Moving On... Brand Portfolio Strategy

I started this semester a little earlier than most and with this extra time I've been able to finish reading Designing Brand Identity by Alina Wheeler rather quickly. As such, I'm going to move on and start reading Brand Portfolio Strategy by David A. Aaker.

I thought Designing Brand Identity was a pretty good book. It was a great look at the actual process and was delivered more like an executive summary... highlighting topics without going into too much detail. As for Aaker's book, I'm excited to get started and would expect that we'll get into more conceptual details.

Anyhow, I'm going to start using Aaker's book as the reference to guide the majority of future blogs. I'll also try and plan on taking a look at a few more case studies from Designing Brand Identity.

Speaking of case studies...

Aaker begins with a solid look at the evolution of the Intel brand and subbrands. Intel's brand story really takes off in the spring of 1991 when Intel began a company defining brand identity program. The "Intel Inside" program was implemented to differentiate Intel's processors from increased competition and to clear up lingering consumer confusion that had arisen from the perception that competitors could "clone" Intel's products. A year later, Intel would would build upon "Intel Inside" and rebrand its processors with the Pentium subbrand. Given the nature of rapid change in the processor business, each time a substantial change in the product was released, the Pentium subbrand was given an update - Pentium Pro, Pentium II, Pentium III, Pentium 4. In addition to the Pentium brand, Intel also introduced market specific subbrands. The Xeon was developed to differentiate higher end servers and workstations. Celeron was introduced to the value segment of the market. The Centrino was developed for mobile processing.

There are several really good topics that arise from the Intel case study. Real quickly here are three:

1. What's interesting about the "Intel Inside" brand is that it has resonated with the public and built up strong brand equity despite the fact that most consumers have no idea what a processor really is.
2. How enormous are the implications of rapid product change? Wow. Every time Intel releases a new product they negate the market for their older product. I mean... who wants a Pentium II when you release the Pentium III? No one.
3. Managing the brand portfolio is critical. For instance, when you release a new product, do you brand the new features (Pentium II vs. Pentium II MMX), brand a new generation (Pentium II to Pentium III) or do you introduce a whole new brand (replacing X86 with Pentium)? Also, at what point is it necessary to introduce subbrands targeted at your distinct markets (budget, wireless)?

Lastly, I wanted to provide one quote from the preface of the book:

"There are no cookbook-style rules that are guaranteed to produce perfect strategies. The purpose of the book is to introduce options and issues, rather than easy answers."

Refreshing.