well now let's say you go on and you continue to
grow and then you decide that you want separate divisions you want to have a
separate strategy division and you want to have a separate design division and
you brand those separately as well well again each one of those divisions is
gonna start to earn its own brand equity and then moving on from there again
let's say you decided to then split your business and offer consultancy on this
side and then execution services on this side again you're leveraging that brand
equity you're leveraging the ability for each one of these businesses to be able
to speak specifically to the target audience that you're targeting now this
is not to suggest that as a start-up you go out and you brand all your services
individually and you start splitting divisions and splitting up your company
into two that's not what this is for its ready to just get you thinking about how
your brand structure might look over time whether it's your brand or your
clients brand to think long term about where this business is going where this
brand is growing so you can think structurally about how that will look so
you can provide support to allow for that growth
so let's take a look at some examples here now when it comes to brand
architecture there are two main models and that is branded house and house of
brands so let's start with a branded house so a branded house structure is
where a parent brand or master brand sits on top of the sub-brands and all of
those sub-brands are a derivative of the parent brand so what does that mean well
as a derivative they will all look and feel the same with slight differences
they'll all share the parent brand name but they will have a sub-name so an
example of this would be Apple so with Apple you have Apple sitting at the top
as the master brand and underneath you have the iPhone you have the iMac you
have the MacBook Pro you have the iWatch all of these are so brands but they all
leverage the brand equity of the master brand that is Apple another example of a
branded house is FedEx so with FedEx you have the parent brand or the master
brand sitting on top and underneath with the sub-brands you have FedEx Ground
FedEx Express FedEx Freight and all of these are specifically targeting a
segment of the target market that FedEx has but they're being more relevant to
that specific segment so you can see the benefit playing out here with the FedEx
example then you have the house of brands so the house of brands structures where the
parent brand sits on top and all of the sub-brands are completely independent of
the parent brand so they're all positioned completely differently
they're all positioned independently and they have their own look and feel they
have their own brand identity and they all speak to their own specific target
audience in a very specific way so this structure allows the parent brand to
target a really really broad audience because each one of the sub-brands can
be so so specific in their targeting in their messaging and in their positioning
as well now one of the most well-renowned examples of a house of brands is
Unilever now although Unilever if you're in the
branding space you know who they are but most consumers don't know who Unilever
is they don't hear that brand name because it's not a consumer brand yes
consumers will know the sub-brands they'll know Dove they'll know
Lynx or Axe they'll know Flora or they'll know Ben and Jerry's ice cream all of
these sub-brands have their own specific target audience they position themselves
specifically to that target audience and their messaging is specific so all of
these sill brands are completely independent and as a consumer you don't
see the relationship that these sub-brands have with their parent brand and for
most consumers they don't even know that that parent brand exists and that is
part of the magic behind a house of brands structure is that it allows this
parent brand to sit on top have all of these sub-brands and each one of these
sub-brands can go position themselves specifically to its target audience and
has no public relationship really with the parent brand now I know the examples
that have just given plays into the idea that brand architecture really is for
the giant brands of the world but going back to the earlier examples it allows
you to really think about the structure of your own brand that you're building
or the structure of your clients brands and if you're able to think ahead if
you're able to understand what the vision is long term then you can spot
opportunities for your own brand or for your clients brands to take the time to
brand one of their services or one of their divisions or divide the company
and really think long term about how that structure is going to play out and
if you're able to do that you'll provide support for growth long term but I'd
love to hand it over to you now I'd love to hear from you what are your experiences
when it comes to brand architecture do you work at one of these branded houses
or one of these house of brands and do you have some insights you can share in
the comments below have you used brand architecture with
smaller brands that you're building or your clients brands have you come across
it before or do you have any challenges when it comes to brand architecture how
to lay it out and how to think strategically about it I'd love to hear
your comments in the box below if you like this video please give it a thumbs
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I'll do my best to answer all of those until next time brand like a master and
I will see you in the next video!