When I started my career in Brand Management I did not know what Brand Architecture was. No-one did. It didn’t exist. Prof Leslie de Chernatony and myself were the first to create theory in this field in 1994 which we called Brand-Bonding to examine how Corporate Brands and Product brand should share their power or not and published in the Journal of Brand Management
The brand architect was born out of a need to keep brands growing, to keep company wealth growing and to provide an ongoing sustainable competitive advantage for the firm. It made all the difference when we needed to regenerate Nivea Skin Care in the UK and Commonwealth Countries. It not only resulted in Expanding the brand beyond General Purpose skin care into Specific Skin Care such as Visage etc and the rest is history. It also led to the re-unification of Nivea under Beiersdorf worldwide.
At Wella, we created Transnational brands out of the mess of numerous of local (National) but similar brands created under the old Multinational structures here’s where we recognised how much more effective the L’Oreal strategies were across borders. Those two projects plus our formidable competitors helped us to devise the five different competitive branding strategies that could be actioned during a brand’s growth cycle, just as one would drive a car using 5 gears. All depended on the proximity and fit of the Company Brand DNA to it’s Product Brand DNAs, hence what was later termed “Brand Architecture”.
In the UK I had the good fortune to meet Sir Richard Branson who gave me the chance to rethink and propose an effective brand stretching strategy that the Virgin Group could work to. I laugh to think that I promised to make him rich and famous when he already was. He was so open to learning an outside view regarding what was and was not working with his brand. What a fantastic guy!
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CEO’s, Entrepreneurs, Marketing Directors and Design, PR and Brand Content Agencies are encouraged to contact to me with the most impossibly difficult cases. The more complex, the better. Together, I have no doubt that we find great opportunities. There is always a wonderful way forward. You just have to see it!
For the last 20 years I have mostly been working in the field of luxury brand management working mostly as a ‘silent’ advisor to CEOs and/or Creative Directors/Designers through my company HAUTeLUXE Ltd but also work in the educational field at leading Business and Fashion schools in France, when I can. I am delighted to announce that our new book HAUTE ‘Luxury’ Branding has been well received by professionals and academics alike and has been listed as a Top 10 Branding Books by The Branding Journal New York for the last 5 years. We hope that you will find it useful too.