Product Brand Strategy

We undertake a variety of assignment types that can be broadly labelled as product ‘brand strategy’, e.g.

1. Review and improve the strategy for a single existing brand (or address specific problems with a brand).

2. Develop brand strategy (possibly also market strategy) for a new product or product range, or for an existing product being targeted at a new market.

3. Design/improve “brand architecture” (i.e. how the company’s whole set of brands are structured and interrelate)

4. Install a brand management regime – effectively, ‘best practice’ – to improve how the company manages, utilises and monitors its brands, with the ultimate goal of maximising brand equity.

5. Advise on integration of acquired product brands, specifically to minimise loss of brand equity.

Key Points About Product Brand Strategy

A complete ‘brand strategy’ typically includes:

The scope of the brand (i.e. precisely which products [and applications] are covered by the brand – and which are not),
How the product range is positioned in relation to competing products,
The message or ‘proposition’ the brand aims to convey,
In some cases, the nomenclature systems for identifying individual products within a larger range,
Also, putting in place basic rules regarding who has the authority to make changes to the brand strategy and in what circumstances, and
Generally ensuring the brand strategy and market strategy are totally consistent.

Brand strategy should have a long time-horizon – many of the industrial brands with greatest brand equity have existed for 50+ years. This means that the strategy for product branding should have a horizon considerable greater than that of the market strategies for the products that it represents, and brand equity is damaged if every generation of marketing manager changes brand strategy.

Therefore it is good practice to:

Document brand strategy clearly and thoroughly – so the rationale is not lost
Install the rules mentioned above. Often there are 2 tiers to these: one for how the company generally manages and coordinates its brands, the other covering the specifics of individual brands