"What is in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet." So goes the quote from Juliet in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. When you are considering your company's brand, there is quite a bit in a name. We hang a lot of our marketing efforts on creating, defining and maintaining brand recognition. It is a hallmark of doing business.

What exactly is a brand? The American Marketing Association defines branding as the name, term, sign, symbol or design, or a combination of them intended to identify the goods and services of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of other sellers.¹ The name of your business is a brand. If you have named the products you make or the services you sell, you have a brand. We are surrounded by all kinds of brands every day. At this very moment, you are reading this article on a computer or mobile device that is branded, on a browser that is branded, using software that is branded.

You may be considering diversifying your product or service offerings in our down economy. This is not an uncommon move as businesses try to survive. If you do, you need to be careful that you are not watering down your brand. For instance, let's say you own a small heating and cooling company called Bob's Heating and Air. The gist of your business is installing and servicing HVAC equipment. If the phones are not ringing for furnace and air conditioning repairs, you might consider expanding your services. Let's say you decide to include air duct cleaning as part of your offerings. You come up with a catchy name for the duct cleaning - something like "Duct Devil." You have just created a new brand for the duct cleaning side of your business. You want to run some ads to get the word out. The problem is, do you call this "Bob's Heating, Air and Duct Devils," or just "Duct Devils"? If you call it "Duct Devils", will people associate it with "Bob's"? If you call it "Bob's Heating, Air and Duct Devils", is the name too convoluted to remember?

In the marketing world, using a company name as a brand is known as Corporate or Family Branding. Using the corporate brand with a product or service is known as Sub-branding. Using just the service or product without the corporate brand is known as Product Branding. The following sentence gives an example of each.

I drove my Chevy Suburban (sub-branding) to Target (corporate branding) to purchase Mountain Dew (product branding.)

We try to make it very easy on the customer to remember a brand. Typically we assign one brand per product or service. We don't want them to have to think twice when they hear a branded name. In my example above, you know what a Chevy Suburban looks like. You know that it is neither an Italian sports car nor the Oscar-Mayer Weinermobile. You get a very distinct image when you hear the name. Likewise, you know what a Target store is, what they look like and what they have for sale inside. You would not get a can of Mountain Dew confused with a container of motor oil. These are very distinct branded products and corporations.

In brand architecture, there is an ongoing argument over which way is the best way to go. Should you employ simple product branding, sub-brand or take the corporate/family branding approach? There is one rule that really matters: whatever your brand, it has to be memorable. If people cannot remember the name of the brand and associate it with your business, product or service, you will lose. And on the flip side, if you have too many products and services associated with a brand, the market gets confused. When you expand beyond your initial service offerings, it is sometimes necessary to come up with a new Umbrella brand to hold all of the services. In the case of Bob's Heating and Cooling, it might be necessary to create a new overarching brand, like Bob's Home Mechanical Services, under which Bob's Heating and Cooling can maintain its brand (and its customer base). The new Duct Devils can also have its own brand under the larger umbrella. As long as the services fit under the umbrella brand, it works. Customers can distinguish between needing their air conditioner fixed and cleaning out the ventilation system in their home. And likewise, Bob's could expand into plumbing, electrical and other home mechanical services and still fit under the umbrella brand. If Bob's decided to start a totally unrelated service, like an auto body shop, the umbrella could not hold the new brand. You would need to market it under a new corporate brand with no association to the others.

If you are trying to diversify your product and service offerings, make sure you are making a clear brand statement to your customers. They should be able to make an obvious distinction between different services upon hearing the name of your brand. Keep your branding simple and easy to understand. It will pay dividends in the long run.