Within a last few years, a lot of corporates have been beaten by their competitors at their own game. “Brand Architecture, and Employee Diversity” are two of the reasons that i recognised for such a phenomenon to be possible.

Brand architecture is the structure of brands within an organisational entity. It establishes the brands in a company’s portfolio and also differentiates them from one another. The architecture defines the level of brands within an organisation, and also how the brands and the sub-brands relate to each other, and over time support each other. Companies spend a lot of money to manage their brand architecture to maximise the penetration into the market and become leaders in a highly competitive environment.

By studying the brand architecture of a company, you can by a large measure determine the past, present, and future management decisions of a company, as well as the competitive realities the company faces in the current market.

As people switch from one company to another, they don’t just bring themselves physically to the new company, they also bring in new ideas, new ways of thinking, and new ways of working. A symbiosis of creative people, results in creative ideas and eventually financial success.

Who would have thought that there could be conceptual parallels between chocolate(F&B), luxury automotive brands, competing technology companies. But in my experience i am nearly sure, that people jump from one sector to another in their careers for such ideas to foster.

I’ve been following pulse of the market in terms of brand architecture for a few years now. I’m not an expert at the subject, but many management professionals say that i’m aware more the common guy. Some people even pay for me my branding advise, some of the time 😉

People work all their lives, each and every one of us strives for something, developing fondness for something. Chocolate is something that almost everyone loves or at least likes. One of the big players in the chocolate business makes 200 versions of same product, suiting to all kind of tastes, and sells it for a big profit in the market. Suddenly cell-phones started selling like chocolate in many ways, people trying new ones, new colours, newer flavours.

What on earth happened here, one may ask? Let’s look at the market and what happened.

Samsung released 52 unique smartphones in 2014 alone. One of it’s competitor, HTC released 23 new phones to market. Nokia unveiled 20, Motorola released 10 handsets and Apple unveiled two. LoL! Though many of the Samsung’s 52 devices are aimed at specific markets. I’m quite confused at why there are so many.

Someone at Google was quite aware of the chocolate game quite well, they co-branded a famous chocolate brand with their Mobile Operating System to build loyalty and bring out a cool factor to something, which was not considered cool before. Samsung went a step further they learned from the Automotive sector, on how Toyota became a competitive luxury force and beat the Germans at their own game in many countries around the world.

So is it only me that thinks Samsung learned some tricks they learned from automotive and f&b sector, and applied it to telecom? What did these guys do to be so spectacular with their penetration. Firstly they aligned with Google for an open source O/S Platform, they cut costs-big time.

Second they hired people from diverse backgrounds, not just from engineering and software backgrounds, thus bringing new and fresh ideas into a box. Just another way of market penetration.

Google co-branded with Kitkat with Android. Samsung went a step further they took a concept and applied it to their phones. They learned from Toyota, they knew they had to make a new brand, to get the elite markets attention, just like the ‘Lexus illusion Toyota created, and the Maybach illusion Mercedes resurrected.’

Samsung figured not everyone wants the same boring phone so they “Upgraded their brand architecture not the technology itself.” Just by aligning their industrial design and brand architecture they moved up a step. To gain more customers, they did not need to re-invest in new technology. They upgraded their brand architecture.

They created a new product lineup called the Alpha. Placed above Galaxy and the Grand. The Alpha is a smaller, thinner, metal version of the Galaxy lineup, it aims to attract people who like the metal chassis of HTC and iPhone. Such things are only possible if employees are given intellectual freedom and resource diversity. By hiring people who worked in diverse fields, Samsung maximised their corporate potential and beat the old dinosaurs like Ericsson, Motorola, and BlackBerry at their own game. Now they are one of the two dominant players in the cell-phone industry.

A thoughtful analysis is imperative in coming up with solutions to a companies branding problems. Unless one can identify and define the problems, it is unlikely than they can come up with dynamic and innovative solutions to current and future problems. The approach by most management professionals at solving brand architecture issues has been imitative rather than innovative. The lessons one learns from brand architecture are likely to have universal value and applicability. Since human needs and problems have been conceptually the same regardless of color, ethnicity, race or religion. Without diversity of employees chances of innovation seem weak.