Product versus corporate brand

Feature--- Branding, battling the 'ukay-ukay,' and other questions
Posted: 3:05 AM | Sept. 23, 2005

Dr. Ned Roberto and Ardy Roberto
Inquirer News Service

Q: When is it beneficial to promote product brand vis-a-vis a corporate brand?

A: In an industry where products are known and bought by their product brand more than their corporate brand, then market by product branding. This is the case with most fast-moving consumer products like, for example, Sunsilk hair conditioner. It is more known than its manufacturer Unilever.

But if you are in an industry where products are known and bought by their corporate brand more than their product brand, then it follows that you should market by corporate branding. This is the case with most pharma prescription products like, for example, the prescription products of Pfizer or Novartis. Pfizer is more known than its prescription product brands and those product brands are prescribed and bought more because of the Pfizer name than their product brand names.

In both cases, there are of course exceptions and that's why we said "most" and not "all." For example, in the prescription market, "Ventolin" (an anti-asthma product brand) is more known to consumers than its maker, Glaxo. In the consumer market, "Johnson & Johnson" (a corporate brand) is more known than its product brand, for example, "Pure Essentials." But these are exceptions.

There are two other branding situations where you can ask your question. The first is when you're introducing a new brand into the market. In a previous column, we said that you need both product branding and corporate branding because each has an important marketing function to perform. It's worth repeating here that in introducing a new brand, you have to make two product-branding decisions: "core branding" and "sub-branding."

Your core branding is for differentiating the brand from all other brands in the category. Your sub-branding is for positioning the branded new product in a priority consumer value that it is satisfying better than other brands. Then you have the third tier branding and that's "mark branding." That's the corporate brand and it's for "legitimizing" the product brand in terms of the corporate reputation of its maker.

The idea of a three-tier branding is to get the new brand, in the face of intensifying competition and shortening product life cycle, immediately accepted because it's different (the core branding function), it's promising something needed and unique (the sub-branding function), and it's coming from no ordinary Juan de la Cruz but from a well-known, reputable company (the mark branding function).

The other situation is when you are into a corporate image campaign. Here, it's understandable that you're into corporate branding much more than product branding. But you have to still go beyond a 1-tier branding and into a 2-tier branding. You have to have a core corporate branding as in, for example, HSBC, and then you have to have a corporate sub-branding as in, "The World's Local Bank" for HSBC. The core branding is still for differentiating your company from others while the sub-branding is for corporate positioning or reputation building.