Course summary

Let’s review what we’ve talked about and where we’re going next!

Congratulations on reaching the end of the first course! You have already worked hard and I hope your organisation’s identity is already becoming more clear, consistent, and effective in helping communicate who you are. I want to offer some encouragement that sometimes pulling apart your organisation to assess its brand (especially brand architecture!) can lead to it feeling less clear before it all makes sense again. You may feel very confident about your organisation’s brand, sub-brands, and products, or you may feel a little confused about how to categorise it all. That’s ok. As you continue to think about your organisation and we look at your brand strategy, the pieces will all come together beautifully. Remember, you are the expert on your organisation.

If you’re looking for additional explanations of brand architecture and a deeper dive into the advantages and disadvantages of each model, here is a helpful article.

The most important part of defining brand architecture is that you choose one to follow and stick with it.

Brand architecture:

Parent brand: The highest level of an organisation’s brand that could either exist on its own or contain sub-brands.

Sub-brand: This is owned by the parent brand, but speak to a unique audience and contain a specific offering.

Product: An object, or service the audience receives from the organisation.

Signpost: Ways of categorising and labelling products in communication materials to guide the way the audience experiences the organisation.

Main types of brand architecture:

Branded House: A parent brand contains sub-brand that are completely attached to it with few distinguishing characteristics.
House of brands: A parents brand contains sub-brands that are distinct and unique from it.
Hybrid: A parent brand contains both attached and distinct sub-brand

Leaders guide questions:

• If someone looked at the homepage of your website, how would they describe your organisation in terms of who you are and what you do? Try to only use 1-2 sentences.
• If you were speaking to someone about your organisation for the first time, how would you describe it in 1-2 sentences?
• What, if anything, would someone understand better about your organisation by talking to you versus just looking at one page of your website?
• After completing the brand architecture exercise, what new understandings do you have in how your brand is organised?