If your busi­ness man­ages mul­ti­ple prod­uct lines or sev­er­al brands, you’ll know about the demands of jug­gling your portfolio.

In an ide­al world, your brand archi­tec­ture would have a clear struc­ture where the rela­tion­ships between dif­fer­ent com­po­nents are well-defined. How­ev­er, this isn’t always the case. If your com­pa­ny expand­ed rapid­ly, it might have been dif­fi­cult to devel­op a clear vision for how the port­fo­lio should have grown.

It might be that your brand guide­lines were unclear, lead­ing to incon­sis­tent mes­sag­ing or design. Per­haps the dif­fer­ent inter­nal teams man­ag­ing dif­fer­ent lines or brands did­n’t col­lab­o­rate effec­tive­ly. There are loads of rea­sons why a brand port­fo­lio becomes dis­or­gan­ised, but it’s not so com­pli­cat­ed get­ting it back on track.

This arti­cle explores brand archi­tec­ture and how you can organ­ise yours. Let’s dive in:

7 steps to organising your brand portfolio

1. Define your brand architecture

First, let’s fig­ure out what cat­e­go­ry your busi­ness falls under. There are a hand­ful of dif­fer­ent ways your brand port­fo­lio could be structured.

The first type of brand archi­tec­ture is called a House of Brands, where each brand oper­ates as an inde­pen­dent enti­ty. For exam­ple, Proc­ter & Gam­ble (P&G) is one of the largest con­sumer goods brands in the world. P&G own a vast port­fo­lio of brands includ­ing Oral‑B, Head & Shoul­ders, and Ariel. Its biggest com­peti­tor is Unilever, which owns brands like Dove, Per­sil, and TRESemmé.

If your busi­ness is a House of Brands, you’ll be able to dis­tinct­ly posi­tion each prod­uct line or brand. It will be eas­i­er to tar­get dif­fer­ent cus­tomer seg­ments with­out the risk of dilu­tion or con­flict. This type of brand archi­tec­ture is the most expen­sive, as a busi­ness must finance each com­po­nent with sep­a­rate mar­ket­ing cam­paigns and man­age­ment costs.

The oth­er main type of brand archi­tec­ture is known as a Brand­ed House, where all its prod­ucts fall under one over­ar­ch­ing brand, e.g., Ama­zon, Vir­gin, and Google. In these cas­es, the par­ent brand will gain the most ben­e­fit from its rep­u­ta­tion and mar­ket­ing pow­er. Equal­ly, you run the risk of rep­u­ta­tion­al dam­age if one com­po­nent has a crisis.

There’s also a hybrid type of brand archi­tec­ture that merges these two main types. For exam­ple, Mar­riott owns dif­fer­ent hotel brands (Court­yard by Mar­riott, Res­i­dence Inn by Mar­riott, and Fair­field Inn by Mar­riott). These sub-brands ben­e­fit from the cred­i­bil­i­ty afford­ed to them by the name ‘Mar­riott’. While they ben­e­fit from the endorse­ment, they are still free to dif­fer­en­ti­ate them­selves and their unique offer­ings. If this sounds like your com­pa­ny, you’ll need to be care­ful about avoid­ing inter­nal com­pe­ti­tion and pre­serv­ing the iden­ti­ty of each component.

2. Conduct an audit

The next thing you’ll want to do is con­duct a com­pre­hen­sive review of your cur­rent brand port­fo­lio. Make a list of all the brands, sub-brands, and prod­uct lines you own, includ­ing their posi­tion­ing, tar­get audi­ences, and per­for­mance. Con­sid­er the fol­low­ing questions:

• Which brands/products are profitable?
• Are there any over­laps or inter­nal competition?
• How are your cus­tomers per­ceiv­ing each brand?
• How have you used graph­ic design to dis­tin­guish each component?
• How is each com­po­nent being marketed?

Com­peti­tor analy­sis should also fac­tor into your audit. Learn how your com­peti­tors are man­ag­ing their brand port­fo­lios. What do you like most about their strat­e­gy? Are they expand­ing or con­sol­i­dat­ing their port­fo­lios? Dis­cov­er­ing more about your adver­saries will offer valu­able insights – whether they’re poten­tial threats or opportunities.

Bench­mark­ing your port­fo­lio against that of your com­peti­tors is some­thing you should do reg­u­lar­ly, not just at this ini­tial stage. Keep­ing an eye on their actions will enable you to fore­cast, respond, and adjust to curve­balls as soon as possible.

3. Clarify your goals

Once you’ve famil­iarised your­self with the lay of the land, it’s time to look forward.

Make sure your long-term busi­ness objec­tives are con­crete. You might like to use the SMART acronym (spe­cif­ic, mea­sur­able, achiev­able, rel­e­vant, and time-bound) to ensure your goals aren’t unre­al­is­tic or vague.

Once your objec­tives are clear, it’ll be eas­i­er to deter­mine how your brands or prod­uct lines should be organ­ised. For instance, if your goal is to increase mar­ket share or expand your cus­tomer base, you may want to iden­ti­fy which brands or prod­ucts are best posi­tioned to lead that growth. This might mean invest­ing more heav­i­ly in mar­ket­ing for cer­tain brands, launch­ing new prod­uct lines, or enter­ing new markets.

Alter­na­tive­ly, if your objec­tive is to stream­line oper­a­tions or improve effi­cien­cy, you could look at con­sol­i­dat­ing over­lap­ping brands, dis­con­tin­u­ing under­per­form­ing ones, or sim­pli­fy­ing your port­fo­lio to focus on your strongest offerings.

Under­stand­ing your goals also helps in allo­cat­ing resources (from mar­ket­ing bud­gets to research and devel­op­ment invest­ments) more effec­tive­ly, ensur­ing that each brand or prod­uct line aligns with the big­ger pic­ture of where you want your busi­ness to go.

4. Give each brand a clear definition

The next step is about clear­ly defin­ing the role of each brand or prod­uct in your port­fo­lio. One ben­e­fit of this is that it helps pre­vent inter­nal com­pe­ti­tion. But also, each brand will be tar­get­ing the right audi­ence with a dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed val­ue proposition.

Your brands or prod­ucts will either be Core, Niche, or Sup­port. Core brands or prod­ucts dri­ve the major­i­ty of rev­enue, while Niche brands or prod­ucts are more spe­cialised and tar­get spe­cif­ic cus­tomer seg­ments. Sup­port brands or prod­ucts sim­ply com­ple­ment the offer­ings of a core range (e.g., Gillet­te’s shav­ing gels and after­shaves sup­port its core prod­uct of razors by offer­ing a com­plete groom­ing solution).

It’s impor­tant to under­stand the role each com­po­nent plays because your mar­ket­ing, prod­uct devel­op­ment, and resource allo­ca­tion must be aligned with the unique goals and needs of each brand. When each brand has a clear pur­pose, it’s eas­i­er to make deci­sions about how to grow, pro­mote, or repo­si­tion it in the market.

For exam­ple:

• Core brands will require con­tin­ued invest­ment in inno­va­tion and broad mar­ket­ing cam­paigns to main­tain their dom­i­nant position.
• Niche brands may need more focused strate­gies that speak to their spe­cif­ic cus­tomer base, such as tai­lored mes­sag­ing or exclu­sive dis­tri­b­u­tion channels.
• Sup­port brands can ben­e­fit from cross-pro­mo­tion or bundling with core prod­ucts to cre­ate a seam­less cus­tomer experience.

Busi­ness­es should also con­sid­er how they want to approach the graph­ic design and visu­al iden­ti­ty of each port­fo­lio com­po­nent. The design choic­es you make play a key role in com­mu­ni­cat­ing the rela­tion­ship between the dif­fer­ent com­po­nents of your port­fo­lio and shap­ing cus­tomer perceptions.

If you want your brands or prod­ucts to feel close­ly relat­ed and part of a larg­er whole, con­sid­er assim­i­lat­ing the visu­al iden­ti­ty across the port­fo­lio. This might involve using the same colour palette or typog­ra­phy across all offer­ings. This approach strength­ens brand recog­ni­tion and rein­forces the idea that the prod­ucts or brands are part of a cohe­sive family.

If dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion between your brands or prod­ucts is cru­cial, you may opt for more indi­vid­u­alised designs. In this case, each brand or prod­uct would have its own unique visu­al iden­ti­ty, such as dif­fer­ent colours, logos, or design styles, help­ing to set them apart in the marketplace.

Ulti­mate­ly, the deci­sion to adapt the visu­al iden­ti­ty of your brand/s should align with your over­all strat­e­gy, depend­ing on whether you’re going for a uni­fied or diverse portfolio.

5. Streamline your brands or products

A key part of organ­is­ing your brand port­fo­lio is stream­lin­ing your offer­ings; iden­ti­fy if there are any over­laps between your brands or prod­ucts. If there are, you might con­sid­er con­sol­i­dat­ing some or phas­ing out the weak­er ones. This will ensure your resources are focused on the strongest, most prof­itable brands.

When stream­lin­ing, be mind­ful of how cus­tomers val­ue your offer­ings (i.e., brand equi­ty). If a sub-brand or prod­uct range has strong recog­ni­tion and loy­al­ty, you should avoid chang­ing its iden­ti­ty too dras­ti­cal­ly. You should only rebrand or con­sol­i­date a com­po­nent of your port­fo­lio if brand equi­ty is weak.

As a result, it’s a good idea to quan­ti­fy brand per­cep­tion and cus­tomer loy­al­ty at this stage, to get an idea of what you’re work­ing with.

6. Identify a hierarchy or relationship between components

Next, you’ll want to be able to map the rela­tion­ships between the dif­fer­ent ele­ments of your port­fo­lio and iden­ti­fy a hier­ar­chy if there is one. This is for the ben­e­fit of the busi­ness and its inter­nal teams, but also for customers.

The hier­ar­chy or rela­tion­ships should be com­mu­ni­cat­ed through brand­ing and mar­ket­ing so that:

• It’s easy to dif­fer­en­ti­ate brands and sub-brands.
• Each brand’s role and tar­get audi­ence are com­mu­ni­cat­ed clearly.
• Mes­sag­ing is con­sis­tent across all brands.

It’s cru­cial that your new­ly organ­ised brand port­fo­lio is under­stood by your inter­nal teams. Pro­vid­ing train­ing and clear com­mu­ni­ca­tion about how the brands fit togeth­er ensures con­sis­ten­cy across mar­ket­ing, sales, and cus­tomer ser­vice teams. So, you might like to hold inter­nal work­shops or train­ings and ensure that inter­nal teams can com­mu­ni­cate each brand’s unique val­ue proposition.

You’ll also want to ensure that this hier­ar­chy is reflect­ed exter­nal­ly, in how cus­tomers expe­ri­ence your brands. Whether through pack­ag­ing, adver­tis­ing, or online pres­ence, your cus­tomers should be able to intu­itive­ly nav­i­gate your port­fo­lio and be guid­ed to the rel­e­vant products.

For exam­ple, if one brand serves as the pre­mi­um offer­ing, its posi­tion­ing, design, and mes­sag­ing should clear­ly reflect its ele­vat­ed sta­tus com­pared to oth­er brands in the port­fo­lio. Like­wise, sub-brands or low­er-tier offer­ings should have their role in the hier­ar­chy clear­ly expressed, so cus­tomers know exact­ly what to expect in terms of qual­i­ty, price, and purpose.

7. Update your marketing efforts

Once your port­fo­lio is organ­ised, you’ll need to update your mar­ket­ing cam­paigns. This could include new designs or repo­si­tion­ing efforts to clar­i­fy each brand’s iden­ti­ty and place in the port­fo­lio. It might include a com­bi­na­tion of:

o Uni­fied mes­sag­ing where relevant.

o Indi­vid­ual cam­paigns for port­fo­lio com­po­nents that tar­get dif­fer­ent demographics.

o Cross-pro­mo­tion strate­gies where com­po­nents can sup­port each other.

Don’t for­get to ensure that your web­site and social media pres­ence reflect your port­fo­lio’s new struc­ture. Clear­ly seg­ment­ed or uni­fied pages for each brand can make it eas­i­er for cus­tomers to find and engage with the appro­pri­ate prod­uct or service.

Final thoughts

By fol­low­ing these steps, you can build a well-organ­ised, strate­gi­cal­ly aligned brand port­fo­lio that max­imis­es clar­i­ty, reduces redun­dan­cies, and strength­ens your over­all brand value.

A clear and struc­tured brand archi­tec­ture is essen­tial because it gives each brand or prod­uct a dis­tinct iden­ti­ty, pur­pose, and tar­get mar­ket, which will help pre­vent cus­tomer con­fu­sion and make it eas­i­er for them to engage with your var­i­ous offerings.

Hav­ing an organ­ised brand port­fo­lio will also make it eas­i­er for your busi­ness in the future if you want to intro­duce new prod­ucts or ser­vices. And in the present day, resources are allo­cat­ed more efficiently.

When endeav­our­ing to restruc­ture your brand archi­tec­ture, make sure you don’t over-com­pli­cate the struc­ture. Too many sub-brands or unclear rela­tion­ships between brands or prod­uct lines can con­fuse cus­tomers. Fur­ther­more, a com­mon error is that busi­ness­es choose to organ­ise their port­fo­lios based on inter­nal log­ic rather than con­sid­er­ing how cus­tomers per­ceive the brand – this should be avoided.

And final­ly, fail­ing to build flex­i­bil­i­ty into your port­fo­lio can lead to dif­fi­cul­ties when expand­ing or intro­duc­ing new brands, so keep the future in mind too. It might be that the mar­ket shifts or cus­tomer needs change, so it’s impor­tant that you reg­u­lar­ly review the per­for­mance of each port­fo­lio com­po­nent and adjust accordingly.

To get help with organ­is­ing your brand port­fo­lio, reach out to us here at purpleplanet.

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