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Advantages & Disadvantages of Different Branding Strategies

brandingsarahjaneOn Monday, we talked a bit about various branding strategies and why you should consider picking one to help your business and marketing strategies. With each branding strategy comes both advantages and disadvantages that you should be aware of.

  • Corporate Brand – For companies that only offer one benefit to a customer, they usually use a corporate brand (unless they have an overall holding company).
    • Advantages: Everything the company does is attributed to its brand.
    • Disadvantages: Everything the company does is attributed to its brand.
  • Distinct Brand – Some companies choose to release each product or service as its own brand (ex. Proctor & Gamble).
    • Advantages: Each product stands alone so failures do not affect the entire company or other products.  Distinct benefits for each product can be directly attributed to a specific brand.
    • Disadvantages: Each product will require its own marketing strategy and budget, with no synergy possible between products.  Successes will not be directly attributed to the company’s brand.
  • Hybrid Brand – When a product extends the benefit of an overall brand or company, some companies use a hybrid branding strategy.
    • Advantages: Marketing and branding can take advantage of the overall brand for budgets and reputation.
    • Disadvantages: Any problems or negative press for either the product or the overall brand will affect both brands.
  • Umbrella Brand – If a company offers different products with different benefits, but they all extend the same value to the customer, sometimes they are all offered under an overall brand (ex. Nike – athletic gear).
    • Advantages: Each product contributes to the shared value offered to the customer.  Marketing and branding strategies can be at the shared value level, touting all the specific benefits.
    • Disadvantages: Any product can negatively affect the overall brand and specific benefits may be muddled in the overall shared value.

Whichever branding strategy you choose, once you are aware of the advantages and disadvantages of each, you can take those into account when preparing your marketing strategies.

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(photo by Sarah Jane @ Flickr CC)

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Choosing a Branding Strategy is Fundamental

strategyhikingartist1Choosing a branding strategy is fundamental to properly marketing a product.  How you decide to brand your product or service will affect everything from advertising to pricing.  You may already have a branding strategy and not realize it, but here are some of the options:

  • Corporate Brand – Many companies, such as Target, offer only one type benefit to the customer (“design for all”).  Even though they sell a wide variety of products, there is only one value they add.  In this case, the brand is the same as the company.
  • Distinct Brand – Some companies produce a wide variety of products that each have distinct benefits to the customer.  There is no value in using the same brand for each product since the brand would then stand for a mishmash of benefits.  Companies such as Proctor & Gamble (P&G) us this type of strategy as they brand each of their products distinctly (Ivory, Pampers, etc.).
  • Hybrid Brand – Sometimes it makes sense to leverage the company name or an overall brand in addition to a separate name for the product.  This usually works best when the product brand extends the benefits offered by the overall brand, and is very common in the automobile industry (ex. Ford Taurus).
  • Umbrella Brand – When your company offers multiple products that each have a distinct benefit, but together offer a shared value to the customer, you may want to consider an umbrella brand (ex. Nike – athletic gear).

Whatever branding strategy you pick, be aware that it may affect the branding and marketing of your company and other products.  If you only have one product right now,  your choice will mostly be whether you are going to brand the product with your company or not.  Once you have a branding strategy in mind, it makes marketing and advertising decisions much easier.

(photo by HikingArtist.com @ Flickr CC)

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What is a Brand?

Our recent discussions on branding (here and here) brought up an important topic – what is a brand? Sometimes business owners think a brand is just a logo or a marketing message, but I think it’s much more:

  • Visual – A brand usually has a visual representation in terms of a logo or graphic that is easily recognizable.  Brands can also be identified by a spokesperson or icon (for example, the energizer bunny). Sometimes there are also visual representations that have been created by customers instead of the company.
  • Auditory – Many brands have a signature theme song or jingle (think rhapsody in blue for united airlines, or the Intel chimes) which can bring to mind the company when heard outside of advertisements.
  • Verbal – Through marketing, sales, and customer service, a company creates verbal impressions of what the company stands for in various situations.
  • Emotional – Brands evoke an emotional response in customers (hopefully good emotions), which are influenced by their interactions with the brand (advertising, purchasing, customer service, other customers, etc.).
  • Communal – With the ease of communication available on the Internet, customers can easily share opinions, feelings, and experiences about your brand with or without your influence.
  • Instinctive – Closely tied with emotional and communal influences, customers have instinctual feelings and opinions about your brand even before they’ve interacted with your company, formed through advertising and information from other customers.
  • Evolutionary – Brands are constantly evolving through interaction and shared experiences of customers, non-customers and companies.  A company can try to influence the evolution, but is no longer in complete control of the brand.
  • Descriptive –  By combining the various interactions with a brand, an overall impression of what the company stands for is shared among customers and non-customers. A brand is descriptive of what a company, product, and/or service stands for, in terms of all the elements above (visual, auditory, verbal, emotional, etc.).

What else does a brand mean? What does your brand mean to you?  What do other brands mean?  Please share your thoughts in the comments below.

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