by
Yasi ZhangDo you have a brand for the company but also several other brands for products? Or do you have a brand for the company and the same brand name for your product or services? It can happen that potential customers are confused about what are you selling a product, and who are you as a company. This article is to help you clear those confusions.
Corporate Brand
A corporate brand stands for the company as a whole, not a particular product or service. A corporate brand is like Unilever, P&G, Berkshire Hathaway, or Daimler. Corporate branding is thus different from product or service branding. It covers a broader range of topics, for example, corporate culture, CSR, investor relations, and so on.
Product or Service Brand
Product or service brands are more familiarized by the general public. Most of the B2C products are known by their product brands. For example, Tide, Magnum, Ben&Jerry, AXE, and so on. But few people know that all of those mentioned brands belong to the Unilever company. Because those are products, and companies invest more in product branding in order to sell more. Can you use the same brand name for the company and product? Yes, you can. But be aware that when you have more than one product in the future, it might cause some confusion to the customers. When you have more than one product, potentially even more in the future, you need to have a clear brand strategy. Do you use House of Brands or Branded House?
…
What is the House of Brands
According to the name, the house of brands means a house of different brands. When you put different brands in the ‘house’, each of them has its own brand identity. Consumers or customers are familiar with individual brands, rather than the ‘house’. Examples of the house of brands are typically seen in the consumer goods industry.
Photo 1
Photo 2
In the first picture, Unilever is the corporate brand, this company has many products and each of them has a brand. So it is a house of brands.
The picture below shows P&G is a corporate brand. The company owns many other brands. More than the ones showed in the picture here in reality.
It is very intuitive to understand why those two companies choose the house of brands model. Each brand has a unique proposition, even though they are both ice creams, in the case of Ben&Jerry, Cornetto, or Magnum. The brand positioning is quite different. The product itself is also somewhat different. By capturing consumers at each segment, Unilever can maximize market share through various brands.
On the other hand, the Branded House means a single brand which consumers are familiar with, and there are products that are under the brand. Imagine it is a branded house, inside the house, there are many sub-brands. The most typical example is Google.
Branded House Model by Google
Branded House Model by Fedex
You can see a pattern that each product carries the name of the mother brand. The products are all complimentary to each other. A Branded House model works the best when the products are not directly competing against each other, rather complimentary. Companies that adopt this model can channel all resources to build a strong mother brand and create a synergy. While companies use the house of brands model need to invest in building each brand. There are both advantages and disadvantages to each model.
…
House of Brands Model
- Unique brands for each product
- Capture each customer segment
- Suitable for companies offering products that can cannibalize each other
- Need to invest a lot in building each brand
Branded House Model
- Grouped under the mother brand, easier for new product entry when the mother brand is established
- Synergies in brand-building efforts. Companies can focus on building a strong main brand and it has an effect on sub-brands.
- Suitable for companies offering complementary or non-competing products and services.
Case Study
Recently I made a marketing strategy on ProtonMail to evaluate its branding and marketing. ProtonMail started as an encrypted email service but then extended its product range to ProtonVPN and ProtonCalendar. If you check the main website and all social media accounts, the company is building a brand called ProntonMail. This can be very misleading especially ProtonMail is also the name of its emailing product.
It started as a brand which contains the product ‘Mail’ in the name, as the company starts to develop other products, ProtonMail is no longer a valid brand for all products. Since its products are complementary to each other, the best is to use Branded House Model. Under the Proton brand, there could be ProtonMail, ProtonCalendar, ProtonVPN, and so on.
…
Many startups or small companies started with an initial brand name, as the business develops, it is no longer suitable. Ideally, you should look at your business model, then you would know what kind of product range you are going to offer. Then when developing the marketing strategy, a suitable branding model can be decided. If you don’t have a concrete idea of where the business will go in the future, the safest choice is to choose a general name without specifying the product(eg.avoid mistakes like having ‘Mail’ in ‘ProtonMail’).
We know how much work it requires to manage a social media channel, and the success is not always immediate. That is why we are at promote and scale to help startups grow on social, and you can focus on business development and product. We have in-house expertise and a team of experts to support you, and you can grow fast. Book a free 30 minutes consultation call with us to learn more.
…
We are Promote and Scale, an agency specialized in digital marketing and lead generation for early-stage start-ups.
It is our mission to help you stop wasting your time and money on ineffective and inconsistent marketing activities. It is our vision to offer you comprehensive, high-quality, and efficient marketing services, so you can focus on what really matters — building your product, business development, and acquiring new customers.