The brand strategy toolkit: Branded House and House of Brands

The Brand Relationship Spectrum was introduced to the world by David Aaker and Erich Joachimsthaler in 2000 to help brand architecture strategists employ insight and subtlety to subbrands, endorsed brands and their alternatives.

Being a brand strategist is pretty easy. We only need to know how to do three things:

  1. Articulate what makes a brand different and desirable (brand positioning).
  2. Establish a clear role for the different parts of a brand portfolio (brand portfolio strategy).
  3. Communicate the relationships between different parts of a brand portfolio using appropriate visual and verbal signposts (brand architecture).

There are a myriad of tools for brand positioning and portfolio strategy. If you want to position a brand, you can use a two-by-two matrix, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, archetype theory, Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle, or something more old school...

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WARC helps you to plan, create and deliver more effective marketing

  • Prove your case and back-up your idea

  • Get expert guidance on strategic challenges

  • Tackle current and emerging marketing themes

We’re long-term subscribers to WARC and it’s a tool we use extensively. We use it to source case studies and best practice for the purposes of internal training, as well as for putting persuasive cases to clients. In compiling a recent case for long-term, sustained investment in brand, we were able to support key marketing principles with numerous case studies sourced from WARC. It helped bring what could have been a relatively dry deck to life with recognisable brand successes from across a broad number of categories. It’s incredibly efficient to have such a wealth of insight in one place.

Insights Team
Bray Leino

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