Brand architecture

Brand architecture arranges every name a company owns into a hierarchy: the parent brand on top, with product names, divisions, sub-brands and acquired companies beneath it. Three basic forms are common. In a branded house one name carries everything and the sub-brands are descriptive additions. In a house of brands several independent names sit side by side and the parent stays in the background. Between them is the endorsed form, where an independent brand is visibly backed by the parent.

The decision is not a matter of taste but a matter of cost. Every independent name needs its own recognition, its own content, often its own domain and its own trade mark protection, permanently rather than once. An additional name is therefore only right when it covers a different audience, a different price level or a different risk from the parent brand. Anything else is a name that draws attention away from the main one rather than adding to it.

In smaller companies the question rarely arrives as a strategy project. It arrives as tidying up: over the years three product names, two domains and a sub-brand have accumulated and nobody can tell what belongs to what. The reflex is a rebrand with a new name. Usually the smaller answer is enough: decide which name leads, hang the others beneath it as descriptive labels, and point the surplus domains at the leading name by redirect.