Mobile phone category a prime example of brand families
Brand Families is the friendly label for this new blog covering any topic related to brand architecture, portfolio management, co-branding, endorsements, or any bringing together of two or more brands. Any combination is fair game. From the inspired, such as Expedia’s (www.Expedia.com) ownership of Trip Advisor (www.tripadvisor.com), to the media savvy, such as The Colbert Report’s sponsorship of US Speed Skating team (www.colbertnation.com), which itself is sponsored by Verizon, to the curious at best example of Google creating its phone available only from Google but serviced on the T-Mobile network.
Today, no brand is an island. Brands pretty much go to market in a “Brand Ecosystem.” A high brow way of saying that contemporary branding is a web of interrelated brand experiences. Some of these relationships are entirely within one company, some pair the brands of two or more companies. A great example is mobile offerings. Consider your trusty cell phone. How many brands are united to bring you your mobile experience? Let’s count ‘em out.
One: the device manufacturer–LG, HTC, Nokia, Samsung and the like.
Two: the software that runs the phones applications–Windows, Simbian, WebOS and more.
Three: the carrier that provides your service–Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile.
Four: App developers that give you access to thousands of apps that make your smartphone do all those nifty things.
And here’s where it gets really fun. Consider anyone of these brands above, look under the covers and more brand relationships reveal themselves. Take Windows which is the operating system within Windows Phones. Windows is also the brand that drives Windows 7 that runs computers around the world. It’s attached to Windows Azure which is setting the new standard in cloud computing. All of these are businesses of Microsoft (www.microsoft.com) which is home to dozens of powerful brands including Office, Xbox and Sharepoint and SQL Server. The brand threads are endless and those threads combine to form fascinating brand fabrics.
So here’s to brand families. Let the discussion, critique, celebration and analysis begin!
For the latest on the mobile phone category, see the following WSJ article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703525704575061253074391256.html?mod=WSJ_business_whatsNews
