Sub-brands come from the parent brands to reach a new audience. The attributes of sub-brands are distinct as much as they are related to the leading brand. Sub-brands often operate under their brand standards, logos, or colors.
Successful sub-brands are beneficial to their parent brands as they can help advertise and increase the exposure of prominent brands. Sub-brands can attract new customers, re-engage old customers, and help your company expand into new markets.
Sub-brands are beneficial. However, they require corporate restructuring to accommodate their new identity. In this way, consumers will easily distinguish them from parent brands.
Not Substandard
Umbrella companies can easily underestimate a sub-brand if they have a parent brand that channels more resources to grow and maintain itself. However, Sub-brands should be treated with equal importance as they serve as a better way to deliver value to your customers in case of an underserved gap in the retail community.
Building a brand is like building a house. You cannot start reaping benefits before you understand what needs to be done to achieve a finished product. Brand architecture, therefore, is your company’s blueprint that guides your growth. Your architecture also tells you how to structure your parent brand, even as your company evolves with new products services and becomes distinct in the market.
You can create a sub-brand if you need to explore an idea that might not fit your company’s core objectives. With sub-brands, you’ll be at liberty to explore new avenues for revenue new ideas and help you go beyond your initial portfolio. No matter the brand architecture you choose, always ensure that you stay connected to your parent brand.
Different in a Good Way
Sub-brands help you reach new markets or market segments that parent brands can’t reach. Your sub-brands products or services may not take the same amount of resources as your company’s product, but a customer base that trusts a parent is likely to choose to still buy from your sub-brand.
If you are into marketing, a sub-brand in printing merchandise should easily convince existing customers to buy just by looking at how pens are made. Sub-brands can also be cost-effective and can offer products at different price levels meant for different audience examples: students, young professionals, students, or athletes.
If you don’t wish to risk revealing your corporate functions as the main product line, you can allow your sub-brand to gain more exposure than the parent brand. In some cases, sub-brands act as co-drivers with the parent brands, as they are never strong.
Sub-brands attempt to enrich your Masterbrand with new associations and can be a good strategy when working on a limited marketing budget.
Much as sub-brands have several benefits to offer, they can be expensive and challenging to run. Sometimes, sub-brands can be unsuccessful. Such failure can negatively impact your parent brand as it affects loyalty, trust, and business as a whole. If your customers will have bad experiences, it can tarnish both the sub-brand and parent brand.
Differentiating Brands
During expansion, confusion between the parent brand and sub-brand is likely to occur. This confusion can potentially dilute the power and identity of the main brand, and this is why sub-brands need corporate restructuring to accommodate a new brand and its identity.
A proper brand architecture will bring more advantages to your company. It will drive revenue, capture customers, increase brand equity, and create an accurate corporate culture with a beautiful brand story. There are different brand architecture models that you can choose from depending on your organization’s needs. For instance, the hybrid brand architecture model creates awareness for your brand while protecting your company’s brand reputation.
To implement brand architecture successfully, you need to analyze the mix of your existing product versus your current positioning and ensure that customers get the right message. Mixed messages or unclear correlations among family brands can mislead the general public.
When to Start a Sub-brand
If you offer more than one product or service, you can consider having a sub-brand. Sub-brands can be effective when you need to distinguish between products sold under one brand as it modifies how consumers perceive the qualities of the parent brand.
You can also consider including sub-brands in your overall brand strategy if it promises a genuinely different value from the overall company value. If it doesn’t bring any value, having a sub-brand will not be necessary. You should also consider a sub-brand if it promises to reach markets that your company cannot. The potential sub-brands target audience differs from your audience and if that target audience is distinct from that of the parent brand.