Brand Extension

If you have ever named a boat, a pet or a child, you know how difficult it can be to choose the right name. Despite the importance of the decision, the process seems hit-and-miss and there seem to be few guidelines for getting it right. After agonizing over lists of alternatives, you reject all but one, with no sense of certainty. Later the name seems inevitable – how could you have considered any other name?
The Challenge of Naming
The naming challenge is compounded in a business environment, where anointing a company with a name is likely to be just the first of many labeling decisions. Products, business units, specific services, marketing programs, features, line extensions, apps, web sites and more all need monikers. Each decision has implications for future decisions, so it’s important to have a plan or ‘rules’ to guide your choices and avoid confusing customers.
Although critically important to brand health and company value, it can be difficult to create the rules for naming brand entities, and for specifying the relationships among them. Here is a partial list of the kinds of challenges faced: * When is it desirable to extend an existing brand and when is a new brand required? * How should a new brand be linked to the parent? Should the relationship be explicit or kept in the shadows? * Which is better, a descriptive name or a fanciful name? * When should a name be retired? * When should a feature be branded? * Should different brands from the same company have different web sites?
These types of decisions become more complex as the brand portfolio grows. That’s why it’s important to have a plan for efficiently presenting your brand.
Brand Architecture: The Face of Your Brand
The purpose of brand architecture is to establishing the ‘rules’ that ensure brand names fit together in one coherent offering. A