Know-How Exchange : Branding

Benefits are that you invigorate a dying or disliked brand, are able to deliver multiple product to different segments of the same marketplace (ala Tide and Oxydoll) and you save yourself some money and headache by not having to design and maintain separate identities for each brand (as opposed to varying a common identity). Also--it helps overall corporate if there is corporate branding as well and it wants to become quickly known as a multi-brand corporation (Nestle or GE for instance).

Disadvantage is you destroy or corrupt customer loyalty to a known or admired brand.

The market will tell you whether this makes sense. If there is no loyalty, or there is dislike or distrust--rebrand. If the market likes the product--don't touch.

A brand is a promise of performance. You promise that your brand will deliver a stated benefit every time the consumer/customer buys/uses it. If you deliver, you have a strong brand. If you don't your brand is worthless.

The question you have to ask yourself is whether the various brands/products deliver the same benefit to the target audience(s) or not. If they do, then perhaps you can offer them all under the same brand name. If they don't, you'd be fooling yourself if you thought you were somehow saving money or simplifying the benefit story for your customers. You're much more likely to confuse them and cost yourself far more than you've saved.

Most of the time, the right answer is to have separate/different brands for different benefits and/or target audiences. When companies forget this, they usually regret it in the end.