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Brand Strategy
Learn Brand Architecture from Your Favorite Brand: Marvel (Sorry DC Folks).
Marvel is absolutely an amazing storyteller, making them one of the greatest entertainment brands of our time.
(DC people screaming)
No matter whether you are an absolute advocate of them or you just hate them from the inside out, you'd have to admit that they are world-class brand strategists themselves.
Do you remember which specific super hero got you into the Marvel Universe in the first place? The Hulk? Thor? Or the Cap? (definitely Mr Stark for me)
Back then, the concept of the Marvel Universe probably wasn't even known. It only came to existence when someone in the studio thought to themselves, "How are we going to manage all these different heroes and maximize the collective impact?”
There it is: Brand Architecture comes into play.
What Is Brand Architecture?
You will get different answers for the same question if you go to different people:
An accountant may understand it as the allocation of assets within the company and how the balance sheets should reflect that.
A lawyer may say it is the management of the trademarks and entities your company has, along with the legal liabilities and implications.
It is a set of names, symbols, colors, and visual approaches that distinguish one brand from another, as stated by the creative.
If you ask a marketer, they might say it is an organizational hierarchy that manages the brands, products, and services to help customers access and relate to a brand.
None of them is a specifically better answer than the others; they are all true.
The Kind of Relationships That Can Be Ultra-Rational.
In the simplest sense, you do one thing in Brand Architecture: you put one thing closer or further away from another within your wider portfolio, figuring out the relationships among all those involved.
What this process really does is it requires you to think inside out about the relationships between each components in the given portfolio and the associated implications.
The objective here is to find the ideal balance within the portfolio: maximize successes and minimize risks.
Why Does It Matter?
From the business perspective, this is where you look for overlaps and discrepancies among the pieces in terms of offers, targets, objectives, resources, etc.
Two or more brands are too similar and competing with each other? Merge them into one.
One specific brand getting overwhelmed with multiple objectives? Spin off the secondary.
There is an emerging market opportunity that none of the brands cover and reflect that. Add a new one to the portfolio.
Brand architecture is important for another reason: to unite brand affinity and amplify the total brand equity.
And what does that even mean?
Avengers! Assemble!
(Marvel fans start crying)
Help Customers Navigate the World You Are Creating for Them
By now, you should understand why we mentioned Marvel as a great brand strategist, because they are.
Marvel Universe is the perfect example of an amazingly effective brand architecture. Used to be all fragmented and fight their own enemies, all the heroes now join forces for greater collective power. So do their respective fans, joining the Marvel tribe and making it an even more powerful brand.
You probably liked Iron Man in the first place, but then you realize that good-looking dude with a shield is also very likable. Oh wait, who's that hammer guy again? He's gorgeous, too!
The funny thing is, you probably won't remember all of them by name (well, who am I kidding... just for the sake of discussion though), but you will surely remember where to find them. And it's easy and intuitive, because it's by design.
A well-designed brand architecture helps people make sense of the universe you are creating and influences their perceptions, decisions, and interactions with one of your brands or all the many brands you have, all depending on the model you adopt to fit the goal of your brand.
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