Brand hierarchy, otherwise known as brand architecture, refers to the brand strategy behind the relationships between various parts of a business. Broadly speaking, this strategy is best summarized by grouping products and services according to their associated similarities and differences.
Understanding brand hierarchy
As companies grow, so too do their product ranges. Brand hierarchies help businesses and indeed consumers communicate vital brand elements and feature differences between individual products in a range.
Brand hierarchy is important for the simple fact that many businesses overlook the strategy entirely.
These businesses tend to have a preoccupation with releasing products and services without first thinking about the relationship between them.
As a result, the association between offerings is vague and not reflective of the wider brand. Consumers then become confused and unable to make a purchasing decision, which negatively impacts revenue and profits.
Establishing a robust brand architecture is not difficult and can be performed at any stage of business development.
However, those who focus their initial efforts on product development at the expense of brand hierarchy may encounter a costly rebrand in the future.
The three types of brand hierarchy
Corporate, umbrella, and family brands
The highest level of the hierarchy is corporate, family, or umbrella brands.
This level uses cohesive and consistent naming and identity structures, ensuring that individual products and services are homogenous throughout the range.
The corporate strategy is particularly useful for large parent companies that have many divisions or subsidiaries.
For example, Heinz Cream of Tomato Soup and Heinz Tomato Ketchup both share similar visual branding on their labels.
They also feature the corporate brand Heinz in their names, reducing confusion among consumers, and increasing brand equity in the process.
Endorsed brands
Endorsed brands are those that have been endorsed by a parent brand that is either a corporate, umbrella or family brand itself.
In theory, the endorsement from the parent brand adds credibility to the endorsed brand in the eyes of consumers.
In this approach, products are linked or grouped according to brand identity itself and do not rely on homogeneous naming or aesthetics.
For example, parent company Microsoft lend its brand identity and credibility to Office, Xbox, Windows, and Bing.
But each endorsed brand in isolation is distinct in the sense that it is not immediately recognizable as being owned by Microsoft.
Individual
Individual brands are consumer-facing brands where no explicit link between the product and its parent brand is promoted.
In many cases, there is also no link between individual brands themselves.
This is a common occurrence when parent brands acquire smaller brands with high equity among consumers.
Here, the parent brand is irrelevant and often detrimental to brand equity compared to the individual products it takes ownership of.
Coca-Cola uses this strategy to their advantage, having acquired brands such as Fanta, Sprite, and Dasani that were successful in their own right.
Those who are motivated to do so can discover the connection of these brands to The Coca-Cola Company, but they nevertheless continue to exist in original, recognizable forms.
Benefits of incorporating brand hierarchy strategy
Reduces customer confusion. Businesses offering a line of unrelated products confuse consumers as to the brand they are trying to create and convey. Establishing a proper brand hierarchy lessens this confusion, establishes consistency, and leads to increased brand equity.
Reduces competition. In some cases, sub-products achieve such popularity with consumers that the weaker core brand loses popularity. Brand hierarchy strategies focus on strengthening the primary brand so that products under its “umbrella” do not compete with or undermine each other.
Provides clarity. When brands are visually or otherwise segregated with a hierarchy, it allows businesses to develop a marketingstrategy for each. Since each brand will have its own target audience and brand story, clarity reduces the chances of brand dilution or improper messaging.
Brand hierarchy examples
Now that we’ve explained the theory behind brand hierarchy, let’s take a look at some real-world examples.
FedEx
FedEx operates an umbrella brand hierarchy where the master brand is linked to all products and subproducts.
The company has many business branches across various services such as FedEx Office, FedEx Ground, FedEx Freight, FedEx Trade Networks, and FedEx Express.
While these branches perform different functions and operations, they remain united under the core FedEx brand.
Proctor & Gamble
Proctor & Gamble utilizes an individual brand hierarchy with a vast portfolio of strong product brands that have no overt connection to the company itself.
Below is a look at just some of these brands arranged by product category:
Fabric care – Bounce, Cheer, Ariel, Tide, and Gain.
Grooming – Braun, Gillette, Gillette Venus, and The Art of Shaving.
Haircare – Head & Shoulders, Herbal Essences, Old Spice, and Pantene.
Distinctive Premium – Le MERIDIEN, Westin, and Renaissance Hotels.
Classic Select – Courtyard Hotels, Four Points, and SpringHill Suites.
Distinctive Select – AC Hotels, Aloft Hotels, and Moxy Hotels.
Classic Longer Stays – Marriott Executive Apartments, and Residence Inn.
Distinctive Longer Stays – element, and Homes & Villas by Marriott International.
Mondelez International
Mondelez International is an American multinational food and beverage company that specializes in chocolate, cookies, powdered beverages, confectionery, and gum.
The company has a more complex brand hierarchy with various family brands, individual brands, and modifiers (models) under the core Mondelez brand. To explain this structure in more detail, consider these examples:
Cadbury (family brand) – Dairy Milk, 5 Star (individual brands), Dairy Milk Hazelnut, Old Gold, Caramilk (models).
Most consumers think of the Golf or Beetle when they think of German auto-manufacturer Volkswagen, but the company owns multiple vehicle brands with each having many model designations.
Given the pedigree of some brands among car enthusiasts, Volkswagen’s hierarchy is comprised of individual brands with little relationship to its core brand aside from perhaps some minor style similarities.
Some of these individual brands include:
Audi – with models such as the A3, A5, A7, and R8.
Porsche – with models such as the Cayman, Boxster, and Macan.
Lamborghini – a premium sports car manufacturer with models such as the Huracan, Aventador, and Urus.
Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles – these include the Caddy, Amarok, and Transporter.
Ducati – a motorcycle brand with models including the Superleggera, Scrambler, Streetfighter, and Multistrada.
Key takeaways:
Brand hierarchy is a means of organizing different brands and their associated products under a larger, parent brand.
Brand hierarchy can be divided into three main types: corporate, endorsed, or individual. Each has a different organizational structure based on real or perceived relationships between a parent company and its various brands.
A brand hierarchy strategy is most effective when implemented as a foundational element of business operations. It clarifies the future direction of a brand and avoids individual products within a brand potentially undermining each other.
If implemented as a foundational element of business operations, brand hierarchy can help clarify the future direction of a brand and avoid individual products within a brand potentially undermining each other. Thus, it helps improve the brand’s overall performance, both internally and externally, by:
Reducing customer confusion.
Reducing competition.
Providing clarity.
What are the levels of a brand hierarchy?
Brand hierarchy is divided into three main types: corporate, endorsed, or individual. The highest level of the hierarchy is corporate. The second level is endorsed brands. The third level is individual brands consumer-facing brands.
How do you manage a brand hierarchy?
To correctly manage brand hierarchy, companies must focus their efforts on ranking their products, as their initial efforts on product development are executed, to avoid having costly rebranding in the future. Thus, it’s critical to incorporate a brand hierarchy framework within product development to properly organize a product portfolio.
Account-based marketing (ABM) is a strategy where the marketing and sales departments come together to create personalized buying experiences for high-value accounts. Account-based marketing is a business-to-business (B2B) approach in which marketing and sales teams work together to target high-value accounts and turn them into customers.
Ad Ops – also known as Digital Ad Operations – refers to systems and processes that support digital advertisements’ delivery and management. The concept describes any process that helps a marketing team manage, run, or optimize ad campaigns, making them an integrating part of the business operations.
Venture capitalist, Dave McClure, coined the acronym AARRR which is a simplified model that enables to understand what metrics and channels to look at, at each stage for the users’ path toward becoming customers and referrers of a brand.
Affinity marketing involves a partnership between two or more businesses to sell more products. Note that this is a mutually beneficial arrangement where one brand can extend its reach and enhance its credibility in association with the other.
As the name suggests, ambush marketing raises awareness for brands at events in a covert and unexpected fashion. Ambush marketing takes many forms, one common element, the brand advertising their products or services has not paid for the right to do so. Thus, the business doing the ambushing attempts to capitalize on the efforts made by the business sponsoring the event.
Affiliate marketing describes the process whereby an affiliate earns a commission for selling the products of another person or company. Here, the affiliate is simply an individual who is motivated to promote a particular product through incentivization. The business whose product is being promoted will gain in terms of sales and marketing from affiliates.
The bullseye framework is a simple method that enables you to prioritize the marketing channels that will make your company gain traction. The main logic of the bullseye framework is to find the marketing channels that work and prioritize them.
Brand building is the set of activities that help companies to build an identity that can be recognized by its audience. Thus, it works as a mechanism of identification through core values that signal trust and that help build long-term relationships between the brand and its key stakeholders.
According to inbound marketing platform HubSpot, brand dilution occurs “when a company’s brand equity diminishes due to an unsuccessful brand extension, which is a new product the company develops in an industry that they don’t have any market share in.” Brand dilution, therefore, occurs when a brand decreases in value after the company releases a product that does not align with its vision, mission, or skillset.
The brand essence wheel is a templated approach businesses can use to better understand their brand. The brand essence wheel has obvious implications for external brand strategy. However, it is equally important in simplifying brand strategy for employees without a strong marketing background. Although many variations of the brand essence wheel exist, a comprehensive wheel incorporates information from five categories: attributes, benefits, values, personality, brand essence.
The brand equity is the premium that a customer is willing to pay for a product that has all the objective characteristics of existing alternatives, thus, making it different in terms of perception. The premium on seemingly equal products and quality is attributable to its brand equity.
Brand positioning is about creating a mental real estate in the mind of the target market. If successful, brand positioning allows a business to gain a competitive advantage. And it also works as a switching cost in favor of the brand. Consumers recognizing a brand might be less prone to switch to another brand.
Business storytelling is a critical part of developing a business model. Indeed, the way you frame the story of your organization will influence its brand in the long-term. That’s because your brand story is tied to your brand identity, and it enables people to identify with a company.
Content marketing is one of the most powerful commercial activities which focuses on leveraging content production (text, audio, video, or other formats) to attract a targeted audience. Content marketing focuses on building a strong brand, but also to convert part of that targeted audience into potential customers.
One of the first mentions of customer lifetime value was in the 1988 book Database Marketing: Strategy and Implementation written by Robert Shaw and Merlin Stone. Customer lifetime value (CLV) represents the value of a customer to a company over a period of time. It represents a critical business metric, especially for SaaS or recurring revenue-based businesses.
Customer segmentation is a marketing method that divides the customers in sub-groups, that share similar characteristics. Thus, product, marketing and engineering teams can center the strategy from go-to-market to product development and communication around each sub-group. Customer segments can be broken down is several ways, such as demographics, geography, psychographics and more.
Developer marketing encompasses tactics designed to grow awareness and adopt software tools, solutions, and SaaS platforms. Developer marketing has become the standard among software companies with a platform component, where developers can build applications on top of the core software or open software. Therefore, engaging developer communities has become a key element of marketing for many digital businesses.
A digital channel is a marketing channel, part of a distribution strategy, helping an organization to reach its potential customers via electronic means. There are several digital marketing channels, usually divided into organic and paid channels. Some organic channels are SEO, SMO, email marketing. And some paid channels comprise SEM, SMM, and display advertising.
Field marketing is a general term that encompasses face-to-face marketing activities carried out in the field. These activities may include street promotions, conferences, sales, and various forms of experiential marketing. Field marketing, therefore, refers to any marketing activity that is performed in the field.
interaction with a brand until they become a paid customer and beyond.
Funnel marketing is modeled after the marketing funnel, a concept that tells the company how it should market to consumers based on their position in the funnel itself. The notion of a customer embarking on a journey when interacting with a brand was first proposed by Elias St. Elmo Lewis in 1898.
Funnel marketing typically considers three stages of a non-linear marketing funnel. These are top of the funnel (TOFU), middle of the funnel (MOFU), and bottom of the funnel (BOFU). Particular marketing strategies at each stage are adapted to the level of familiarity the consumer has with a brand.
A go-to-market strategy represents how companies market their new products to reach target customers in a scalable and repeatable way. It starts with how new products/services get developed to how these organizations target potential customers (via sales and marketing models) to enable their value proposition to be delivered to create a competitive advantage.
The term “greenwashing” was first coined by environmentalist Jay Westerveld in 1986 at a time when most consumers received their news from television, radio, and print media. Some companies took advantage of limited public access to information by portraying themselves as environmental stewards – even when their actions proved otherwise. Greenwashing is a deceptive marketing practice where a company makes unsubstantiated claims about an environmentally-friendly product or service.
Grassroots marketing involves a brand creating highly targeted content for a particular niche or audience. When an organization engages in grassroots marketing, it focuses on a small group of people with the hope that its marketing message is shared with a progressively larger audience.
Growth marketing is a process of rapid experimentation, which in a way has to be “scientific” by keeping in mind that it is used by startups to grow, quickly. Thus, the “scientific” here is not meant in the academic sense. Growth marketing is expected to unlock growth, quickly and with an often limited budget.
Guerrilla marketing is an advertising strategy that seeks to utilize low-cost and sometimes unconventional tactics that are high impact. First coined by Jay Conrad Levinson in his 1984 book of the same title, guerrilla marketing works best on existing customers who are familiar with a brand or product and its particular characteristics.
Hunger marketing is a marketing strategy focused on manipulating consumer emotions. By bringing products to market with an attractive price point and restricted supply, consumers have a stronger desire to make a purchase.
Integrated marketing communication (IMC) is an approach used by businesses to coordinate and brand their communication strategies. Integrated marketing communication takes separate marketing functions and combines them into one, interconnected approach with a core brand message that is consistent across various channels. These encompass owned, earned, and paid media. Integrated marketing communication has been used to great effect by companies such as Snapchat, Snickers, and Domino’s.
Inbound marketing is a marketing strategy designed to attract customers to a brand with content and experiences that they derive value from. Inbound marketing utilizes blogs, events, SEO, and social media to create brand awareness and attract targeted consumers. By attracting or “drawing in” a targeted audience, inbound marketing differs from outbound marketing which actively pushes a brand onto consumers who may have no interest in what is being offered.
Integrated marketing describes the process of delivering consistent and relevant content to a target audience across all marketing channels. It is a cohesive, unified, and immersive marketing strategy that is cost-effective and relies on brand identity and storytelling to amplify the brand to a wider and wider audience.
The marketing mix is a term to describe the multi-faceted approach to a complete and effective marketing plan. Traditionally, this plan included the four Ps of marketing: price, product, promotion, and place. But the exact makeup of a marketing mix has undergone various changes in response to new technologies and ways of thinking. Additions to the four Ps include physical evidence, people, process, and even politics.
Marketing myopia is the nearsighted focus on selling goods and services at the expense of consumer needs. Marketing myopia was coined by Harvard Business School professor Theodore Levitt in 1960. Originally, Levitt described the concept in the context of organizations in high-growth industries that become complacent in their belief that such industries never fail.
Marketing personas give businesses a general overview of key segments of their target audience and how these segments interact with their brand. Marketing personas are based on the data of an ideal, fictional customer whose characteristics, needs, and motivations are representative of a broader market segment.
Meme marketing is any marketing strategy that uses memes to promote a brand. The term “meme” itself was popularized by author Richard Dawkins over 50 years later in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene. In the book, Dawkins described how ideas evolved and were shared across different cultures. The internet has enabled this exchange to occur at an exponential rate, with the first modern memes emerging in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Microtargeting is a marketing strategy that utilizes consumer demographic data to identify the interests of a very specific group of individuals. Like most marketing strategies, the goal of microtargeting is to positively influence consumer behavior.
Multichannel marketing executes a marketing strategy across multiple platforms to reach as many consumers as possible. Here, a platform may refer to product packaging, word-of-mouth advertising, mobile apps, email, websites, or promotional events, and all the other channels that can help amplify the brand to reach as many consumers as possible.
Multi-level marketing (MLM), otherwise known as network or referral marketing, is a strategy in which businesses sell their products through person-to-person sales. When consumers join MLM programs, they act as distributors. Distributors make money by selling the product directly to other consumers. They earn a small percentage of sales from those that they recruit to do the same – often referred to as their “downline”.
The Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a measure of the ability of a product or service to attract word-of-mouth advertising. NPS is a crucial part of any marketing strategy since attracting and then retaining customers means they are more likely to recommend a business to others.
Neuromarketing information is collected by measuring brain activity related to specific brain functions using sophisticated and expensive technology such as MRI machines. Some businesses also choose to make inferences of neurological responses by analyzing biometric and heart-rate data.
Neuromarketing is the domain of large companies with similarly large budgets or subsidies. These include Frito-Lay, Google, and The Weather Channel.
Newsjacking as a marketing strategy was popularised by David Meerman Scott in his book Newsjacking: How to Inject Your Ideas into a Breaking News Story and Generate Tons of Media Coverage. Newsjacking describes the practice of aligning a brand with a current event to generate media attention and increase brand exposure.
A microniche is a subset of potential customers within a niche. In the era of dominating digital super-platforms, identifying a microniche can kick off the strategy of digital businesses to prevent competition against large platforms. As the microniche becomes a niche, then a market, scale becomes an option.
We can define pull and push marketing from the perspective of the target audience or customers. In push marketing, as the name suggests, you’re promoting a product so that consumers can see it. In a pull strategy, consumers might look for your product or service drawn by its brand.
Real-time marketing is as exactly as it sounds. It involves in-the-moment marketing to customers across any channel based on how that customer is interacting with the brand.
Relationship marketing involves businesses and their brands forming long-term relationships with customers. The focus of relationship marketing is to increase customer loyalty and engagement through high-quality products and services. It differs from short-term processes focused solely on customer acquisition and individual sales.
Reverse marketing describes any marketing strategy that encourages consumers to seek out a product or company on their own. This approach differs from a traditional marketing strategy where marketers seek out the consumer.
Remarketing involves the creation of personalized and targeted ads for consumers who have already visited a company’s website. The process works in this way: as users visit a brand’s website, they are tagged with cookies that follow the users, and as they land on advertising platforms where retargeting is an option (like social media platforms) they get served ads based on their navigation.
Sensory marketing describes any marketing campaign designed to appeal to the five human senses of touch, taste, smell, sight, and sound. Technologies such as artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and the Internet of Things (IoT) are enabling marketers to design fun, interactive, and immersive sensory marketing brand experiences. Long term, businesses must develop sensory marketing campaigns that are relevant and effective in eCommerce.
Services marketing originated as a separate field of study during the 1980s. Researchers realized that the unique characteristics of services required different marketing strategies to those used in the promotion of physical goods. Services marketing is a specialized branch of marketing that promotes the intangible benefits delivered by a company to create customer value.
Sustainable marketing describes how a business will invest in social and environmental initiatives as part of its marketing strategy. Also known as green marketing, it is often used to counteract public criticism around wastage, misleading advertising, and poor quality or unsafe products.
Word-of-mouth marketing is a marketing strategy skewed toward offering a great experience to existing customers and incentivizing them to share it with other potential customers. That is one of the most effective forms of marketing as it enables a company to gain traction based on existing customers’ referrals. When repeat customers become a key enabler for the brand this is one of the best organic and sustainable growth marketing strategies.
360 marketing is a marketing campaign that utilizes all available mediums, channels, and consumer touchpoints. 360 marketing requires the business to maintain a consistent presence across multiple online and offline channels. This ensures it does not miss potentially lucrative customer segments. By its very nature, 360 marketing describes any number of different marketing strategies. However, a broad and holistic marketing strategy should incorporate a website, SEO, PPC, email marketing, social media, public relations, in-store relations, and traditional forms of advertising such as television.
Gennaro is the creator of FourWeekMBA, which reached about four million business people, comprising C-level executives, investors, analysts, product managers, and aspiring digital entrepreneurs in 2022 alone | He is also Director of Sales for a high-tech scaleup in the AI Industry | In 2012, Gennaro earned an International MBA with emphasis on Corporate Finance and Business Strategy.
