Branding strategies
As a lot of expense may be incurred in creating, registering, using, monitoring, and protecting a mark, therefore, would you recommend the use of one mark for all products of a business or a new mark for each new product introduced by a business or some else? The answer to this question would depend on a range of factors, such as the type of the product, the nature of competition, the marketing strategy of a company and that of its competitors. So, for good reasons, different businesses adopt different branding strategies for marketing their products. The same business may vary its strategy over time and even at a given point in time it may adopt varying strategies for different market segments in the same country or for markets abroad.
1. Multi‐brand strategy
Some businesses follow a multi brand strategy marketing two or more similar and competing products under different and unrelated brands.
For example, Guangdong Kelon Electrical Holdings, a Chinese company, follows a multi brand strategy for marketing its refrigerators and air conditioners. For refrigerators, Kelon is the high‐end brand, Ronshen is the middle‐ to high‐end brand, and Combine is the low‐end brand. The company has three assembly lines, and advertises the three brands separately.
Another example is Nike, which started as a shoestring operation in 1964 under the name Blue Ribbon Sports, has rapidly grown and taken the mantle of the industry's No. 1 from Adidas. It recently has made several acquisitions that allow the company to market to discount shoppers under the Starter brand; "lifestyle" consumers in the middle‐market channel under the Converse sneaker brand; and keep its core premium customers with the signature Nike brand.
2. Family brand strategy
A family brand is a brand which is used on a group of products of a given company. A family brand may be the corporate brand or there may be number of family brands under a corporate brand. The product group may or may not be all of those businesses’ product line. Good examples include brands in the food industry, including Kellogg’s, Heinz and Del Monte.
Learn more: Combination brand names or secondary brand identification
The use of a family brand saves money on branding but may also create problems if one of the products gets bad publicity or is a failure in a market. This can damage the reputation of a whole range of brands. So, it may be better for individual members of the family to also carry individual brands to differentiate them from other family members. Thus, you would have combination brand names or secondary brand identification. Often companies may maintain their family brand name on all their products while also applying an individual brand name to each product line.
More Reference 1: Co‐branding
Brands are often not used alone but in combination. There are various ways of doing so. Sometimes two companies come together in a joint Venture that uses the two brands together.
For example, MARUTI and SUZUKI are used together for cars in india. This is an example of co‐branding where two or more brand names are used in support of a new product, service or venture. This may also be done after mergers or acquisitions of companies.
More Reference 2: Generic brands
A mark may have become generic having lost its distinctiveness or it continues to be a functioning brand. It cannot be both. Indeed, this combination of words is an oxymoron.
The term generic brand is used by many in marketing circles to refer to what may be considered to be poorly differentiated marks, targeted towards consumers that do not necessarily care about a brand name. Generic brands are also called Savings brands.
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