Are you looking to build brand equity beyond your current customer base? One way is to introduce sub-brands. If you opt to do this, you’ll have a lot of choices to make as you plan your product rollout. Do you want customers to associate your new products with existing ones, or do you want your sub-brands to have different brand identities? Do you want your sub-brands to showcase uniform branding or distinct aesthetics that appeal to specific market niches? Your decisions will depend on your brand architecture.
What is brand architecture?
Brand architecture is the structure that organizes a company’s sub-brands and product lines. It serves as a blueprint for how a company connects its brand portfolio. For example, brand architecture dictates whether a parent company’s brands cross-promote or stand independently so that consumers don’t know they’re owned by the same company.
Take the corporate brand PepsiCo. It owns the soda brand Pepsi as well as the cereal brand Quaker Oats, which in turn owns the brand Cap’n Crunch, which itself has several different product lines. PepsiCo’s brand architecture indicates the relationship between these different sub-brands.
Brands that aren’t as large as PepsiCo might create another brand if it makes sense from a messaging perspective. For instance, Dominion City Brewing Company launched City Seltzer after they created a non-alcoholic creamsicle seltzer for a local beer festival and its popularity took off.
You can visualize these inter-brand relationships in a brand architecture diagram—an internal document that helps a company’s stakeholders see the big picture and understand how consumers view a brand from the outside.
Types of brand architecture
How you structure your brands can depend on the variety of your product lines, your company’s management structure, or where you are in your brand journey. Here are the different models of brand architecture:
Branded house
Branded house architecture is effective for companies with strong brand recognition, closely interrelated products, and a loyal customer base. It’s also useful for companies interested in rolling out brand extensions.
House of brands
This type of brand architecture works well for multinationals and large conglomerates that want to maintain different products’ loyal customer bases.
Endorsed brands
In the endorsed brands model, sub-brands outwardly publicize their relationship with the parent brand. They might include the parent company’s logo and signature design elements in their branding.
You can see this type of brand architecture in the food company Kellogg’s. The parent brand is widely known, and sub-brands including Froot Loops, Rice Krispies, and Frosted Flakes prominently display the Kellogg’s name on their cereal boxes.
This type of brand architecture allows each sub-brand to maintain a distinct aesthetic and brand identity while leveraging the name recognition of a powerful parent brand.
Hybrid brand
The hybrid approach to brand architecture combines multiple types of structures. A company might use the branded house structure for its most closely related sub-brands, while allowing other sub-brands to stand alone.
Apple uses a branded house model for some of its product lines: the iPad, iPhone, and Apple Watch, for example, are all branded with the Apple logo and rolled out with uniform product styling. Other brands Apple owns are individuated (distinguished from others of the same kind, so not branded as “iHeadphones”), like the headphones Beats by Dre or the music app Shazam.
Hybrid brand architecture can give you the best of both worlds: You can use your parent brand name recognition when it suits you while still targeting unique markets with sub-brands that have their own distinct brand identities.
How to develop your brand architecture
- Articulate your brand identity
- Identify underserved niches
- Conduct competitor analysis
- Launch complementary products
- Consider your organizational structure
Your brand architecture may evolve as your company grows. You may start out with a branded house structure, then as you scale up and introduce sub-brands (or participate in a merger), you might adopt a different structure. Here are a few things to consider as you build out your brand architecture:
Articulate your brand identity
Before you get down to the nuts and bolts of designing your brand architecture, take the time to flesh out your brand identity. This can help you determine how much you want your sub-brands to reflect your parent brand. For example, if your company’s brand identity and visual identity are strong, you might decide to roll out your logo, brand colors, and typography across your different sub-brands. In this case, you would decide to use the branded house framework.
Identify underserved niches
Conduct market research to assess demand for products within your area of expertise, then use the data to decide what type of brand architecture to build. For example, if you run a skin care company selling primarily to Gen Z customers, you might use market research techniques like focus groups and discover high demand for similar products among older consumers. If your research indicates Gen X likes your face cream but is looking for a product that prevents wrinkles, you might decide to add a sub-brand specifically targeted toward Gen X. You could use the endorsed brands structure to market your new wrinkle-prevention cream: the product would have a distinct brand identity that appeals to Gen X while benefiting from the trusted name of your parent brand.
Conduct competitor analysis
Use competitor analysis to determine how similar companies structure their brand architecture. Thorough study of your competitors can provide insights into the types of brand architecture that have already proven effective.
For example, let’s say you run a sneaker company and want to expand into outerwear. You analyze your competitors and see other companies use a branded house model to successfully sell apparel. Since your brand identity is strong, you might decide to organize your new outerwear line under the same type of brand architecture.
Launch complementary products
Consider leveraging your existing brands to promote new sub-brands. For instance, let’s say you run a meal kit company with multiple sub-brands organized in a branded house structure, and you want to launch a line of silverware. You could launch the silverware sub-brand within the endorsed brands framework, allowing you to leverage your trusted name while selling a product that’s distinct from your current offerings. Your company would then have a hybrid brand architecture.
Consider your organizational structure
Take a look at your company’s organizational structure and make sure it can facilitate your selected brand architecture. For example, a branded house framework can function well under a single management team. In a house of brands structure, however, you’ll likely need separate management, sales, and marketing teams dedicated to each individual brand. Companies that use this architecture might have employees in different locations with limited interaction with one another. Take, for example, the company LVMH, which operates within the house of brands framework: LVMH owns a host of luxury brands including Louis Vuitton, Loewe, and Tiffany & Co., each with their own dedicated teams stationed in headquarters across the world.
Brand architecture FAQ
How do you identify brand architecture?
You can identify brand architecture by looking at how a company positions its sub-brands in relation to the parent company. If all sub-brands are interrelated, the company is likely using a branded house or endorsed brands model. If the company’s sub-brands are fully differentiated, the company is using either a house of brands or hybrid brand architecture.
How do you choose a model of brand architecture?
Choose a model of brand architecture based on your company’s growth strategy and product offerings. If your parent brand identity is strong and your sub-brands are closely interrelated, it probably makes sense to use a branded house or endorsed brands model. If you see opportunities to expand into new, varied markets, offering products that aren’t necessarily related to each other, a house of brands model might be ideal. You can also incorporate the benefits of different brand architectures with a hybrid model.
What is a parent brand?
A parent brand is a company that owns multiple sub-brands. For example, Unilever is a consumer goods company with sub-brands including Dove, Ben & Jerry's, and Hellmann's. Even though each sub-brand has a distinct identity, they are all part of the same parent company.
