Brand architecture – the high-level structuring of your brand’s offers – is a must if you want to scale your brand without wasting time and money. It affects product naming. It informs advertising. It determines how your corporate trade-mark will appear around other brands in your roster. It can even influence your division names.
Brand Architecture Is a Big Front-End Job
As critical as it is, brand architecture is typically overlooked. Even the savviest C-suiters will sweep it under the rug. Why? Because it’s brain-bustingly hard to streamline your past, present and future offers. Getting the right brand architecture takes a lot of clarification and commitment.
The Cost of Ignoring Brand Architecture
Unclear brand architecture is a compounding waste of time, money and brand equity. The more you live with it, the more you will probably suffer from:
- Diluted brand awareness (especially if you’re looking to promote your corporate brand)
- Cluttered advertising
- Costly design inefficiencies
- Product naming inconsistencies
- Too many trademarks
Try This Sometime
If your organization has muddy brand architecture, it might benefit your leadership team to see a simple example of good brand architecture. Try looking at parallel industries for examples. Start with Apple. Recently, they changed Apple iPhoto to Apple Photos. This naming decision indicates that Apple is moving towards an increasingly clean brand architecture which puts emphasis on the Apple trade-mark.
Be a Brand Architecture Champion
Maybe Apple’s approach would benefit your organization. Or maybe you need something a little different. Either way, there are many examples to draw from. Maybe one will give you the fuel you need to make brand architecture a bigger priority in your firm. And maybe – just maybe – you’ll be one of the valiant few who have what it takes to lead the way.