House of brands
See also: pluralistic architecture
A house of brands keeps the parent company invisible behind independent brands, as Procter & Gamble does with Ariel, Pampers and Gillette. Each brand can target a distinct audience, and a failure in one does not contaminate the others.
In practice
This is the most demanding architecture for naming, because each name has to do the entire job alone with no parent to lean on. It suits portfolios whose audiences genuinely differ, and it is expensive: every brand needs its own marketing investment.
Procter & Gamble's brand list in its 2018 filing is the plain illustration: Tide, Pampers, Gillette and Ariel are named separately, and the filing, not the packaging, is where the common owner shows. WARC places this model at one end of the spectrum, opposite the branded house.
In a naming project the house of brands means every brief is a full naming job: own audience, own markets, own trademark and linguistic screening, and a name that could be sold tomorrow without the parent. What goes wrong is a name that quietly depends on the parent for meaning, such as a descriptive stem that only makes sense next to the company name. It also fails when the company has the audience of one brand and the budget of none, because an independent name without marketing is only an unknown word. Compare the cheaper alternatives under endorsed brand and in Brand hierarchy: branded house or house of brands?.
Where this sits in the process
The studio treats this as part of a single run rather than a separate service: the category is read, the creative direction is chosen from what the research found, candidates are generated in volume and then cut against criteria that were written down first. See how the studio works for what that produces, or the naming module for the stages themselves.
Related concepts
- Brand architecture: Branded house, house of brands, or something between: how portfolio structure decides what a new name is allowed to do.
- Branded house: One name on everything: how a branded house concentrates both equity and risk, and what it means for naming new products.
- Endorsed brand: The middle position in brand architecture: how endorsement lets a new name borrow trust without inheriting constraints.
Further reading
- Brand hierarchy: branded house or house of brands?: How to structure the brands in a company: branded house, house of brands, endorsed brands and sub-brands. Real examples, and what each model asks of a new name.
Frequently asked questions
What is a house of brands strategy?
A house of brands strategy gives each product an independent brand name and keeps the parent company in the background, as Procter & Gamble does with Tide, Pampers, Gillette and Ariel. Each brand can address its own audience, and trouble in one does not travel to the others.
What is an example of a house of brands?
Procter & Gamble is the standard example. Its 2018 filing lists Tide, Pampers, Gillette and Ariel side by side, and a buyer of one has no reason to know that the others share an owner.
What are the disadvantages of a house of brands?
Every brand pays for itself: its own marketing, its own trademark work and its own story. The model also asks the most of naming, because each name has to do the whole job alone with no parent to lean on.
When does a house of brands make sense?
When the audiences of the products really differ, or when trouble in one product should not reach the others. It is a poor fit for a company with one audience and four products.
Sources
- [1]Form 8-K, Procter & Gamble Co. (brand list, 2018)— U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
- [2]Brand architecture spectrum— WARC