In this fast-changing world, companies cannot afford the luxury of a brand positioning that ties them down to a narrow set of features and benefits. What they need is the ability to quickly take advantage of new opportunities when they emerge and shift away from old business models when they are no longer relevant. They need branding to support their need for speed.
Organic supermarket chain Whole Foods is diversifying. Last week, it announced that alongside its existing 400 Whole Foods locations it was launching a new chain of branded stores in the US under the brand name ‘365’.
Society is accelerating. In the digital world, time and geography are of little relevance. People can be anywhere and everywhere. As lines blur providing some separation between “real life” and “digital life”, it becomes increasingly difficult to maintain distinct parts of our lives.
The single most important piece of brand theory of the past quarter century was published in the California Management Review in 2000.
While much has been written about when you should revisit your brand architecture and the things you should consider in doing so, often the conversations around how to structure brands seem to center on hierarchical concerns. “What do we have?” “How do we need to group it?” “How many levels?” “Is it consistent?”
