Devising a Branding Strategy

A firm’s branding strategy—often called its brand architecture—reflects the number and nature of both common and distinctive brand elements. Deciding how to brand new products is especially critical. A firm has three main choices: (1) develop new brand elements for the new product, (2) apply some existing brand elements, or (3) use a combination of new and existing brand elements (see definitions in Table 8.3).

Branding Decisions

Today, hardly anything goes unbranded. Assuming a firm decides to brand its products or services, it must choose which brand names to use. Three general strategies are popular:

• Individual or separate family brand names. Companies often use different brand names for different quality lines within the same product class. A major advantage is that if a product fails or appears low quality, the company has not tied its reputation to it.³⁵
• Corporate umbrella or company brand name. Many firms, such as GE, use their corporate brand as an umbrella brand across their entire range of products.³⁶ Development costs are lower, and sales of the new product are likely to be strong if the manufacturer’s name is good. Corporate-image associations of innovativeness, expertise, and trustworthiness have been shown to directly influence consumer evaluations.³⁷

TABLE 8.3 Branding New Products

Concept	Definition
Brand extension	Using an established brand to launch a new product
Sub-brand	Combining a new brand with an existing brand
Parent brand	An existing brand that gives birth to a brand extension or sub-brand
Master (or family) brand	A parent brand that is already associated with multiple products through brand extensions
Line extension	Using a parent brand on a new product within a category it currently serves (such as new flavors or colors)
Category extension	Using a parent brand on a new product to enter a new category, different from the one it currently serves
Brand line	All the products (including line and category extensions) sold under a particular brand
Brand mix	The set of all brand lines sold by a particular seller
Branded variants	Specific brand lines supplied to specific retailers or distribution channels
Licensed product	Using the brand name licensed from one firm on a product made by another firm

• Sub-brand name. Sub-brands combine two or more of the corporate brand, family brand, or individual product brand names. Kellogg does this by combining the corporate brand with individual product brands as with Kellogg’s Rice Krispies. The company name legitimizes, and the individual name individualizes, the new product.

The use of individual or separate family brand names has been referred to as a “house of brands” strategy, whereas the use of an umbrella corporate or company brand name has been referred to as a “branded house” strategy. These represent two ends of a brand relationship continuum, with the sub-brand strategy falling somewhere between. With a branded house strategy, it is often useful to have a well-defined flagship product, one that best represents or embodies the brand as a whole to consumers. It often is the first product by which the brand gained fame, a widely accepted best-seller, or a highly admired or award-winning product.³⁸