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Please be patient with us.

by Rob WallaceJune 19, 2008

Brand extensions are more than twice as likely to succeed as new brands. With mega-brands like Crest extending to more than 80 SKUs in the United States alone and over 300 products worldwide, today’s brands are not just expanding—they are hyper-proliferating.

Brand identity architectures—and the design strategies that define them—are rarely planned to accommodate this hyperbolic explosion. In an effort to differentiate their various tiers, firms may use design strategies that overstep their needs. In the best cases, these ill-planned design architectures close the door on future brand growth. In the worst cases, over-extended design architectures actually denigrate the base brand’s integrity.

The most successful brands leverage their relevance across a number of meaningful experiences, attracting a broad range of consumer profiles without eroding the brand’s essence. In their initial evolution, brands offer core users variations of the same experience. As they grow, many brands offer core consumers completely new, but relevant experiences. When they are more fully evolved, idealized brands leverage their core attributes to both new consumers and new experiences. And when a brand’s values become so richly engrained in the culture, the brand’s reputation can credibly endorse unrelated brands, too, while still building on base-brand credibility.

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