Now that an exit plan looks like it has been hammered out between The Firm and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, the question many people are asking is just how much do the married couple and their Sussex Royal brand stand to gain in terms of that much vaunted “financial independence”? Where could the Sussex Royal brand go?
There’s an interesting polarisation going on right now in terms of brand size. Companies that have expanded are now consolidating their brand models in the hope of getting closer to consumers and achieving greater brand growth.
There are certainly good times to consider diversifying your brand, but equally there are times when such a strategy should be avoided. Here are three situations when your brand shouldn’t go there.
Franchising can be a very powerful way to grow your brand, but it is a way of branding a business that has very specific characteristics and challenges.
When Al Ries took aim at McDonald’s decision to broaden their menu, saying that introducing more items had not worked as a strategy and would not so do into the future, his piece raised questions for me on the differences between diversification and adjacency.
Whilst the measures for evaluating what a brand is worth are well established, those for quantifying a brand’s potential seem less so. In general, brands are valued on their residual equity (what they are associated with and the depth and competitiveness of that association), their competitive performance and how much they are assessed to be worth.
Great piece in AdWeek on the failure of single-item brands is a reminder of a question that comes up a lot: whether to dive deep or go wide. Speciality vs diversity.
In the search for more income, many brands seem keen to broaden their mandate or redefine the sector they see themselves as now being part of. But the hunt for diversified income streams comes with its own list of dangers and the most obvious caution is this: don’t lose the plot. Don’t spread your brand so wide, generalise your position so much or shift your emphasis so far from where you’ve been that you lose credibility, authority or distinction in the minds of your customers.
