A brand portfolio is a set of brands for a company. Basically, this model is used when we see consumer brands.

A brand portfolio is needed when you cannot cover many different products with one brand, when each brand has its own target audience, when you have different products. Then comes the House of Brands architecture, or it is a monobrand, the parent brand on which everything is built (for example, Miratorg, where Winner is, in fact, the only additional one). The brand portfolio must contain at least five brands. And when you understand that you have a different target audience, it has different values, you convey the same different value to this target audience with these brands. Brands are created to sell more.

Why create a brand portfolio? It is needed to cover the maximum number of buyers with different values ​​and different needs.

A brand portfolio helps distribute all value propositions across different audiences, consumption situations, and products. It happens that products are completely different in terms of consumption. Unilever has both household chemicals and food products in its portfolio. This is where these things really need to go. You can’t eat AOC or Fairy chocolates if you clean something with a product with that name. Therefore, multi-brand companies are monsters that represent brands in different categories, segments, because they have a large enough resource to manage it all.

We can consume the same foods in different ways: breakfast, light snacks, dinner, treats are all different positioning territories because they are different situational needs. One brand cannot offer the same product. If we take milk, you can’t eat one yogurt or drink one milk in all situations of consumption, but you can make products specifically for this, pack them in separate brands, and present them to different audiences: there is a young audience, there is a more mature one, there are singles, there are families, family with a child. And each needs special products. When a brand director of a company decides to develop new products, he understands that one brand is unlikely to attract the entire audience to its products. Because he constantly has to talk about different positioning, which is wrong,

There are several models for building a brand architecture in a company. The first is when we use different brands in the portfolio. We created such a portfolio for the Volga Ice company (ice cream production). The second model is when there is one brand (monobrand) in the portfolio. For example, for the Mistral company, we have developed such a brand portfolio in cereals.

Miratorg can be cited as an example of a monobrand:almost all brand products in different categories are Miratorg. This model is also used in various agricultural holdings (which, in fact, is Miratorg). Their products are quite similar in their characteristics. If it is, for example, meat, then there is meat, chicken, premium meat, semi-finished meat products. They used to have a plant theme under a different brand – “Vitamin”. But in order to consolidate the portfolio, they decided on a vegetable theme, also to bring frozen vegetables under Miratorg, which correlates with meat. When you make a steak and as a side dish, fry the beans also in a skillet. Everything from Miratorg is good. That is, there is a single brand that covers everything. Where products that are produced under this brand can be united by common values ​​and principles: we are Miratorg, we are food experts, meat experts, see all our products. The only thing that cannot be introduced into this brand is animal feed. Their company also promotes. But if people eat products from Miratorg, then giving the same to a cat or dog is not entirely correct. There is a hitch here, and we understand that we need a second brand that would start working for a different target audience (people who have animals, animal breeders). But people here are in a different situation of consumption, they don’t eat it, their pets do. And we come to the conclusion that we need a different brand for the pet, but from Miratorg. This is how Winner from Miratorg appeared. That is, Miratorg is preserved, because the brand values ​​need to be developed for this topic as well. They say we are meat experts and there is a lot of meat in our food. Miratorg there looks like a stabilizing co-brand, the main brand is Winner.

Let’s analyze the brand portfolio using the example of a large multinational company Danon.

To disassemble the brand architecture, we need the Growth Platform wheel. Danon is one of the best dairy portfolios on the market. They have products and brands in the traditional line, which represents family values ​​and is located above the comfort category: Prostokvashino, For the whole family. There are basic Danon products, and they can be divided into lines depending on the degree of consumption.

Danon is a global brand that helps the company to be in all segments of dairy products. It can be quite basic, yoghurts and dairy products in comfort, value-added yoghurts that speak of pleasure can be in pleasure, breakfast cereals based on Danon yogurt can be in energy and freedom. But Danon lacks some of the positioning that also exists in the market.

Danon is a French company and would like to be local. For example, take on those people who believe that milk should be fresh, it should be ours, these people have a patriotic look. Therefore, Danon has got local brands Prostokvashino, For the whole family. And all the brands that came from Unimilk organically joined the Danon portfolio.

Danon has Rastishka. This is an energetic brand that says “let’s grow”. This is a special brand that is designed for children of a certain age, the products contain vitamins and minerals that help them grow faster.

They have Actimel – a product with lactobacilli, which speaks of strengthening immunity, it is in control, because thanks to it we can control the state of our body and talk about a more scientific dairy product than just yogurt, and thereby strengthen our immunity, keep health under control.

The company has the Activia brand, which helps adults to be in active shape, be in trend and control their digestion, which largely determines being. There is “Danissimo”, which develops exclusively for pleasure.

And these are all different products in terms of functionality. You cannot sell the same product under different brands and tell people about different benefits. They will figure out that there is only one product and they are being deceived a little.

Therefore, when creating brand portfolios, you must understand how products change qualitatively. Here we must approach the company’s development strategy, which segments, target audiences, groups it claims as a company, and develop value propositions for them. We have to look at the structure of the company, what product it produces, what products can already work for certain values. And what products can we launch with them, or change something in existing ones, or create new products for new target audiences. We carried out such work for the regional company Volga Ice. When we arrived, there was chaos, there were a lot of products: one cone, another cone, ice cream in a glass, everything was mixed up. People produced the same products under different trademarks: “Cheboksary Plombir”, “I am ice cream” – just different labels, different names, and the team itself is confused about what they do and where they go. None of the salespeople could explain when the buyers asked how one differed from the other. This situation is quite common among Russian entrepreneurs who have created a lot of trademarks, it is not clear why and why.

We can create an effective brand portfolio in two ways:

1. Expert. Our experts go to the company, talk to employees, conduct in-depth interviews with all top managers, look at the product, go to production, ask what they can release and what not. Based on this, we propose a brand portfolio model that is distributed across the audience, will have value propositions for the buyer, where the product will correspond to these value propositions.

Brand = value + product + communication

We offer a model for the audience: value, a product with certain characteristics (this is very important, because it depends on the product which brand will go where. Using the example of Danon, we see that the manufacturer changed the product depending on the consumption situation for different audiences. Danissimo and basic yogurts are not similar, although they are all yogurts, Danissimo develops into pleasure, and Danon into the basic values ​​​​of fresh yogurts). In this case, we show the communication component, since each brand has its own audience, points of contact and promotion channels. This is what constitutes the whole construction of the brand portfolio. This is a work of about two months, along with statements, intermediate presentations, with conversations among employees.

2. Workshop. This is a faster way to build a brand portfolio. We bring together all employees from different departments, including heads of key departments, with them we begin to build a brand portfolio through immersion in your customer (on the first day), generating ideas for improving products, creating new products (second day). During the workshop, employees understand that there is a consumer, and he has a certain need, but there is no product to satisfy this need. The technologies that are used at this event help to create this product, while earlier specialists did not even think about this way.

We assemble a brand portfolio with the help of a team in two days. When people immerse themselves in the values ​​of the buyer, study them (real buyers and buyers of competitors come to this workshop), they undergo a transformation in their heads. What does not happen in the first (expert) version. Because employees of the same company are often not in the same context. We can interview ten people, get very different ideas, which happens very often (in fact, everyone has different ideas about the development of the company), this slows down the process very much, because one thinks one way, the other thinks differently. The workshop helps us create a single picture, because the team works together, immersed in the same context, in the same space. A unanimous opinion is developed in a short time.

Many clients tell us: we need to set aside two working days for the workshop! Believe me, two working days are worth it. It’s better than two months (or even more) you will collect this story. And in the end it will not work out very effectively, because some people do not see the possibilities and insist on their own. And having plunged into the workshop, they would see these opportunities there. People make their choice, and the moment they make it, their choice seems best to them. But often we make a decision, and then we say “we should have done it differently.” This is what happens when you go through a certain experience, see an opportunity and regret that at that moment you did not see it and did not take advantage of it. The workshop helps to avoid such things, to avoid failure, because everyone is in the same context, and the decision is made not by one person, not two, but by a team of those managers who who came to the workshop to create the future of the company. You will always have an operating system, but maybe there won’t be two days to create the future. When you are about to do this, time will be lost, specific people will already bypass you, come out with similar decisions and proposals, and will already be in the networks. And you, as you were in the operating system, remain there. Because the routine distracts us from the important, from the strategy. Sometimes it is better to take and think about your future, it will be more effective. Those people who understand this choose to develop a brand portfolio through a workshop. as you were in the operating system, so you remain there. Because the routine distracts us from the important, from the strategy. Sometimes it is better to take and think about your future, it will be more effective. Those people who understand this choose to develop a brand portfolio through a workshop. as you were in the operating system, so you remain there. Because the routine distracts us from the important, from the strategy. Sometimes it is better to take and think about your future, it will be more effective. Those people who understand this choose to develop a brand portfolio through a workshop.

This happened to the Volga Ice company, which we helped create an effective brand portfolio. The man made up his mind, took a team, we went to Cheboksary and created a good, balanced ice cream brand portfolio. We helped make the strategy. The classic ice cream group and the popsicle group, that is, the ice cream that we remember from childhood. And we called this brand “From Our Yard”. The value is that everyone has their own yard from childhood. We have created a brand on a state of comfort, when a person remembers his childhood, his parents, he is transferred to a state of comfort, and this product helps him enter this state. Additionally, photographs of real employees from childhood were depicted on the ice cream; on the reverse side, they talked about their childhood dream.

It is also important that there is no cannibalization inside the brand portfolio. You create one product with different brands, I would not call them brands, because they do not yet have brand characteristics: a brand is a value creation for the buyer and a built-in communication model that tells everything about it. There is no strategy in a trademark, there is a strategy in brands and brand portfolios.

Question: There is a phrase in the TOR: “ competitors have a model for constructing coordinates and analyzing hitting one or another quarter of the coordinate grid, it would be very good to use a similar one ”

Answer: probably, these are the coordinates for brands. A “growth platform” is responsible for building a brand portfolio – a tool where all consumers are divided into segments, the main states of consumption, territories (comfort, energy, freedom, pleasure, belonging, etc.) are divided. Within each category, we understand the customer issues we are tackling and the customer aspirations. There is also a communication story that defines the archetype of the future brand. And all this helps to build a good brand portfolio.

Further, when the concept itself, the model is dismantled, you can already finish these brands yourself. Because the brand portfolio determines the position of brands on this wheel and demonstrates that each brand does not compete with each other, it has its own purpose, its own purpose, its own audience and even its own product. Accordingly, when you build these brands in more depth, you can use our Brand 3D Field tool, where we talk about value creation and describe it in more detail, product characteristics are also prescribed in more detail and a communication strategy is created for each of the brands. But this is when we deal with the brand separately. The brand portfolio development service includes only the basic distribution of brands by segments.

The cost of developing a brand portfolio

Option 1 (expert) – from 700 to 1 million rubles – depending on the number of in-depth interviews, the number of products, the amount of work. This is the classic path that everyone follows.

Option 2 (Workshop) helps to reduce the time, respectively, make it cheaper, its cost is from 600 thousand rubles + 200 thousand is the report on the results of the workshop.

Brand portfolio development is a premium service, not suitable for startups. Understanding a brand portfolio is a great value for a company, especially in a traditional Russian company where trademarks have been gathering for years, and now they are starting to devour resources and drown the company.

In a good way, when you are building a brand portfolio, you should properly evaluate your resources. Do you have a marketing department in your company that can do this in the future? If you have one marketer and five brands, this is not an effective story for further development. In multinational companies, there is a brand manager who deals with the brand, under him there is a junior brand manager who replaces him. In addition, there is a group-brand manager who oversees the entire category. The group-brand manager deals, for example, with the category of breakfasts (he can combine dry and other types) or drinks (drinks, yogurts). Above all this, there is a marketing director who determines the strategy and policy for the development of the company’s brands. This is the minimum structure. Do not try to create a brand portfolio and hang everything on one marketer, you will bury all this work. You need to hire one person for one brand, ideally two: one brand manager, another junior, one fell ill, left, the other replaces him. Everything closes on the marketing director, who sees the whole picture, reports to the commercial director, and better the general director.