What Every C-Level Executive Should Have in Their Back Pocket

Alena Caras, VP of Brand Strategy, Hot Paper Lantern

Think about a top-tier brand. What word associations come to mind? FedEx, overnight delivery. Google, internet search. Dove, body positivity. Heinz, ketchup.

Brands work really hard – over decades – to establish this association, and it starts with laying a strong foundation, operating with agility and accelerating brand adoption.

Great brands aren’t built overnight, nor are they static. Like your business strategy, brand strategies have to adapt over time to maintain – or change, depending on the circumstance – the way they are perceived in the market.

That evolution isn’t possible without a strong brand architecture. Brand architecture is the structural set-up of the brand(s) and its product or service offerings. While each brand may be structured differently, the method for evolving – the secret sauce – remains the same.

For some, a brand architecture may include one brand with multiple product or service offerings, or it may include several brands within a structure serving multiple customers and a variety of products or service offerings. Regardless of size and set up, a sound brand architecture looks at the composition of this framework, scrutinizes customer need states, and determines if the existing structure provides clarity, synergy, and leverage.

Hitting peak clarity for a brand means the organization, both internally and externally, has achieved a clear articulation of the product or service offering. While it sounds intuitive at face value, oftentimes organizations forget to communicate about how their products or services should be communicated out in the market. This is especially true when companies are busy focusing on speed to market, launching a new product/campaign or they are focused on the operational aspects of M&A. When clarity is assumed, internal confusion ensues. That internal confusion breeds external disconnect which alters the brand’s image in the marketplace. 

The next component in establishing a strong brand is synergy. When there are multiple brands, products or service offerings, synergy is paramount. Connecting brands back to a single brand promise and establishing that synergy enables brands to own certain word associations in the customer’s mind. Rewinding back to the top-tier brands mentioned earlier and the words that they’ve been able to own in their space, without clarity and synergy that would not be possible. When synergy is in full-force, companies start to establish that ownership and that ownership is worth its weight in gold. With that in mind, regardless of the equity of an individual brand, companies should constantly look to map back to a single brand promise when dealing with multiple offerings, products or services.

The last component in the secret sauce to building a strong brand is leverage. Companies achieve strong growth in their quest for market share and customer loyalty when they review how each brand exposes cross-sell opportunities from their various product or service offerings and establishing a system for others within the organization to accelerate it.

While it takes time to establish a strong architecture, it can help to start small by looking through the lens of these three components. After all, as the digital age accelerates the pace of change, brands must adapt in order to outpace the competition and stay in the minds of their customers. To hear more, check out the podcast where Alena talks about what it takes to build a world-class brand in the digital economy.

About the Author: With over 10 years’ global experience working in brand and marketing at PwC, Alena is now the VP of Brand Strategy at Hot Paper Lantern, an agency that fuses deep expertise in brand and marketing communications with business consulting and technology solutions. Alena has built world-class brands first-hand. Listen to her podcast on building a brand in the digital age.