HBR ARTICLE

THE BRANDING LOGIC

BEHIND GOOGLE'S
CREATION OF ALPHABET
BY KEVIN LANE KELLER
Presented by
Alan Babu
Amrutha P R
Anandu K M
 INTRODUCTION

• Google brand is one of the most valuable brands in the world.

•But in August 2015 the company abruptly renamed itself 'Alphabet' and Google a subsidiary.
•Alphabet is meant to be the tech’s giant parent company, with Google as its largest subsidiary (managing
popular services such as search, maps, YouTube and Android), but also other direct divisions such as Nest and
Ventures.
•So this change results in arising a question in everyone's mind and that was if the Google brand is so well-
known, why muddy the waters by introducing a new parent brand, Alphabet?
•For reaching out to a conclusion the stories of two other iconic brands – Starbucks and Virgin are instructive.
 1.STARBUCKS

•Starbucks with 2 decades of spectacular growth in coffee chain in the world,

desire to turn over more customers and cut costs to boost profits led Starbucks to
lose sight of what it was.
•It entered Dunkin’ Donuts’ and 7-Eleven’s territory of automated, sub-par,
budget coffee.
•But unfortunately revenue
•Its market capitalisation plummeted.
•Starbucks responded by going “back to basics,”
 2.VIRGIN

• Virgin expanded its corporate brand into an incredibly diverse set of industries.
• Internally, their businesses were organized into seven categories:
• Proven to be extremely difficult to keep its promise to the customers.
• The Virgin brand has encountered problems or even failures across a whole set of
product and service markets.
• Many products and services which Virgin was introduced and subsequently
withdrawn.
 3. GOOGLE  

• Google is wise to learn from these two brand histories.

• Google is moving in the opposite architectural direction.
• The theme of the past decade wasthe move towards a single ‘branded
house’
• Google is doing the exact opposite by creating a pure ‘house of brands
The new Alphabet umbrella aims to:
*Give investors more transparency about its structure and different businesses.
*Separate business activities that had nothing in common.
*Give an entire focus on each division of the new holding

*Make each division grow into its own brand.