1. 7. What are the different roles that brands can play as of brand portfolio?
Answer:
The Brand Portfolio
The composition of a brand portfolio is imperative for the basic architectural parameter.
Which brands to add or delete are major decisions to be taken. Building a brand requires
adequate resources. If there are too many brands, there may not be enough resources to
support them all. The task here is to choose and pick: Which brands will add value and
which won’t. The brands that are not adding to the overall equity in any way need to be
eliminated.
Portfolio Roles
Brand Portfolios incorporate different brand roles that create synergy. This imparts a
strategic perspective to the brands. Various roles include those of a strategic brand,
linchpin brand, silver bullet brand, and a cash cow brand. A brand could even be a
combination of more than one. Brands play as part in the portfolio.
Flanker Brands:
 Flanker Brands are protective or fighter brands
 It create stronger points-of-parity with competitors’ brands
 Fighter brands must not be so attractive that they take sales away from their
higher-priced comparison brands
 If they are connected to other brands in the portfolio, they must not be
designed so cheaply that they reflect poorly on other brands
Cash cow Brands:
 Brands with significant customer bases that require less attention than other
brands.
 The total sales may be on a decline, yet there are a group of hard-core loyal
customers who do not leave the brand.
 The role of a cash cow brand is to generate resources that can be invested in other
brands for future growth.
Nivea Crème is one such example of a brand that has been extended to other skin-
related products to provide resources for other brands by banking on its customer
base.
Low-End Entry Level & High-End Prestige Brands:
 A brand or sub-brand that positively influences the image of another brand.
 It can be a major factor in changing, creating or maintaining a brand image.
Relatively Low-priced brand
 In the brand portfolio is to attract customers to the brand franchise
 Retailers use these as traffic builders with a view to ‘trade up’ customers

2. Relatively high priced brand
 In the brand family is to add prestige and credibility to the entire portfolio
even if it is not the most profitable
HP’s laser jet resolution enhancement is a branded feature that instantly reflects on
the image of HP being a breakthrough company in printer technology.
8. Develop a brand hierarchy for IGLOO Ice-cream brand and General Motors’s
brand.
Answer:
Figure 1: Brand Hierarchy of Igloo Ice Cream
Figure 1 shows an abridged version of brand hierarchy of Igloo Ice-Cream and it also shows
its branding strategy.
Igloo Ice-Cream
Litre-Box
Vanilla
Cocolate
Strawberry
Mango
Firni
Nawabi Mithai
Cake Ice Cream
Ripple
Sundae
Single Sundae
Chocolate
Vanilla
Strawberry
Caramel
Double Sundae
Chocolate
Cheers
Caramel
Combo
Strawberry
Sparkle
Pistachio
Passion
Mango Melody
Igloo Cones
CornelliClassic
Cornelli2 in 1
CornelliBelgian
Chocolate
Igloo Sticks
Chocbar
Mega
Macho
Shell & Core
Orange Lolly
Lemon Lolly
Igloo Cups
Vanilla
Chocolate
Strawberry
Candy Crunch

3. Figure 2: General Motors's Brand Hierarchy
Figure 2 shows an abridged version of brand hierarchy of General Motors and it also
shows General Motors’s branding strategy.
General Motors
Chevrolet
Trucks
Colorado
Avalanche
Silverado
Equinox
Trailblazer
Suburban
Uplander
Express
Cars
Aveo
Cobalt
HHR
Corvette
Impala
Malibu
SSR
Monte
Carlo
Pontiac
G6
Torrent
Solstice
GTO
Grand Prix
Grand AM
Vibe
Sunfire
Montana
Bonneville
Buick
LaCrosse
Terreza
Rendezous
Rainer
LeSabre
Lucerne
Cadillac
STS
XLR
CTS
Escalade
ESV
EXT
DeVille
GMC
Sierra
Canyon
Envoy
Yukon
Savana
Safari
Saturn
Ion
L300
Vue
Relay
Hummer
H1
H2
H3

4. 9. Explain the potential levels of a brand hierarchy. How can you build brand at
different hierarchy levels.
Answer:
Brand hierarchy
Brand hierarchy is the graphical portray of a firm’s branding strategy by displaying the
number and nature of common and distinctive brand elements across the firm’s products,
revealing their explicit ordering. It’s a means of summarizing the branding strategy by
displaying the number and nature of common and distinctive brand elements across the
firm’s products, revealing the explicit ordering of brand elements.
Potential Levels
There are different ways to define brand potential levels of hierarchy. The simplest
representation is:
Corporate or company brand:
It is the highest level of hierarchy. The company or corporate brand is almost always
present somewhere on the product or package.
 Corporate image: The consumer associations to the company or corporation
making the product or providing the service
 Relevant when the corporate or company brand plays a prominent role
in the branding strategy
Family brand:
 Used in more than one product category but is not necessarily the name of the
company or corporation
 Also called a range brand or umbrella brand
 If the corporate brand is applied to a range of products, then it functions as a
family brand too.
 If the products linked to the family brand are not carefully considered, the
associations to the family brand may become weaker.
Individual brand:
 Restricted to essentially one product category, although multiple product types
may differ
 Customization of the brand and all its supporting marketing activity
 If the brand runs into difficulty or fails, the risk to other brands and the company
itself is minimal
 Disadvantages of difficulty, complexity, and expense of developing separate
marketing programs
Modifier (designating item or model):
 Brands should distinguish according to the different types of items or models
 Modifier: Designate a specific item or model type or a particular version or
configuration of the product
 Function of modifiers is to show how one brand variation relates to
others in the same brand family
 Help make products more understandable and relevant to consumers

5. Product description:
 Helps consumers understand what the product is and does
 Helps define the relevant competition in consumers’ minds
 In the case of a truly new product, introducing it with a familiar product name may
facilitate basic familiarity and comprehension
Building Brand in different Hierarchy Level
The goals of brand hierarchies are on one hand to exploit commonalities between
different brands in order to generate synergy, and on the other hand to find and reduce the
differences between brand identities in different contexts and roles so that they do not
damage each others. Brand hierarchies also reduce confusion and achieve clarity among
different brands. Moreover, a single integrated hierarchy can respond more easily to
external changes, and thus it takes the future changes more adequately into consideration
and allocates future resources to different brands based on these predictions. Although
presenting a good static framework of the brand structure inside a company, a brand
hierarchy does not, however, offer much understanding about the vertical interaction
among levels within the brand hierarchy. Product brand building is still today high on the
manufacturing companies´ agenda. It is almost the only way to demonstrate
differentiation and it is a key success or a failure factor. Corporate branding builds on the
tradition of product branding.
In product-dominant branding strategy the individual product brands are more important
than the corporate brand. More marketing investments and resources are allocated to the
product brands so that they would be as tempting as possible to the customers. The
corporate brand stands aside as a contact point for the partners and investors and as an
employer for the internal stakeholders. On the contrary, in the corporate-dominant
branding strategy the corporate brand shares its brand name with all of the products so
that for the customers the corporate and product brands act as the one and the same. In
this case the benefits of corporate brands can be extended to the product brands as well.
However, the corporate-dominant branding strategy also requires more attention to the
synergies and interaction between the brands. The intermediate forms of product
dominant and corporate-dominant branding strategies involve mixed branding since they
combine product and corporate brands. Consequently, also the advantages and
disadvantages of product –dominant and corporate-dominant branding have to be taken
into account in such branding strategies.