“ A brand has only one need: to grow, while maintaining its reputation and profits.”

– Kapferer (2016)

The simplicity of this statement from one of the best known authorities on the subject of strategic brand management is profound. And yet it escapes so many brand managers, too many of whom, when asked what brand management is about, often get into a fuzzy, vague zone; and while doing so, one of the terms that pops up is brand architecture.

Brand architecture? The term brand architecture appears only three times in the latest edition of Brand Management by Kotler and Keller, the book that so many of us regard as the Bible of marketing. Now, my experience is that if it is not in a Kotler, most Jamaican marketers need a reminder about it; and so I shall lead a short discussion on the subject.

DEFINING A BRAND

Perhaps we should begin by defining what a brand is. Here is what the American Marketing Association has to say on the subject, “A brand is a name, term, sign, symbol, or design, or a combination of them, intended to identify the goods and services of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from the competition.”

Technically speaking, then, whenever a marketer creates a new name, logo, or symbol for a new product, he or she has created a brand. Newspapers and magazines are products, but The Jamaica Observer and TIME are leading brands — one regionally, the other globally.

BRAND ARCHITECTURE

“Brand architecture is a strategy: it may be ideal, or may lead to losses of efficiency, even to paralysis. In fact, groups never cease to change their brand architecture.”

– Kapferer (2016)

“The firm’s brand architecture strategy helps marketers determine which products and services to introduce, and which brand names, logos, symbols, and so forth to apply to new and existing products. It defines both the brand’s breadth or boundaries and its depth or complexity. Which different products or services should share the same brand name? How many variations of that brand name should we employ?”

– Keller (2013)

THE ROLE OF BRAND ARCHITECTURE

• To clarify brand awareness: Improve consumer understanding and communicate similarity and differences between individual products and services.

• To improve brand image: Maximise transfer of equity between the brand and individual products and services to improve trial and repeat purchase.

Key questions about brand architecture

• What to call new products? What’s in a name? Everything! In the 1920s an Englishman named Harry Pickup created a toilet cleaner that he branded Har-pic. Almost a century later, many of us still buy the Harpic brand of toilet cleaner. But what if that same company developed a brand of toothpaste, and in keeping with the success of the parent brand extended the Harpic brand name to their toothpaste product. Would you buy it? I don’t know about you, but I’m yet to find anyone who would buy Harpic toothpaste!

• How many brand levels to adopt? Should there be only one brand name within the company? This is the choice for most Asian groups. And so we have Samsung televisions, Samsung mobile phones and Samsung digital cameras. And then there’s Mitsubishi. Mitsubishi makes/markets everything. Come to think of it, isn’t that what Apple is doing too?

• How much visibility to give to the corporate name, group name and the company name itself? Should everything be brought together under this one name? Here in Jamaica the Jamaica National Group has the JN Bank, JN General Insurance Company, JN Small Business Loans, and so on.

• More generally, should there be a different name for the company and the commercial brand? You may ask, why is this important? But some commercial names are at best kept from public view – like Mossell Ltd, owner of the Digicel brand. Digicel rolls off the tongue easily, but Mossell. Ahhhhh…. Let’s leave well enough alone.

• Should the same architecture apply around the world? The mission of Jamaica’s own GraceKennedy is, “To take the taste of Jamaican and the Caribbean foods to the world, and world-class financial services to our region”.

Within GK’s portfolio there are numerous brands, some of which, quite naturally, are better known in Jamaica than others. I keep wondering what GK’s brand architecture will be as they seek to conquer the world. I haven’t a clue. Do you?

Herman D Alvaranga, FCIM, MBA, is president of the Caribbean School of Sales & Marketing. For more insights on sales and marketing go to his blog at www.cssm.edu.jm