How can brand research inform effective brand architecture?

A brand exists in the hearts and minds of consumers, so you 100% need to know their perception of value drivers, and how they differ across segments, to design an architecture that will be meaningful and intuitive to them.

Ever thought of diversifying your business without losing your niche? Picture purchasing a new firm, grappling with whether to integrate or stand alone. You need Brand Architecture. This roadmap guides your naming, grouping, and linking of brands. An intuitive system that makes sense to both your customers and stakeholders. It gives you the power to define your unique value proposition, and leverage your brand equity across multiple market segments. Here's a quick breakdown: 1. Branded House - Google. A single giant housing Google Chrome, Google Cloud, Google Maps. 2. House of Brands - P&G. Independent products like Gillette, Tide, Bounty under one umbrella. 3. Endorsed - Coca Cola. Sprite, Fanta and others under the parent brand.

A brand architecture is like the design of a house, with various parts that make your brand easy to recognize and remember. Just as a house has a foundation, exterior, and decorative elements, your brand has its own unique elements. There isn't one fixed way to create a brand architecture; you can shape it to best fit your brand and your customers.

Just like a skyscraper with its foundational structure, a brand needs to identify and build its core strength which becomes a base for any adaptation. Although segmentation yet may not be intricate as consumer branding, I find this concept also applicable to Employer Branding.

Brand architecture refers to the structure and organization of a brand portfolio. It defines the relationship and hierarchy between different brands and sub-brands within a company.

Brand research is a crucial step in forming and building your brand's architecture. This is what you need as a first step before you organize and present your brand, sub brands you may have and clarify the relationship between different products / services to your overarching corporate brand communication. it helps align your brand structure with customer perceptions, business goals and market dynamics. This ensures your brand portfolio remains relevant and consistent with your brand audience.

Brand architecture is all about mental models. To build an effective brand architecture, you need to understand how different categories and offerings relate to one another in the minds of your customers. This is particularly important for companies with diverse offerings across several categories or audience segments. Qualitative research can help unpack these associations. How might your customers organize your offerings? What's different or similar about them? Where does your brand intuitively stretch, versus where does it hit the boundaries of your equity?

Brand research is essential for brand architecture because it provides valuable insights and data that inform the strategic decisions and development of an effective brand architecture

Brand research can be used either to inform or to validate. You do research to inform your brand architecture, collecting inputs from the target group, but also from the employees and management on the company. Once you have formed your brand architecture, crafting it in your unique perspective, you can now go back to research and validate what you have created.

Understanding Customer Needs: Brand research provides valuable insights into the needs, pain points, and preferences of your target audience. This understanding is essential for designing a brand architecture that aligns with customer expectations and addresses their specific requirements. Segmentation: Effective brand architecture often involves segmenting your customer base and tailoring brand offerings to different groups. Brand research helps identify meaningful segments and informs how your brand should resonate with each segment. Competitive Analysis: Researching your competitors and their brand architectures can reveal opportunities for differentiation or indicate areas where your brand might be at a disadvantage.

Brand research is an underrated aspect of brand building but I’ve discovered that it’s very helpful in helping you understand your customer insights, what the competition is up to, and coming up with your brand equity assessment. It identifies customer segments, guiding decisions on branding or hybrid approaches. Research assesses brand strength, helping leverage existing equity or if you need to reposition your brand. It helps in defining your messaging and overall positioning. All of this is what forms your brand architecture and helps you make informed decisions about how to structure & position your business for maximum impact and relevance in your target markets.

Brand research at times is taken for granted when brands just launch their ideas without proper facts and insights. A parallel example would be 'home architecture'. You need to research the materials, the structure, the foundation, etc. With 'brand architecture' the research you get from FGD, surveys, research companies will aid you when you create your brand architecture.

Using brand research to inform brand architecture design involves a systematic and strategic approach. Here are some steps to consider: Define Research Objectives Conduct Customer Research

Brand research has helped us uncover key insights about the target audience. We use the findings to inform every brand decision we make including whether or not to shift our client's brand hierarchy strategy. For us, it's all about customer preferences and their perception of our client's products and services.

Define Your Brand Research Objectives: Start by clearly outlining your research objectives. What specific aspects of your brand architecture are you looking to inform or refine? Whether it's clarifying brand positioning, optimizing sub-brand relationships, or understanding customer perceptions, having a clear focus is essential. Conduct Customer Research: Conduct thorough customer research to gain insights into their needs, preferences, behaviors, and perceptions. This can involve surveys, interviews, focus groups, or online monitoring. Understand how customers currently interact with your brand and sub-brands and what associations they have with each.

Analyze Market Data: Analyze market data, including sales figures, market share data, and customer behavior data, to evaluate the performance of the brand architecture. Compare the performance of different brands or sub-brands within the architecture to identify strengths, weaknesses, and areas for improvement. Look for patterns, trends, and correlations in the data that can provide insights into the effectiveness of the current brand architecture.

Data has always been important, hard facts, but so is customer sentiment. It is a good practice to gather customer feedback about an experience, whether that is using an app, visiting a website, making a purchase, or visiting a physical store. Then you would cross reference that information with the data you have collected. To have a better understanding and make brand adjustments to provide better experiences to your customers. One key thing to have into consideration, is that even if you have both, the feedback and data, you should always be aware of unexpected scenarios or situations beyond your research and most importantly to be open to change in order to adapt and thrive.

Establish Clear KPIs: Start by defining Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that align with your brand architecture objectives. These could include metrics related to brand recognition, customer loyalty, market share, or customer satisfaction. Continuous Tracking: Implement a system for continuous tracking of your brand's performance metrics and customer feedback. This can involve regular surveys, social media monitoring, website analytics, and other data sources. Benchmarking: Compare your brand's performance against industry benchmarks and competitors. Identify areas where your brand architecture may lag or outperform others.

Continual brand research is vital. Regularly gather feedback and data to gauge brand performance and customer satisfaction. Keep an eye on market dynamics and adjust your brand architecture as needed to stay relevant. Your brand should evolve with changing customer needs and industry trends. Use these insights to make informed decisions and ensure your brand remains a valuable asset over time.

It should be consistent and preferably in real-time . Flexibility and adaptability are critical, being able to use key data, observations and strategies is an always-on role.

Define Research Objectives: Clearly define the objectives of the brand research for brand architecture. Determine the specific questions you want to answer and the information you need to inform your brand architecture decisions. For example, you may want to understand customer perceptions, assess brand equity, identify brand relationships, or uncover customer needs and preferences. Identify Research Methods: Determine the appropriate research methods to gather the required information. This can include a combination of qualitative and quantitative research approaches. Qualitative methods, such as focus groups, interviews, or ethnographic research, can provide in-depth insights and capture nuanced perspectives.

To get started consider these three areas; Organise, Rationalise, Clarify Organise the basic relationship of your portfolio; brands, names, companies, divisions, products, and services. List everything. What is the logical order? What order do you want your customers to find them? Rationalise the offer to make it easier for your customers to find what they need. Where is there overlap between what you’re offering? Which are similar? Which are more distinct? What could you get rid of? What should you add? Clarify everything through a consistent and meaningful approach to names, labels and messages that inform the audience. What descriptive terms do you use? Are they consistent? Are they helpful to your audience?

Approach brand research systematically. Begin with a well-defined plan that aligns research objectives with your business goals. Choose appropriate methods and allocate resources wisely. After collecting data, analyze it thoroughly to make informed decisions. Implement changes to your brand architecture thoughtfully, and communicate them effectively to customers and stakeholders. Continuously monitor and assess the impact of your brand architecture decisions to stay agile and responsive in a dynamic market landscape. Effective brand research is an ongoing process that ensures your brand remains relevant and resonates with your target audience.

Start at the very beginning and use research to narrow your path down. Deep diving and thin slicing is a nuance that allows you to remove and add as you go. Try to think of all that could go right, then all that could go wrong and then answer those questions. Look at your overarching mission and use research and strategy to plot out the stepping stones which head in the correct and targeted direction, any time you are confused, go back to those stepping stones and check your path and if you are still on the chosen one.

Embrace Customer-Centricity: Make customer-centricity a core principle of your brand research and architecture efforts. Continuously seek to understand and prioritize the needs and preferences of your customers. Your brand architecture should revolve around delivering value to them. Segmentation Insights: Use segmentation data from your brand research to tailor your brand architecture to different customer segments. Customize messaging, sub-brand relationships, and product offerings to cater to the unique preferences of each group. Emotional Connections: Recognize the emotional aspects of your brand and how they relate to your brand architecture.

you can get started with brand research for brand architecture in a structured and systematic manner. Remember to keep the research objectives in focus, select appropriate research methods, collect and analyze your data, and translate the findings into actionable insights that guide your brand architecture decisions.

I have noticed during extensive growth periods in businesses that brand research becomes the single most important decision maker on a strategic level. It can truly be a future telling power tool that guides you in the right direction. A well designed brand research structure is solidifying your strategic actions as a brand strategist, manager etc., as these can be designed to measure small and large initiatives. A well designed brand research structure CAN measure deeper emotions which is crucial to understand in order to really tap into your customer.

When companies go away to vision for their organisations, develop strategy on how to become more profitable, and engage in conversations about having the best talent in their team, part of this conversation if not all of it can also be considered brand research. Searching within themselves, the major contributors to truly living out their brand and what it stands for.