Brand Architecture Questions

We have worked with a large number of organizations that have needed help addressing brand architecture issues. Here are some of the issues that our clients have asked us to help solve:

• Should we have one brand or two?
• How should our brand promise play out at each level of branding?
• How many levels of branding should there be, and how does each level manifest itself?
• How can we reduce our brand architecture down from five levels of branding to two levels of branding?
• What is the architecture that creates the most coherent portfolio?
• How is each subbrand positioned against every other subbrand?
• How do we transition a product out of the architecture?
• How should category descriptors and product descriptors be handled vis-à-vis the architecture?
• How do we create more consistency in brand endorsement?
• Should these two brands be combined?
• Which brand’s identity system should be dominant?
• How will we determine the identities of new products, services, and programs?
• How do we create naming coherence across our brands?
• Should our organization build a dominant umbrella brand?
• If so, should there be other subbrands?
• If so, which ones?
• What should the dominant umbrella brand be?
• If there is a transition in the umbrella brand, how should this transition occur?
• Should we combine these subbrands into one brand?
• Should we change our subbrand structure to better match the way our consumer segments are evolving?
• How do we address naming of internal programs?
• What do we do with our newly acquired brands? How should they fit into our portfolio?
• How do donor-named entities (supported by large donations) fit into the brand architecture?
• How should we cobrand with strategic partners?
• How do we express ingredient brands?