Optimized Brand Portfolio
Focus your brand portfolio to reinforce differentiation
Services
- Brand hierarchy development
- Naming (company and products)
- Visual identity design
- Brand management
Your “brand portfolio” includes your corporate brand, subsidiary brands, product brands and branded differentiators like named ingredients, technologies, functional attributes or services. Optimizing a brand portfolio means development, consolidation or extension of brands to support your business strategy and build strategic differentiation.
Whether you have a strong single brand or a diverse portfolio, Quadric can help you assess your options and manage transitions.
Your brand portfolio should:
- Clearly reinforce your positioning
- Transfer value between subsidiaries
- Give new products an increasing advantage
- Increase marketing efficiency
Often companies find themselves holding a complex portfolio as a result of acquisitions or entries into new markets. In the case of acquisitions, sometimes negotiation of goodwill and late stage concessions to management result in brands of acquired companies/products being unchanged. In the case of new market entries, new brands are often created to maintain an entrepreneurial spirit or give focus to a team. In these cases, transitioning to a more consolidated structure may make sense.
In other cases, expanding the brand portfolio creates value. For example, unique services or technologies (e.g. Toyota’s “Hybrid Synergy Drive”) or even corporate commitments (e.g. GE’s “Ecomagination”) can be developed into sub-brands that contribute to differentiation of the company and products .
Naming
Successful naming depends on first having a clear understanding of the position you want to build. Inspired by the position, as many names as possible should be developed and screened for relevance, usage and availability.
We generally recommend a combination of an internal competition, research into existing trademarks and name development by our creative network. We screen names using an international network and help you select the right name from a qualified short list. Once you select a name, we develop the guidelines for its role in your brand portfolio.
Output
Output will vary depending on your situation and the transition required. Often, the tangible deliverables are a brand book, online brand management resources and a training program that establishes new brand management principles. The contents include descriptions of the brands and their roles in your portfolio, extensive visual identity guidelines and policies for migration of brands or creation of new brands/sub-brands.
Read about how Cultural Uniqueness unites your people and enables them to deliver your position.