Brand portfolios evolve. Businesses expand into new categories, launch new sub‑brands, acquire competitors and before long, what starts as a well-thought-out portfolio architecture becomes a messy patchwork. It’s all too easy to end up with a unintended mash‑up: a unified master brand covering a few brands here; endorsed brands over there; somewhere else, standalone brands with equity of their own; and maybe even own‑label offerings fighting for the same customer’s attention.
A clear portfolio architecture isn’t a nice to have. If there’s no organisation or logic there’s risk of diluting equity, confusing customers and consumers, burdening sales teams with conflicting direction, and potentially wasting money or making poor investment decisions. And from that come the intangible issues, an erosion of internal confidence and decision‑making that becomes bogged down, slow, political and tentative.
The question then is how to disentangle it all and get something that works in place.
It starts by recognising the problem: a clear, strategic portfolio architecture maximises both brand equity and business performance. When architecture is muddled:
- Customers don’t understand your brands’ roles
- Brands more easily cannibalise one another
- Marketing spend can be wasted
- Future NPD rationale gets murkier
- Teams can’t prioritise with confidence
Next, an objective and systematic mapping of the current architecture
Speak with customers and consumers. Get an honest, visual map of how your brands are currently positioned. Plot them according to customer journey and decision drivers. What do customers actually think each brand stands for? How are they perceived not just individually, but together. Are the linkages known? Understood? Helpful or a hinderance?
What’s often revealed are multiple brands trying treading on each other’s toes, inconsistent endorsement logic, or brands that have outgrown their original purpose and now lie in no-man’s land.
Then, define brand roles with clarity
The key here is to get some intentionality behind the portfolio structure. Every brand in your portfolio should have a distinct role and is (classically) organised into a portfolio architecture
- Unified Brand where the master brand leads all products – think Apple or Virgin.
- House of Brands where individual brands have independent equity, think Mars or P&G
- Endorsed Brands where sub‑brands get credibility from a parent but still stand alone – like Courtyard by Marriott or Sony PlayStation
And you don’t need just one approach. A hybrid will work fine if each brand’s role is clear and defensible. Is it clear on what customer need the brand serves that others don’t? Is it clear on whether the brand dilutes or reinforce the unified parent brand?
Time to act: rationalise, realign, reposition (other letters are available)
Once roles are clear, it’s time to prune and align. This might mean:
- Consolidating brands with overlapping roles
- Elevating or retiring brands
- Re‑endorsing sub‑brands for clarity
- Reallocating brand investment to strategic priority or driver brands
And finally, actively managing the portfolio
Errors or relapses happen when organisations lack brand governance. Establishing clear rules is always beneficial. Be clear:
- what constitutes a new brand
- when you endorse vs. when a brand can stand alone
- what ‘distinctive assets’ are truly owned in your targets’ minds, so they can be nurtured and stewarded across different sorts of consideration or consumption moments.
And when you are brand planning, build in portfolio planning as a crucial first step.
Cleaning up a messy brand portfolio is not merely cosmetic, nor an intellectual exercise. It’s a strategic action that markedly helps to drive internal alignment, helps your business cut through market noise overall, helps sharpen customer understanding, and helps to direct investments against those brand priorities which need it. A well-oiled machine, if you will, not a patchwork quilt.
David Preston is founder of The Crow Flies, a research, strategy, innovation and brand planning company that helps brands find a direct route to long lasting success. Talk to us if you need a strategic diagnosis of your portfolio and an action plan that will drive meaningful commercial change.
david@thecrowflies.co.uk; +44 (0) 1889 725670; www.thecrowflies.co.uk; @crowflieshigh. © The Crow Flies, 2026.
What’s unusual in the Coke example is that often, companies move away from this single ‘architecture’ approach over time as they wrestle with multiple sub brands sharing a single meaning. How can a low fat, full fat, high taste, low taste, large size, small size, for the young, for the old range cohesively sit together. It’s not impossible, but it creates strain. And of course, Coke are not lacking in the funds to adopt a brand by brand approach – which is why over many years they haven’t. Coca-Cola brands – original / diet / diet Caffeine free / Zero have been connected by shared values and iconography, but have ploughed, very successfully separate furrows. Separate furrows in the same field, but separate nonetheless. Off the back of this, Coke Zero has been an incredible launch and Diet Coke – well, in overtaking original Coke has been a phenomenon. So why change?