The Disney Brand

Let's talk about Disney.

According to Young & Rubicam's measurements of key brand dimensions (differentiation, relevance, esteem and knowledge), Disney is a super brand. What's a super brand? It's a brand that scores over 80% on each dimension. In Disney's case, they actually scored over 90% on each dimension.

Here's a question for you: What can a brand be worth? According to the Business Week 2002 Interbrand study of brand values, over 50% of Walt Disney Company's value was attributable to the Disney brand. The Disney brand itself was valued at $29 billion dollars.

Disney's brand portfolio includes the corporate brand, master brands like ESPN and ABC, product brands like Disneyland and Walt Disney Pictures and property like The Lion King.

Here are two great points from the book:

1) One characteristic of good extensions is that the parent brand brings something to the party.
2) An extension should also support and enhance the parent brand.

Disney illustrates the above perfectly. The Disney brand brings expectations of magical family entertainment to each extension. Like the book says, if you had never been on a Disney cruise, wouldn't you immediately have an idea of what to expect? Of course. At the same time, Disney's extensions have been wildly successful at supporting and enhancing the Disney brand. Aaker's suggests that Disneyland Park has had more brand impact than nearly any brand building initiative in business history. It's easy to see where he's coming from given that Disneyland took magical family entertainment to a whole new level. Disneyland lets the audience interact and experience Mickey Mouse, Snow White and Fantasia in person. These experiences at Disneyland are the Disney brand.

Lastly for today, I want to discuss something that I should have discussed yesterday. We know a portfolio is a collection of assets. But what's the significant of the portfolio in brand strategy? The whole idea about approaching brand strategy from a portfolio perspective comes down the belief that the value derived from the collection of brands is greater than the sum of the individual brands.

Brand Portfolio Strategy - The Foundation

Today I'm going to start off by doing something way out of the norm. I'm going to offer a few definitions.

Master brand. The top billing and primary indicator of the offering. Ex - 3M in the brand 3M Accuribbon.
Endorser brand. Serves to provide credibility to the offering. Ex - General Mills endorses Cheerios.
Subbrand. Augments or modifies the masterbrand in a specific product-market context. Ex - Porsche Carrera.
Descriptors. Describe the offering in functional terms.
Product Brand. A product offering consisting of the master brand and the subbrand. Ex - Honda Civic.
Umbrella Brand. A grouping of product offerings under a common brand. Ex - Microsoft Office.
Driver Role. The degree to which a brand drives the consumer purchasing decision or defines the user experience. Ex - Honda plays more of the driver role than Civic but they both have influence.

Yes, definitions are boring but I felt these were critical to our dialog as we move forward. Today's post largely provides a foundation that we'll build upon.

Anyhow, to make definitions a little more fun, I thought we might apply the terms above. For instance, check out this example from the book:

Venus Shaving System from Gillette for Women, with aloe and the DCL Blade edge.

What do we have here? We have a master brand (Venue), a product brand (Venus Shaving System), and endorser (Gillette for Women), and two branded differentiators (aloe and DCL Blade edge).

Next, I wanted to discuss what exactly is Brand Portfolio Strategy? There's not a simple, easy definition here that I've found. But, my understanding at this point is that brand portfolio strategy largely attempts to address the structure of the brand portfolio and leverage "the scope, roles and interrelationships of the portfolio brands."

Moving on... I wanted to list the objectives of Brand Portfolio Strategy. They are 1) foster portfolio synergy, 2) leverage brand assets, 3) create and maintain relevance, 4) develop and enhance strong brands, 5) achieve clarity of product offerings.

Lastly, what can we expect in the coming blogs? Well, Aaker appears to have organized the book based upon his contention that the development of a brand portfolio strategy involves six dimensions: 1) the brand portfolio itself, 2) product defining roles, 3) portfolio roles, 4) brand scope, 5) portfolio structure, 6) portfolio graphics. I'm not going to go into any more depth about these dimensions because it looks like we'll be taking a closer look at each as we move along in the book.

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.