Executive Summary

• A brand architecture framework serves as an important roadmap and allows for a parent company to determine how to manage its subsidiary brands, how to strategize its outreach, and how its various brands should function.
• A successful brand architecture strategy offers benefits like improved brand clarity, enhanced brand equity, and greater opportunity for growth.
• Some types of brand architecture frameworks include the branded house, house of brands, endorsed brands, and hybrid framework models.
• In implementing their framework, companies will need to overcome challenges like managing a complex portfolio of brands, maintaining consistency across this portfolio, and adjusting to changes.

Building a Successful Brand Architecture Framework

A brand architecture framework is crucial in cases where a company oversees multiple products, services, and brands. This architecture will highlight how each brand relates to each other, how you present all your brands in the public eye, and how they overlap under the umbrella of your parent brand.

As you build this framework, you will need to answer questions like whether you want to advertise and manage your subsidiary brands freely and independently or whether you want them to be tied more closely together with your parent brand. Regardless of your choice, by building a strong framework, you increase your ability to clarify your brand identity, establish clearer messaging for each brand, and improve your management of each one.

To build a successful brand architecture, you should conduct a thorough audit of your current product and service offerings, understand your target audiences, and determine which architecture model makes the most sense for your company’s goals.

Types of Brand Architecture

A brand architecture is a strategically created framework that outlines a company’s structure and how its various brands, services, and products work together to create the parent company. There are multiple ways that a brand can build its architecture, from having the parent brand front and center to allowing more independence for sub-brands under a quieter parent brand. The following are different types of brand architecture examples and models.

Branded House (Monolithic)

In a branded house model, all a business’s brands operate under one umbrella parent company and are typically indistinct from each other. These instances allow for all the products and services to share the label of the parent company and for users of the services to understand which company oversees them.

For example, Google has a large suite of products that features Maps, Drive, Mail, Meet, Hangouts, and more. All these products are considered part of Google and target similar general audiences, yet they each offer their own separate service.

House of Brands (Pluralistic)

This model features several brands that all operate under one umbrella of a larger corporate entity. Each brand in a house of brands has a strong individual identity and unique brand story, to the point where it may appear as its own separate company but is still managed by an overarching company. Using this approach offers the benefit of allowing each brand to operate more independently and target a more specific audience with more refined messaging.

A house of brands architecture framework example is the Coca-Cola Company, which offers its classic soda but also oversees other brands like Dasani, Minute Maid, Sprite, Powerade, and more. You will see the Coca-Cola company logo somewhere on these products’ labels, but ultimately, each product maintains its own unique brand, messaging, and marketing initiatives.

Endorsed Brands

In an endorsed brand model, the overarching corporate brand is associated closely with its subsidiary products. The inclusion of the overarching corporate brand model acts as a seal of approval—this helps give each product strong credibility. This model is helpful when companies want to offer new products but already with a high level of legitimacy.

For example, Adobe offers a range of products that bear the name Adobe, like Photoshop, Lightroom, and Acrobat, but each product is different and tailors itself to a different audience. Still, the Adobe endorsement separates each product from its competitors with a mark of legitimacy and credibility.

Hybrid/Mixed Architecture

As you might guess, a hybrid architecture is a combination of the above approaches. The hybrid brand architecture may incorporate elements of branded house architecture, house of brands, and endorsed brand elements. In these cases, the parent company may associate closely with some of its brands while allowing the others to operate more independently.

This model allows a company to maintain some cohesive brand elements and consistency between its multiple brands while also allowing others to maintain a more distinct presence in the market. The hybrid approach is ideal for companies with diverse business needs and target audiences.

A good example of this model is Marriott International—the hotel brand uses this model to separate its luxury and premium brands from its value brands.

Steps to Building a Brand Architecture Framework

A brand architecture framework is a valuable tool in determining how to present a brand to a target audience and refine its messaging. The following steps are crucial in building a firm, successful brand architecture framework.

1. Audit Existing Brands and Products

The first step to building a successful brand architecture framework is to review all your company’s existing products and brands using a thorough brand audit. You should use this audit to determine how each brand is perceived by your target audience, how well your messaging resonates with consumers, and assess both strengths and areas of improvement.

If you find that your company offers a wide array of products and services that bear different brands, you will likely benefit from a house of brands or approach, or if you have many similar products that you offer under one strong parent company, you will likely benefit from an endorsed brand or branded house approach. Meanwhile, a hybrid model may make more sense if a company features both types of brands.

This audit will allow you to group brands together in your architecture framework depending on common target audiences, product offerings, and messaging opportunities.

2. Define Business Goals and Objectives

The brand architecture framework you use should align with your overall brand strategy. You should work with your team to define clear business goals and objectives for your parent company and each of your subsidiaries.

Consider how your business will benefit from the various brand architecture framework example models. Clearly outlining your business goals will allow you to determine which framework best aligns with your ambitions, objectives, and interests. Be sure to think about both your short and long-term business goals in the process.

Consider the following questions as you draft your goals:

• Do you plan on offering new products or services in the future?
• How large of an audience do you want to reach?
• Do you hope to expand upon any of your current brands?
• Are you looking to reach different audiences?
• What does your growth plan look like for the future?
• Are you satisfied with your current branding and outreach strategy?

3. Understand the Target Audience

Your target audience, or audiences, is one of the biggest factors in shaping your brand architecture framework. Analyze your target audience by conducting market research and consumer surveys to begin audience segmentation and decide whether your various brands are all targeting similar audiences or if you have one generalized audience that can be reached by a singular entity.

If you have one large target audience, then a monolithic approach may be a better fit. However, if you have several target audiences that you reach using several different brands, then a pluralistic approach will likely make more sense.

4. Map Out Current Brand Relationships

Once you have a firm understanding of the audience you serve, you should map out all your brands, how they relate to each other, and how everything ties together. Consider how all your current brands are connected and where they stand in relation to your parent company.

Gather a holistic view of your current brand structure, which brands are subsidiary to the parent company, and which operate more independently. Using this map, you can determine whether a restructuring may be necessary to meet your business goals or if you only need a few changes. You can accomplish this by looking for holes in your strategy and identifying areas of improvement.

5. Choose the Appropriate Brand Architecture Type

All of your work auditing and analyzing your brands will culminate in you being able to choose the brand architecture type that makes the most sense for your company. As you weigh your options for a framework, you will need to consider your short and long-term vision for your brand.

Think about the following factors as you decide which one makes the most sense for you:

• Will your brand hierarchy be clear to you and your customers?
• Will you want to market all your brands together or separately?
• How closely do your subsidiary brand services relate to the parent brand?
• Do you want to closely manage your brands under one umbrella or do you want them to operate with more autonomy?
• Which hierarchy will account for all your unique target audiences?

6. Define Brand Roles and Hierarchies

Using your new framework, begin to define roles and hierarchies for all your brands and their relationship to the parent brand. This step is particularly helpful if you are following a hybrid structure.

Determine which brands will act as the master brands, sub-brands, endorsed brands, and so forth. Then, decide which brands will coincide closely with the parent brand in the public eye and which will maintain more distinct messaging. Make sure all the roles are clear and named distinctly so that there is no confusion in your brand hierarchy, for your team or your consumers.

7. Develop a Brand Migration Strategy

This step only applies in some instances, so you can adjust depending on whether this is applicable to you. If you are reframing your brand architecture for a brand that already exists, you will need to create a framework that will include all your current brands. If there are significant changes, you will need to determine how to migrate them either under the same umbrella or to a more independent position.

Your migration strategy should consider how you want to position each brand, how you roll it out to each target audience, whether you need to create a new brand identity, and how you adapt the messaging or styling for each one. Then, you must share this migration strategy with key stakeholders in your organization for consistent implementation.

8. Create Brand Guidelines and Governance

Finally, once you have determined your ideal brand architecture framework, you can focus on how each brand should present itself and how you manage each one. Your management and creative teams should work together to craft consistent brand guidelines for the different brands that give each one a distinct logo and room for independence but also tie them all together under a similar, familiar style.

These brand guidelines should cover factors like:

• Verbal messaging
• Voice and tone for writing
• Brand styles for graphics, fonts, and imagery
• Brand color palettes

These brand guidelines should then be shared across your organization with necessary stakeholders, like your design, outreach, and marketing teams.

You should also have clear procedures in place for how you will manage each of these brands. For example, determine whether brands will function mostly independently with significant autonomy for the management team or if an office of the parent company will oversee multiple brands.

Benefits of a Well-Defined Brand Architecture

A clear and well-defined brand architecture serves as the foundation for how you should handle marketing initiatives, messaging, resource allocation, and more. All together, a structured brand architecture framework informs the rest of your brand management strategy.

Benefits of a well-defined brand architecture include:

• Improved clarity – A well-thought-out brand architecture improves clarity for those in the organization as well as customers on how various brands relate to a parent company.
• Enhanced brand equity – An architecture framework supports improved value from being recognized by a larger audience and generating lasting loyalty.
• Greater flexibility for growth – A clear architecture allows your company to prepare for growth and determine where new products and brands will fit into the framework.
• Streamlined marketing efforts – Your brand framework will determine how you should run your marketing efforts based on your different service offerings.
• Stronger customer trust – A strong structure fosters brand trust as customers are better able to recognize the unique parts of your brand and build connections with the sectors of your brand that are most meaningful to them.

Common Challenges and How to Overcome Them

Developing a brand architecture strategy for a company with several subsidiary brands can be a complex and involved process. The following are some of the common challenges associated with creating a well-defined brand architecture.

Resistance to change

Companies may experience resistance to changing brand architecture from stakeholders who prefer business as usual. However, having a clear roadmap for your marketing and management plans moving forward will allow you to demonstrate that the changes are worthwhile. Findings from a brand audit and customer surveys that inform your brand architecture realignment plan can also be helpful for proving that your initiatives are results-driven and goal-oriented.

Maintaining consistency across brands

Even though subsidiary brands may be separate and independently operated underneath a parent company, many companies aim to achieve a level of consistency to keep brand communications and styles consistent. As brands are segmented, this becomes more difficult.

To overcome this, it’s important for brands to maintain strong brand guidelines that specify how messaging should look across the parent company and all subsidiary brands. With these guidelines in place, companies can stay consistent across brands for easier brand recognition. Companies may also choose to have

Navigating complex portfolios

If you are a parent company with a complex portfolio of brands, then building a strong framework can be challenging. In many cases, a hybrid approach is helpful for structuring companies that have a diverse set of interests and audiences so you can maintain flexibility.

However, be sure to avoid developing a brand architecture strategy that is too complex. You should avoid getting lost in the weeds and create a framework that is clear and uniform so that it’s easy for internal managers and external stakeholders to understand and manage.

Create a Framework That Aligns with Your Business Goals

Building a brand architecture framework is instrumental in helping companies define who they are and how they present their brands to their target audiences. Choosing the right model for your organization will allow you to refine your messaging for each of your brands, determine how to manage each, and better reach your intended audiences.

At PETERMAYER, we help brands determine who they are and how to channel their identity into positive outreach. From helping create a brand identity framework to developing creative messaging campaigns, we channel our expertise into helping brands connect with their target audiences. Above all else, we support brands in unlocking the joy they bring to their consumers through their everyday actions, helping brands discover their Joy Score and how to leverage it.

Schedule a call with our team at PETERMAYER to learn more about how we can support you in building and refining your brand.

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