Taming the unruly brand

Everyone has a story to tell. The problem is *how* to tell it.

Brands are no different. Drowned out by a cacophony of conflicting visuals, a fractured brand architecture, and a voice that speaks in multiple, confusing tongues, ‘unruly’ brands are losing recognition, reputation, and ultimately, revenue.

Unruly brands don’t pop up overnight. They’re often created over time due to a lack of strategic foresight in an evolving business. Their unruly nature develops when a company acquires a new business or reacts to market demands through new product development without considering broader brand integration. Failure to integrate these brands or products into the existing portfolio leads to overlaps, inconsistencies and internal competition. A bit like that wire drawer everybody has in their kitchen, things can get a bit tangled up and left to the next person to sort out.

Disentangling an unruly brand

Good news: by spotting an unruly brand’s symptoms, you can take the first step to disentangle it. Here are a few key indicators to help you out:

• Lack of brand stewardship: Different teams may fiercely defend their own interpretation of the brand, leading to unproductive debates and a lack of synergy.
• Visual anarchy: You’ll see logos, colour palettes, and typography that bear little resemblance to each other. Separate departments or product lines may have evolved their own “look and feel” over time.
• Verbal cacophony: Messaging is likely to be all over the place. Taglines, tone of voice and key messages vary wildly, creating confusion about what the brand truly stands for.
• Design inefficiencies: A lack of standardised templates and guidelines leads to duplicated efforts, increased costs and longer turnaround times for marketing materials. The same designers may also jump between different brand expressions with few similarities, creating more inefficiency and blurring identities.

The knock-on effect of these symptoms on your brand shouldn’t be overlooked, and can considerably impact how you show up in the market. Here are a few example effects:

• Weakened brand impact: Consistency should be a brand’s bread and butter. Without it, overall brand equity is diluted, making it harder for customers to recognise and connect with the whole organisation. The brand fails to build strong, unified associations in the marketplace.
• Inefficient flow of equity: When sub-brands have been created, a lack of clear connection to the primary brand can weaken the equity of both. Customers may not understand the connection between the sub-brand and the parent company, missing out on the trust and recognition associated with the master brand. Sub-brands then fail to benefit from the master brand’s established equity. A lose-lose situation.
• Opportunity loss: When disjointed product or service messaging lacks clear connections to the overarching brand narrative, customers won’t see the logical next step in their journey. Siloed communication prevents them from understanding the organisation’s full value, putting a cap on upselling and cross-selling efforts.
• Dilution of value propositions: When individual products or services present disparate value propositions without a unifying brand message, the organisation can appear unfocused and lack specialisation. Customers may perceive them as a “jack of all trades, master of none,” diminishing the perceived value and credibility of individual offerings.

So… what are we going to do about it?

Is this all sounding a little familiar? Don’t stress: spotting the issue is the first step to correcting it. Defining a brand architecture will help you overcome these challenges and provide your brand with much-needed clarity, trust and efficiency far into the future.

And that brings us to us: UnitedUs.

Our approach is meticulous. We assess your current brand landscape through a comprehensive brand audit, speaking to your business stakeholders and customers about how the organisation is performing. We define a clear vision and purpose that supports your core brand and its individual components. We develop a unified brand identity system and verbal guidelines to create cohesive brand experiences. We help you leverage brand equity across your portfolio and create clear pathways for customer engagement. We do a lot.

Is your brand portfolio feeling unruly? UnitedUs will tame the chaos. We’ve already helped some of the biggest brands around organise their house from the inside out while supporting start-ups launching exciting new products. Get in touch to find out more.