Brand Architecture: Building Brand Value

My latest post is out on MarketingDaily. This one is about brand architecture and, specifically, the usefulness of brand value as a way to evaluate brand architecture options. 

Brand architecture is almost always about trade-offs--a single brand strategy may be very efficient but you may lose the ability to focus on a particular customer or market segment whereas a P&G-like house of brands strategy is all about focus but is much more expensive to operate.

Brand value thinking boils down decisions into an evaluation of costs and benefits--will the customer be willing to pay more for a benefit than it costs the company to create that benefit? Such thinking puts a premium on simplicity and challenges businesses to look for sources of inefficiency and waste.

There can be strong arguments for going to market with a portfolio of brands but there's no excuse for wasting money supporting a complicated and expensive brand architecture if it's not paying its way.

In brand architecture, less is often more.

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