Question

Family branding uses the same name to cover a group of products or product lines (for example, Nivea uses family branding).

Individual branding requires the company to provide each product or product line with a distinctive name (for example Procter and Gamble tends to do mostly Individual branding).

How should a company decide whether Individual or Family branding is best for a given product? What are some advantages/disadvantages of each type of branding strategy?

Answer 1

Family branding or the umbrella branding is actually an marketing strategy that allows marketing a wide range of products under a single brand identity, now a firm/ company decides weather its product is suitable for which kind of brand architecture based on:-

1. Degree of Commonality :- Weather the products that are manufactured by a firm share a common purpose, can they be act as a substitute to each other etc.
2. Brand Equity:- Based on the reputation of a firm, its previous popularity in the market, brand recognition, customer trust etc.
3. Type of Product:- Food product, Electronic items, cosmetics, fabrics etc.
4. Product Segmentation:- Based on type of the strata the product is serving, also plays an important role, for eg:- weather the product is targeting middle class people, or upper liberals.

Now some of the advantages of the family branding are:-

1. Previous brand image, help in providing differentiating factor.
2. Cost of a new brand creation is saved, low promotion cost.
3. Advertisement and other cost are less.
4. New product will get market recognition easier.

Some of the disadvantages of the family branding are :-

1. High stress in terms of quality of the product.
2. Failure of one product leads to cascading effect on other products.
3. Failure of one product, affects the entire brand reputation.

Some of the advantages of individual branding are:-

1. Every product has a unique image of its own.
2. Safety of the firm, if a single product fails, less riskier.
3. freedom of less corporate recognition.
4. Less stress in terms of product quality.

Some of the disadvantages of individual branding are:-

1. High promotional cost.
2. High risk while launching a new product.
3. Difficulty in brand recognition, customer trust etc.