Ehrenberg-Bass News

How to expand your brand architecture: strategies for successful brand launches

Published in Admap Magazine, October 2018

Green-lighting the launch of a sub-brand, variant or extension to a new category is an exciting time for any brand manager. One important decision concerns the new launches’ brand identity – how to balance the existing identity of its parent brand, with creating the new launches’ own visual space. Creation of an identity that is too far from the parent brand risks under-leveraging existing parent assets. However an identity that is too close to the parent brand could compromise the visibility of the new launch. To paraphrase Goldilocks: How do you create a new launch identity that neither too far nor too close, but is “just right”?

In this piece I outline factors to consider when creating the identity of a new launch. For clarity I will use the label ‘new variant’ to refer to any new brand launch that draws on a brand name from the existing (“parent”) brand.

The first priority is to protect the parent

To warrant a new variant, the existing parent brand must have some measure of success; success that you should want to protect. In the excitement of launching a new variant within a category, it can be easy to lose sight of this bigger picture. Even if recent sales have declined, the sales the parent brand generates will continue to be important for the company’s bottom line, while the new variant is still unproven. Therefore the first priority should be to protect the parent brand, and make sure any decisions do no harm.

The basics of building a brand identity

The brand sits in the memory of your category buyers, like an anchor, to place all branded information in the same part of the brain. This information includes the various bits of information that are part of the brand’s identity, such as colours, logos, characters or jingles, which we call Distinctive Assets. The primary purpose of Distinctive Assets is to uniquely trigger the brand name in the minds of category buyers. For example the Yellow shaped M is how you know you will shortly pass a McDonald’s on the highway, while if you pick up a triangle shaped chocolate bar, you can be pretty certain to have a Toblerone in your hand.

Building links to Distinctive Assets takes time, as category buyers need to establish and retain links between the colours, taglines etc and the brand name in their memory. To build these assets, you need:

• Reach – so as many category buyers as possible build the link;
• Co-presentation – so there is a direct link between the asset and the brand name anchor; and
• Consistency – to refresh and retain existing links between the brand name and Distinctive Assets, and avoiding mental competition and fragmentation.

Consistency is particularly pertinent when considering new variants. The first step to effective brand architecture is to avoid a parent/new launch clash of identities. A new launch that competes rather than complements the parent brand identity leads to unproductive asset building activities. To avoid this clash, you need to know the strength of your parent brands’ assets.

Test any assumptions about parent brand asset strength

It’s easy to assume that because the parent brand has remained unchanged, its Distinctive Assets will be strong. Just using an asset doesn’t make it strong – asset strength comes from the cut through to category buyers. For example in Chapter 5 of Building Distinctive Assets we report on findings about the relative strength of packaging assets. Every pack has a colour or colour combination, and these were the most common packaging asset types put forward by brand managers to test. However the results showed that colours on pack were the worst performing of the nine types of packaging assets we tested.

Therefore question assumptions about the relative strength (and potential) of parent brand assets. Get empirical evidence to give you a realistic picture of parent asset strength, before even considering any new variant assets. A well-defined parent brand identity strategy creates a solid foundation for effective new variant branding.

Avoid clashing identities

Identities clash when your new variant Distinctive Asset is the same type as a parent Distinctive Asset. For example, the parent brand is using the colour yellow, and you launch a purple-coloured variant. The linking of the two colours to the same brand name creates fragmentation and uncertainty amongst category buyers. For category buyers who only see the parent, the brand’s colour asset is yellow. For category buyers aware of both the parent and the new variant, the brand is yellow, and sometimes purple. For category buyers who only see the new variant, the brand’s colour is purple.

You avoid a clash of identities by making sure that any new variant assets don’t undermine with the parent brand objectives. A strong parent brand identity not only benefits the parent and this new variant, but also any future variants and extensions. Weakening the parent in the hope that the performance of the new variant will not just compensate, but exceed any loss, is a risky bet at best.

Keep any fixed assets consistent

It is useful to identify if any current/potential parent assets draw on fixed qualities, as this affects the asset’s integration into variant brand identities. Fixed qualities are those necessary in a visual item, such as colour, font, and shape. For example a credit card from a bank has to have a colour; a pack can’t exist without a shape and the brand name/text can’t be written without a font. If the parent brand has or wants to invest in one of these asset types, then you would be wise to keep this consistent in all variants linked to the same brand anchor. If nothing else, this makes the most of every exposure opportunity to increase the strength of the parent brand asset.

Build a bridge – don’t create a chasm

Clearly articulate the assets that form the distinctive asset bridge that connects the parent and the new variant. This bridge should be more substantive than any differences. If the parent has a fixed quality asset, this is the best choice for building a bridge as this will help, rather than undermine, the parent brand identity. For example if you are McDonald’s and you omit the colour yellow from the M, you have to substitute another colour to replace the yellow. The other colour will clash with the existing colour yellow asset.

However what do you do in the absence of any fixed quality assets to draw upon? Then the brand may have the other assets, such as taglines, characters, or shapes for you to draw upon. These qualities are secondary to fixed options because they are optional – you choose whether to include these assets or not. When you omit a phrase, or a character in an advertisement, there is no need to substitute another phrase or character to replace the omission. These optional assets can also become part of the bridge between existing and new, in the absence of, or alongside, fixed assets.

Can you stretch the asset?

If you want to create a new asset, think about stretching, rather than replacing, an existing asset. For example if the brand has a character, you can introduce a family member that shares some characteristics with the existing character. If the brand has a tagline, you could keep some words or phrasing the same, and just vary a part of the tagline. The aim is to keep the total idea cohesive, but carve out something for that new variant.

Figure 1: Making decisions about new variant assets (Adapted from Building Distinctive Brand Assets pg. 61)

When creating new assets: avoid the obvious

When it comes to new launch labelling, don’t over complicate it all. Find the simplest and clearest way to signal the key qualities of a new launch. If it is a gluten free variant, you can just write ‘Gluten Free’ on the pack. This doesn’t require teaching category buyers about a new symbol that others can “borrow” with their Gluten Free options, and it gives you the freedom to use the parent brand assets as best suits the media and retail environments.

However sometimes a new variant needs a new asset. When this situation arises, avoid making obvious choices. It is tempting to try and make the assets do “double duty” and be both branding devices and ways to signal the substance of the new innovation. For example when creating the first premium mouthwash and making the pack gold because it signals ‘premium’ to category buyers.

The danger with this approach is that the additional meaning that draws you to the asset also attracts competitors. You educate the category buyers that gold pack = premium mouthwash, and when competitors launch a similar premium product, as invariably happens, they draw on the same design elements. This means that your new variant’s asset is no longer performing the primary duty of being a branding device, but becomes a sub-category signal instead. The shelf is then littered with gold packs everywhere and the premium mouthwashes all look more similar to each other, than they do to their portfolio parents and siblings. This makes it harder for category buyers to buy any brand, including yours!

Parent first, pretty new thing second…

Don’t let the new variant steal the limelight and distract you from the bigger picture of the portfolio as a whole. The parent brand is the priority, particularly in the short and medium term, even with the most disruptive new launch – so remember the first principle of do no harm. Create a new variant that looks sufficiently similar that any category buyer, unfamiliar with the new variant, can still easily recognise its parent brand affiliation.

This order of priorities should flow through to marketing activities such as advertising, or packing design, with emphasis on the parent brand Distinctive assets as well as the variant signals. This approach enables the new variant to contribute positively to the overall mental and physical availability of the parent brand, irrespective of its longevity.

Key takeaways

• To design a good sub-brand or variant brand identity you first need a clear strategy for the parent brand.
• Always remember to protect the parent first, and make sure any sub-brand or variant brand identity decisions ‘cause no harm’.
• Use brand identity to a bridge that links the parent and the sub-brand, don’t create more difference than similarity.
• When creating a new asset for a new variant, avoid the obvious (e.g. green = natural) as this will be easy for competitors to copy.