As many business-to-business marketing organizations seek a stronger focus on solution selling (the ability to have single points of customer contact who can provide solutions from every product and service an organization houses), corporate brand-driven architectures become even more attractive. Our white paper explains why.

1. ®1999-2020 Cohesion., All Rights Reserved
The case for consolidation:
Managing Equity
For Complex Corporate
Brand Architectures
Cohesion.

2. Page 2
Corporate Brands: A Primary Asset.
By signaling something important about the products they make or the
services they provide, corporate brands help people make purchase
decisions. Perceptions of corporate brands will be heavily influenced
by the quality of the products and services they deliver, but will also be
affected by perceptions of their wider performance. Elements that factor
into corporate reputation include a company’s sense of responsibility
toward the public (the extent to which it is a good and ethical corporate
citizen), the degree to which it is perceived as a leader, and its fairness
in its dealings with consumers, employees and suppliers.
Corporate brands differ from product brands both in the nature of their
audiences (which may include employees and potential employees,
investors and potential investors, governments and non-governmental
organizations, suppliers, partners, pressure groups, and journalists) and
the outcomes they can influence.
A strong corporate brand contributes to the financial success of a company,
both directly, as a product brand would, and indirectly. For example, a
strong corporate brand might command greater loyalty and motivation
among employees, thus making them more productive and easier to
retain. The corporate brand might also make the company seem a more
desirable place to work, making it easier to recruit new employees.
Complexity: Multiple Levels of Brand Identity.
The interplay between corporate branding and multiple levels of product
branding can result in complex systems of brand architecture and the
need to understand the linkages across different levels of brand identity. A
corporate brand may own two or more product brands that compete in the
same product category. Each product brand may consist of different lines,
each of which has variants within it. The relationship of the various brands
and sub-brands must be carefully thought through to avoid confusing
consumers.
Managing Equity
For Complex Corporate
Brand Architectures
By: Brian Creath
Managing Principal
Cohesion
bcreath@cohesioncompany.com
www.cohesioncompany.com
The corporate brand
might also make the
company seem a more
desirable place to work,
making it easier to
recruit new employees.
Cohesion.
®1999-2020 Cohesion., All Rights Reserved

3. Page 3
Complexity: Multiple Levels of Brand Identity. (cont.)
Companies that own a number of different brands have some important
issues to manage, including:
Ensuring that each brand has a clear positioning in the marketplace.
•
Understanding how different brands relate to one another and to the
•
corporate brand that owns them.
Continually assessing whether the company needs all of the brands,
•
since each one requires time, effort, and investment.
Managing the broad brand portfolio and architecture to maximize cost
•
and time efficiencies.
Deciding how to allocate investment across brands.
•
Which architecture To choose?
Complex brand organizations face a strategic challenge: Which brand
architecture approach is right for our situation? For complex organizations,
there are three basic architectures to consider:
The “Branded house”
In this methodology, the company is the brand. All products and services
within that company will be subsets of the primary brand. A good example
of a branded house is Apple. They use a singular name across all of their
activities. To all of their stakeholders they are known simply as “Apple”. They
may have different categories/divisions (iPod, Mac, iTunes, iPhone, etc…)
but they all have to fall under the scrutiny of existing branding strategies and
standards.
The “house of Brands”
This architecture focuses of the branding of multiple sub-brands while the
primary brand gets little or no attention. Proctor & Gamble is a perfect
example. Under P&G there are dozens of brands, including Pampers,
Duracell, Gillette, and Tide just to name a few. However, P&G gets very little
prominence itself, and adds no direct credibility to any of its products.
Managing Equity
For Complex Corporate
Brand Architectures
By: Brian Creath
Managing Principal
Cohesion
bcreath@cohesioncompany.com
www.cohesioncompany.com
In the “Branded
House” methodology,
the company is the
brand. All products
and services
become subsets.
Cohesion.
®1999-2020 Cohesion., All Rights Reserved

4. Page 4
Which Architecture To Choose? (cont.)
The “House Blend”
This is an architecture based on the development of sub-brands with the
added credibility of the existing parent brand. Google, for example, started
as a search engine then continued to establish the primary brand through
offerings such as Gmail, Calendar, and Maps. Eventually, they began to
acquire other, smaller tech companies such as Blogger, Picasa, and
YouTube. These acquisitions maintained their existing brands but gained
credibility through the primary brand of Google.
Why Consolidation Makes Sense.
In the case of larger business-to-business marketing organizations, a
branded house, or house blend architecture, often makes the most sense.
And often, these organizations must ‘reign in’ brands that have redundant
or duplicate propositions, have lost their value over time, or, whose interests
might be better served through consolidation with other company brands, or
the corporate brand.
As the web continues to create a more singular portal for brands and diverse
audiences, customers and ancillary audiences have fewer and fewer venues
in which to view product and service brands in isolation. These brands are
almost always viewed in the context of the larger, umbrella corporate brand.
The internal cost and labor efficiencies of having a more monolithic brand
architecture create strong financial and operation rationale for such a blue-
print. (At Cohesion, we have been able to save organizations up to 30% in
hard cost, simply by implementing centralized strategies that reduce
marcomm waste.) The ability for external audiences to mentally link product
brands/properties with the positive reputation of a known corporate brand,
creates even more rationale.
Managing Equity
For Complex Corporate
Brand Architectures
By: Brian Creath
Managing Principal
Cohesion
bcreath@cohesioncompany.com
www.cohesioncompany.com
At Cohesion, we have
been able to save some
organizations up to 30%
in hard cost, through
the centralization of
brand efforts.
Cohesion.
®1999-2020 Cohesion., All Rights Reserved

5. Page 5
Managing Equity
For Complex Corporate
Brand Architectures
By: Brian Creath
Managing Principal
Cohesion
bcreath@cohesioncompany.com
www.cohesioncompany.com
Corporate brand-driven
architectures are even
more attractive to
organizations that seek
to implement solution
selling strategies.
Why consolidation Makes sense. (cont.)
As many business-to-business marketing organizations seek a stronger focus
on solution selling (the ability to have single points of customer contact who
can provide solutions from every product and service an organization houses),
corporate brand-driven architectures become even more attractive. Here,
corporate solution strategies ‘become’ the corporate brand, regardless of the
products and services sold. Which additionally, provides a strong halo for
indirect sales audiences and other critical audiences such as internal staff,
shareholders and key suppliers.
an evolution, not a light switch.
Shifting brand architecture from a house of brands to a blended house, or a
branded house takes time. Additionally, it requires a dedicated study of the
current equity that exists in a given product or service brand, so that that equity
can be properly ‘milked’ and leveraged into the desired new architecture.
Creating, plotting and managing this evolution over a period of time is key to
the successful development of an architecture shift.
* * *
Cohesion is a brand and messaging consultancy. Founded in 1999, Cohesion
helps Fortune 500s / Global 2000s and mid-market companies better define,
leverage and manage their brand and marketing efforts. Our work works because it is
born from in-depth, qualitative research, simple frameworks, and proven methodologies.
Leveraging a proprietary platform and architecture process, Cohesion has successfully
positioned (and developed the messaging for) more than 120 businesses, brands,
products and services. Learn more: http://cohesioncompany.com.
Cohesion.
®1999-2020 Cohesion., All Rights Reserved