Professional Documents
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Brand Architecture: A Branded House or House of Brands?
Within companies, there is often an internal struggle when it comes to brands: diversify or
standardize? The decision about how to brand numerous products within a given company
depends on many factors and is extremely important in determining resource allocation and
organizational structure.
Newer and smaller companies striving for brand recognition typically choose the branded‐house
strategy, focusing resources on increasing awareness of a single brand name across all products.
This is certainly efficient in terms of managing the marketing mix and creating a consistent
image, along with messages and values. However, this strategy can limit a company’s ability to
target a wide audience, limit product expansion opportunities, and leave a company with a
tarnished reputation should a crisis affect just one product within the branded group.
Larger, more diversified companies often choose the house‐of‐brands strategy, creating distinct
brand lines that target broad consumer audiences. Some companies even encourage internal
competition, as Procter & Gamble does by owning Joy, Dawn, and Ivory dish detergents. While
this might risk cannibalizing the products’ own individual market shares, it also creates the
opportunity to dominate a particular product category. Naturally, this strategy requires greater
resources to manage a diverse product portfolio with multiple product images and accurate
messaging.
Today, however, given the dynamic markets resulting from increasing rates of globalization,
consolidation, and acquisition, most companies now employ hybrid, or house‐blend, strategies.
Disney is a great example of the use of the house‐blend strategy. It expanded its G‐rated movie
focus to an R‐rated audience through its acquisitions of Touchstone and Miramax. Google is also
a good example. With the acquisition of YouTube by Google’s parent company Alphabet,
maintaining the YouTube brand despite its otherwise uniformly Google‐branded products.
In addition, a parent or umbrella brand can create what are called brand extensions, which
leverage the association with the parent brand, such as Mars did with M&M’s, Peanut M&M’s, and
Pretzel M&M’s, or NBC did with Law & Order, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (SVU), Law &
Order: Criminal Intent, and Law & Order: UK.