Software development companies usually manage several brands at once (each app usually has its own brand and then another one for the developer’s company), so we will dedicate today’s article to brand architecture. Lets start!
App-Branding | Brand architecture
It is about organizing your brand portfolio to enhance their value. A good brand architecture system allows the specification of missions, values and relationships between the brands of a company (or a network of companies), in addition, brings order and logic to the business structure.
Brand architecture is closely related to brand strategy, detects overlaps, and identifies brands that do not fit the portfolio. It is very important when new products are launched, new channels of communication are opened, new market segments are attacked or when mergers or acquisitions take place.
Brand architecture models:
1. Branded house: a single brand for all products, at the same time, it is the companies’s brand. It is a quality guarantee for new products, it creates a total connection between different areas tackled by the company and reduces the cost in communication, on the other hand, it increases the risk of devaluation if any of the brand extensions does not work properly.
2. House of brands: Each business of the brand and the main corporate brand are different brands. It eases market focus by niches through different value propositions. It is the model used by the most diversified companies and provides flexibility to buy and sell brands. It grants maximum action freedom but the synergy between brands is minimal, in addition, it supposes a great cost in terms of communication.
3. Endorsed brands: it is a mixture of the two previous ones. Supports the new brands with the corporate brand. Communicates growth and size of the mother brand. It implies a certain risk of contagion of devaluation, but not as pronounced as in the branded house model.
4. Hybrid: A mixture of the three previous models and the most difficult to manage. With the asymmetric model you can decide the level of contagion that is appropriate for each brand.
Do not confuse brand architecture with the organizational structure of the company, brand architecture only concerns branding and communication.
Change philosophy:
By varying the brand architecture of a company you have to make changes in moderation and step by step. A first move can be to change the name respecting the graphics of the previous brand, or endorse the new name to the old and make small graphic changes so that the target does not lose the product in the App or Play Store.
A logo update helps to deepen a message change, it means that something has already changed forever in that company and customers are more open to believing the new approach.
To conclude I would like you to imagine your brand as a garden, you have to water it and take care of it daily if you want to have many visitors, who doesn’t like a well-kept garden?
