Wrestle with brand architecture

Does your brand architecture make you easier or harder to figure out?

Let's face it: Brand architecture - how you present what you do to the world - can be a drag to deal with. It's often confused with organization structure (and power structure) and can make people very territorial. But if you don't have it right you are very likely, at best, confusing your customers and at worst undermining the potential in each relationship. While in some settings there is hard science behind finding the optimal brand structure based on valuation impact, there is also just some good common sense to finding the right place on the spectrum from "the branded house" to the "house of brands". And it's rarely that black and white with lots of tools like endorsement branding to create sensible hybrids. Getting it right means coming back to your strategic intent, the optimal structure for relationships and what I call the Proximity Value and Proximity Risk.

I've worked with a number of clients whose brand systems had become unwieldy: RBC, Loyalty One, Great-West LifeCo. The process of untangling it all can be very refreshing.