Decoding brand management mastery –

why can’t brands learn from Apple?

By Magda Adamska / 22 January 2024

Although the factors behind Apple’s commercial success have been widely analysed, the topic of the
company’s brand management practices – pivotal in driving the brand’s long-term growth – hasn’t
been adequately covered yet.

So, today we are not going to focus on aspects such as Apple’s advancement in technology and
product innovation, its state-of-the-art supply chain management or the unique corporate culture
created by its extraordinary CEOs. While crucial, they are outside of BrandStruck’s remit and have
been already investigated by other specialist publications.

Instead, we will analyse a series of strategic brand decisions that have led to Apple becoming the
most valuable brand in the world. Although they seem almost obvious today, making those choices
required unprecedented focus and discipline few companies can pride themselves on.

1. Cohesive brand architecture and strict naming strategy

Apple’s adoption of the “branded house” architecture model (see below) has been instrumental to its
success as it enabled the company to build one strong brand with one set of distinctive brand
assets.

All Apple products, whether it’s the MacBook, iPad, or Apple Pay, are intrinsically linked to the Apple
umbrella brand, play a secondary role to it and are positioned as product variants rather than sub-
brands. What that means in practice is they don’t have their own brand identities but utilise the
identity of the Apple umbrella brand and, as a result, don’t compete with the main brand for
attention.

Additionally, most Apple products follow a strict naming strategy, according to which, all must have
self-explanatory names (iPhone, iOS, Apple Watch, Apple Music, Apple Pay, etc.) and adhere to
established naming conventions (e.g., Apple Product Name, iProductName, etc.). There are only a
few exceptions to this rule (e.g., AirPods or HomePod).

Apple has never made any strategic decisions that could undermine this approach; this naming
strategy not only allows the company to leverage its umbrella brand to introduce new products,
ensuring instant brand recognition and trust, but it is also more effective in terms of budget spend
and enabling operational efficiencies.

Little time and budget is wasted when everybody in the company knows that new products need to
become part of the branded house and have short, descriptive names. Equally, there is no
temptation to launch new products that could compete with the umbrella brand and marketers can
get on with rapidly launching campaigns because the branding and the tone of voice are already
established.

Could other companies replicate this strategy?

Yes. Yet, many choose not to, preferring to launch products under new brand names, over-investing
in branding and marketing only to struggle to build brand awareness of new offerings effectively.
Think of all the product names Apple’s competitors have launched (and now are trying to get rid of,
moving to a more unified brand architecture like, for example, Microsoft).
Lesson / advice
We might sound like a broken record, but the branded house architecture should be a default choice
for any company unless there are strong business reasons against it (e.g., owning two or more
competing products in the same category).

2. Ecosystem strategy and smart brand extensions

Apple has managed to achieve something that few companies (if any) could ever pull off. It has
created a seamless, vertically integrated ecosystem encompassing devices (e.g., iPhone, Mac, Apple
Watch), software (e.g., iOS, App Store, Pages), content (e.g., Apple Originals) and services (e.g., Apple
One, Apple Pay, Apple Music). Apple’s ecosystem strategy has contributed to the company’s
tremendous financial success and is one of the factors why Apple is most likely to be successful for
years to come (if not stopped by antitrust enforcement).

Apple has consistently leveraged its strong brand identity to diversify into new segments by
launching multiple strategic brand extensions within its branded house framework. These extensions
not only work smoothly with other Apple products and services but also make them more desirable.
For example, storing pictures in iCloud makes consumers more likely to continue using iPhones.
The company has also made consistent branding choices as no new products or services have been
given separate brand identities.

Is Apple the best or the biggest in each of the categories it is present in? No.
Has it introduced multiple upselling opportunities, created a sticky customer experience and made it
painful for any user to leave its environment? Yes.

Could other companies replicate this strategy?

No, we’re afraid not. It’s very tempting, but operationally almost impossible. The strategy that has
made Apple so successful might have ruined other companies had they tried to apply it. Even today,
it’s hard to find any business that is highly successful in both hardware and software (not mentioning
content) and capable of integrating them to the extent that Apple has. There are examples of
companies that almost went bankrupt after trying to expand to new categories (e.g., GoPro when it
attempted to become a media business).

Lesson / advice
Don’t enter new categories unless you know you can integrate them into what you’re currently great
at. Brand extensions should make your umbrella brand and the core of your business stronger, not
weaker. If you decide to launch brand extensions, make sure they are strongly related to your
umbrella brand.

3. Unique approach to mergers & acquisitions

There’s no bigger distraction for any business than ill-considered mergers and acquisitions (M&A) as
they often lead to organisational mayhem. Integrating acquired companies into the core business
and making them part of the existing brand architecture and product portfolio without losing talent or
revenue is one of the most difficult tasks.

In situations when there are no strong strategic reasons behind the acquisition other than the
potential financial gains, companies involved in M&A might create multiple organisational, branding
and marketing problems for themselves that cost them focus instead of simply expanding their
market share.

That’s not the case with Apple.

Apple’s merger and acquisition approach and post-M&A branding strategy has been unique in the
tech industry. Unlike many of its competitors, Apple typically acquires smaller companies that can
seamlessly integrate into its existing product lines or contribute to new product development. These
acquisitions are often not about gaining market share but rather about acquiring specific capabilities
represented in technology or talent. Acquisitions have been used to improve and expand Apple’s
core services, such as Apple Music, Siri, and its various apps. Some of Apple’s acquisitions have
been pivotal in developing new products. For example, the acquisition of AuthenTec led to the
development of the Touch ID fingerprint sensor, and the purchase of Beats Electronics was a
significant move into the music streaming and audio products market.

When it comes to Apple’s post-M&A branding strategy, Apple integrates almost all of the acquired
companies into its brand and technology ecosystem. As a result, they lose their names and brand
identities and simply become part of Apple. There are a few exceptions. In case of acquisitions of
well-known brands like Beats by Dre or Shazam (not typical acquisitions for Apple), Apple integrates
them into its product and technology ecosystem but doesn’t change their distinctive brand assets
like names or logotypes, believing that on their own they could reach certain consumer segments
more effectively than Apple itself. Apple’s branding approach to acquisitions is almost unheard of as
almost no other tech company has such an easy to understand portfolio and clean brand
architecture.

Could other companies replicate this strategy?

Only theoretically. It’s a well-known fact that there’s a lot of corporate ego involved in M&A activities
and many companies acquire other businesses for reasons other than strategic benefit and
alignment. They often struggle to integrate them organisationally and don’t have an effective post-
M&A branding strategy. As a result, they become a house of brands (like Alphabet and Meta).

Lesson / advice
Minimise the ego component and make sure you have solid strategic reasons to acquire a company.
Always have a plan beforehand detailing what will happen to the acquired business, its brand,
products, processes, data, and people. If you want to be a company that adopts a branded house
approach to your brand strategy, don’t buy businesses that you can’t integrate into your core
business (e.g., your competitors). An approach to M&A that doesn’t take a sufficiently hard look at
the impact of acquiring and integrating a new brand too often results in talent leaving, time and
resource wasted, and a branding mess that can take years to untangle, which dilutes efforts on your
existing brand.

4. Mastery at positioning and repositioning

If you follow brand and marketing news, you must be aware how frequently companies change their
brand strategies and the set of values they are built on. In particular, appointment of a new CMO is
often followed by a new repositioning process. Usually this effort simply relates to a new leader
establishing themselves and bringing their experience into a new environment as they see the
company with fresh eyes, but in some cases it can be harmful for the business.

Apple has undergone only one repositioning process. For many years, it was positioned as a
challenger brand on a mission to revolutionize the personal computer market. This positioning was in
particular visible in the 1984 Macintosh ad and then reinforced in the famous “Think Different”
campaign, which honoured “the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the trouble-makers, (…), the ones
who think differently”. However, similar to many challenger brands that succeeded (you can read our
article about it here), Apple realised that, if it wanted to grow further, it needed to attract people it
hadn’t spoken to before and become more widely acceptable.

As it expanded its product portfolio significantly and became one of the market leaders, it had to
change its strategy. It started applying a more mainstream approach to its communication: it moved
from symbolism to more literal messaging, from image-driven communication to product campaigns
showcasing how Apple’s products make people’s lives better / easier and from an uplifting and
aspirational tone of voice to a more human and humorous style.
However, despite this strategy shift, certain things have not changed. Apple is still built on its core
values of simplicity, the best in class design and human-centricity (rather than technology-centricity).
It continues to build a premium brand image in an unprecedentedly consistent way – it doesn’t offer
discounts and never leads its communication with messages related to price. To some extent it even
builds the distance between its brand and consumers, an approach more typical of luxury brands
rather than tech companies. When compared to its competitors, Apple does one big thing at a time
rather than everything at once. For example, it doesn’t have a lot of new product launches but they
are always very well thought through.

Since the company positioned itself through the values rather than the category in which it was
operating, there was no need to further reposition Apple when it started entering new segments. The
only relatively new aspect to its positioning is its social responsibility focused on protecting privacy,
encouraging inclusion & diversity as well as caring about the environment (Apple is a carbon neutral
company).

Could other companies replicate this strategy?

Yes, by all means. That should be the easiest part, even though so many companies get it wrong.

Lesson / advice
Have a solid brand strategy and stick to it for as long as possible. Reposition only when necessary.

There are multiple factors that have made Apple one of the most successful companies on the
planet and the way the company manages its umbrella brand, its biggest asset, might be one of the
most important ones.

Brand Architecture Part 1: The difference between branded

house and house of brands
Brand architecture describes the role of the corporate brand in marketing products and services, as
well as the relation between all the brands, sub-brands, products, variants, and acquired businesses
in the company’s portfolio. It is often perceived as an area of interest in big organisations only,
though if you sell just one product or service and need to decide whether it will be called the same as
your company or differently, it is also a brand architecture decision.

The more complex a company’s portfolio, the more difficult it is to change the brand architecture.
And although it has an impact on how a company communicates and markets its products, brand
architecture is purely a business decision as it often affects the way teams are organised and how
budgets are structured.

Branding guru David Aaker has written a great deal about brand architecture, and we use his
nomenclature in this post. We will explain the four main brand architecture types: branded house and
house of brands in this article and sub-brands and endorsed brands in the next.

Branded house
A company with a branded house architecture has many products and offerings under one
masterbrand (also called mother or umbrella brand). Its products don’t have separate identities and
all contribute to the strength of the masterbrand. Examples of companies using this framework
include HSBC and Virgin. Amazon is also predominantly a branded house as most of its new products
derive their strength from the mother brand.

A company that recently changed the brand architecture of its flagship brand, moving it closer to a
branded house is Coca-Cola. Following several years of having its drinks marketed individually, last
year it announced the “One Brand” strategy, resulting in Diet Coke, Coca-Cola Zero Sugar and Coca-
Cola Life all being advertised under the main Coca-Cola umbrella, turning the three sub-brands into
variants of the main brand.

Microsoft is another example of a company that understands the importance of strengthening its
masterbrand. It has become a huge corporation with many strong product brands (e.g. Windows or
Office), as well as independent brands under its belt: Skype, Xbox and recently LinkedIn. Despite the
product brands remaining distant from the masterbrand, it wants to move them closer to the
overarching Microsoft umbrella. The company execs often share their concerns that the fact that
people don’t know that these brands are part of Microsoft is an issue they need to solve. Microsoft
probably will never become a branded house but it’s clear it wants to move toward this in future.

A branded house architecture works when a company targets a similar audience with different
products, and wants to build the same proposition and the same associations for different offerings.
It’s also a suitable solution when an organisation has a limited marketing budget, as it’s
understandably cheaper to build awareness of just one brand as opposed to several. Finally, it should
be used when reputation risk related to different products is low, as one wrong move could affect
the whole company.

House of brands

A house of brands is almost the complete opposite of a branded house, in that there are still many
varied products and offerings, but they are marketed under separate brands, which have their own
identities. There are two prime examples of major “house of brands” companies. The first is Procter
& Gamble, whose brands range from skin and hair care, to dishwashing and laundry
detergents. Ariel, Fairy, Always, Old Spice, Gillette and Head & Shoulders are all P&G brands. The
other example is Unilever, whose portfolio is even more varied, featuring home and personal care
brands as well as food and drink brands. Lynx (Axe), Dove, Knorr, Lipton, Magnum, Marmite, PG
Tips and Wall’s ice cream are just a small handful of the names in the Unilever house of brands.

Whilst branded house companies try to make its new products or acquisitions part of the
masterbrand in its marketing and communication, there’s a clear separation between parent
companies such as Unilever and Procter & Gamble and their brands, with the general consumer
likely unaware some of the brands are connected in this way. However, in more recent
communication, both P&G and Unilever have begun to stronger accentuate their corporate brands
when promoting consumer brands, in a way stepping back from this strategy.

A house of brands structure is recommended when an organisation targets different audiences with
the same product categories (for example three shampoo brands for three different target groups)
and wants to build different propositions and new associations for different products (e.g. a value for
money shampoo, a mid-range shampoo solving a concrete hair problem like dandruff and a premium
hair salon shampoo). House of brands is convenient when reputation risk related to different
products is high and you don’t want other brands in your portfolio to be affected. However, it’s crucial
to remember that this brand architecture can be effectively applied only if there’s a substantial
marketing budget to build awareness of each individual brand. There are many companies using a
house of brands, marketing different products under different names with little success as their
marketing budgets are not adjusted to this brand architecture type.
In closing, changing a brand architecture is by no means a creative exercise involving only a new
naming approach. If you need help with re-arranging your brand architecture, we would recommend
hiring professionals with high business acumen to do it for you. It’s a substantial task, requiring an in-
depth understanding of your business, your market, your product portfolio, your organisational
structure (which is often set up around the main brands) and your financial situation.

Brand Architecture Part 2: The difference between sub-

brands and endorsed brands
The relationship between the corporate brand, consumer brands, sub-brands, products, product
variants and acquired businesses in a company’s portfolio is defined by brand architecture. Brand
architecture also determines how the corporate brand plays a part in the marketing of products and
services, and is in particular important when a company has a complex brand and product portfolio.

In part 1, we covered the two extreme types of brand architecture – branded house, which describes
a company with many products and offerings under one masterbrand and house of brands, when a
company has varied products and offerings but markets them with their own identities.

Today, we look at what’s in-between the two extremes: sub-brands and endorsed brands.

Sub-brands

The sub-brands architecture is closer to a branded house strategy, in that the masterbrand most
often acts as a key driver. In some cases both the masterbrand and sub-brands are considered co-
drivers, but the sub-brand is never stronger than the masterbrand.

This brand architecture type is often reflected in the naming pattern: the masterbrand starts off the
product title and the sub-brand follows it. A good example of where this is used is the range
of MTV channels. For instance, MTV Rocks and MTV Dance are two names in the MTV brand, where
MTV plays the major role and “Rocks” and “Dance” build new associations, reaching out to different
audiences with different music tastes. Also products such as Pepsi Max or Nivea Q10 have strong
parent brands acting as the key drivers. There are also cases, where the masterbrand and sub-brand
are seen as co-drivers. In SonyPlayStation, the two brands are equally strong as are “Adidas” and
“Originals” in AdidasOriginals.

The sub-brands architecture is convenient when you want to extend your main brand to new target
audiences – for example, Disney Junior targeting a younger audience than the Disney masterbrand.
The architecture also works when attempting to enrich the masterbrand with new associations,
whether you want to make it a bit younger, edgier or more premium. It’s also a good strategy when
you have a limited marketing budget and want to build the sub-brand’s awareness based on what
has already been built by the masterbrand. Finally, it’s effective when reputation risk related to
different products is low, as a problem with a sub-brand can affect the masterbrand.

Endorsed brands

In contrast to sub-brands, endorsed brands are closer to the house of brands architecture. As with a
house of brands, endorsed brands see many products and offerings under separate brands, but they
are supported by the masterbrand. In this case, the endorsed brand plays a major role, has a
separate identity and uses the masterbrand’s endorsement as a quality stamp – it helps the
endorsed brand build awareness and trust. However, unlike sub-brands, endorsed brands have only
limited potential to enrich the masterbrand.

The naming structure of an endorsed brand sees the endorsed name first, followed by the
masterbrand. Also the logo and branding of the endorsed brand is more prominent than that of the
masterbrand. Examples of brands fitting this strategy include KitKat with endorsement
from Nestlé, Xbox from Microsoft, Courtyard by Marriott and Munchiesstrongly supported by Vice. A
popular approach within this framework is the linked name strategy, where the endorsed brand’s
name is based on the masterbrand’s name. Examples include Nescafé, based on
masterbrand Nestlé, and Danio, which comes from Danone.

The endorsed brands architecture is a good choice, when you want to target different audiences,
while continuing to use the power of the masterband. It also works, when you want to build different
propositions and new associations for different products. Similarly to the house of brands
architecture, you need a substantial marketing budget to build awareness of each endorsed brand.
However, the presence of the masterbrand in branding and communication should make this job a
bit quicker and cheaper. In terms of the reputation risk, endorsed brands rarely affect other brands in
your portfolio.

Despite the fact that in theory the four brand architecture types are distinct and seem to imply
separate strategies, there are many companies which successfully apply all of them at the same
time. For example, Nestlé, L’Oréal and Danone have complex brand and product portfolios and use
sub-brands and endorsed brands as well as branded house and house of brands simultaneously.