Marketing with Smart:ROI

Tail wags dog

Reputation management

Fusing business model with brand strategy

Brand management in higher education

1 + 1 = 3

The best of both worlds

Engaging and embedding internal communications

Enhancing the brand through the IPO maze

Brand Architecture: considerations

THE BEST OF BOTH WORLDS

One of the many business challenges demanding senior management attention on a regular basis is that of brand architecture, or hierarchy: the overt operating and marketing relationships between different parts of an organisation reflected through the name and visual linkages between a corporate parent and its business divisions, subsidiaries, branded products and services.

Each time a company acquires, merges with (or de-merges from), or partners with another business, product, or service, then questions regarding that entity's future name, visual identity and cultural/operational fit within its new business and marketing environment will land on one, or other, senior executive's desk.

'Monolithic', 'endorsed' and 'stand-alone' are familiar terms these days for describing the differing branding models that can be applied: from at one end of the spectrum the single, integrated corporate entity where most parts of business share one, common brand name, look and culture (e.g. BP); through to more evenly balanced corporate/brand relationships (e.g. United Technologies/Pratt & Whitney); to finally the largely independent, decentralised brands best reflected in many of the fast moving consumer goods' groups, such as Unilever.