Question

Topic: Branding

Sub-branding Engineering Company Good Idea?

Posted by Anonymous on 3/14/2008 at 7:17 PM ET 25 Points
Hi Guys

I'm a graphic designer, designing a brand for a multi disciplinary engineering company who is considering sub-branding there business. They would like to make at the least 12 sub-brands logos for there company e.g. Company Name Airports, Company Name Water etc. They have been in the market place for 30 years but just recently have decided to expand and have done little branding or marketing in the past, so where basically starting from the bottom.

This is something they are quite passionate about, but I feel that its a bad idea because there trying to establish a brand presence around there name and logo and by adding sub-brands at this stage of development will create confusion in the market place and lead to clients believing they only do that kind of work.

I was wondering if i could get peoples thought on this? Is sub-branding a good idea (at this early stage of development)? Am i jumping around for nothing? Does anyone know of where i can find case studies to back my argument?

Any help would be greatly appreciated


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RESPONSES

  • Posted by L. Duggan on 3/14/2008 at 9:17 PM Accepted
    I'm not sure that what you described is sub-branding, at least as I understand it. General Motors has a number of sub-brands, Chevrolet, Pontiac etc.

    It seems what your firm is trying to do is to extend its brand name to products as a way to take advantage of a name that you say has been around for 30 years. It actually makes sense to leverage the 30 years of brand equity they have accumulated and put it's name on different products.

    If they were only around for three years, it may be a stretch to extend the brand to other products. The concept of a brand is sometimes misunderstood and many think it only relates to the visual elements of a franchise (e.g., brand name, logo, signage etc.) A brand is the sum total of an organizations delivery on promises it has made over the years to their various publics. The visual elements are simply reminders of what the brand stands for.

    It seems that they believe that over the course of 30 years their constituents have come to position their brand as credible, reliable, cost effective, whatever it is that they have consistently done. And now they want to apply that to other products.

    Check out any of the books by David Aaker: "Managing Brand Equity" or "Building Strong Brands". There is also
    "Building the Brand Driven Business" by Scott M. Davis and Michael Dunn. Hope this helps. Good Luck!
  • Posted by ilan on 3/15/2008 at 8:18 AM Accepted
    You are talking about brand hierarchy, and brand architecture, not sub-branding.
    In the previous message you have a good list of books to learn from.
    Get other books about branding and try to understand the brand architecture structure before you recommend anything.
  • Posted on 3/15/2008 at 11:32 PM Author
    Thank you very much that has really helped and clarified a lot. Many of the people within this organization have called it sub-branding for a long time i glad to know that its not sub-branding but brand architecture/hierarchy. Thanks for the books referrals i'll definitely will check them out.
  • Posted by matthewmnex on 3/17/2008 at 9:36 PM Member
    This is a very interesting and important question. I very much like all the professional answers that you have received so far.

    It is really tough to give good replies in these forums with so little actual hard data to go on from the initial post but here are a couple of thoughts of my own.

    30 years in terms of building brand equity is actually a very short time - however we do not know as yet the size of the operation you are discussing and it's catchment area.

    You had mentioned that you are designing a brand - Again, please be careful with your words here. You are designing a logo or stylistic intended to create visual recognition for the brand. Designing and building a brand is a highly technical and long term job of which the graphical image work is just 1 important part of the mix. (not to put you down you understand but just to help you to clarify and separate the various elements of brand building).

    My gut feeling would be to go with Phil G who recommends to keep the diamond in tact. You had earlier mentioned that they had not yet done much in the way of brand building activities despite 30 years of operation. (no uncommon).

    There is definitely some value in clearly defining the different disciplines that the company can handle with operational divisions but 12 may be far too many at this time.

    You don't want to destroy the brand equity by becoming a 'jack of all trades and master of none'.

    My advice would be to concentrate on the core specialities that the firm can do up to a maximum of 3.

    1 Master Brand (put 80% of the branding marketing efforts here)
    2 speciality divisions below: Work on this for 2 or 3 years and measure carefully the response of the market and growth of these divisions. if all looks good - add more specialities later but do it conservatively.

    if a particular speciality is too different or too far from the original core expertise of the Master Brand. Set up a whole new company with a new name and new brand and make it a subsidiary of the Master company to avoid dilution of the brand.

    I hope some of this is helpful.
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