The classic brand manager dealt with simple brand structures in part because he or she was faced with a relatively simple environment and simple business strategies. Today the situation is far different. Brand managers now face market fragmentation, channel dynamics, global realities, and business environments that have drastically changed their task. In addition, there is pressure to leverage brand assets because of the prohibitive cost of creating new brands. This set of challenges has created a new discipline called "brand architecture." A coherent brand architecture can lead to impact, clarity, synergy, and leverage rather than market weakness, confusion, waste, and missed opportunities. Brand architecture is an organizing structure of the brand portfolio that specifies brand roles and the nature of relationships between brands. This article introduces a powerful brand architecture tool, the "brand relationship spectrum." It is intended to help brand architecture strategists employ insight and subtlety to subbrands, endorsed brands, and their alternatives. Subbrands and endorsed brands can play a key role in creating a coherent and effective brand architecture.

As more and more companies begin to see the world as their market, brand builders look with envy upon those businesses that appear to have created global brands--brands whose positioning, advertising strategy, personality, look, and feel are in most respects the same from one country to another. Attracted by such high-profile examples of success, these companies want to globalize their own brands. But that's a risky path to follow, according to David Aaker and Erich Joachimsthaler. Why? Because creating strong global brands takes global brand leadership. It can't be done simply by edict from on high. Specifically, companies must use organizational structures, processes, and cultures to allocate brand-building resources globally, to create global synergies, and to develop a global brand strategy that coordinates and leverages country brand strategies. Aaker and Joachimsthaler offer four prescriptions for companies seeking to achieve global brand leadership. First, companies must stimulate the sharing of insights and best practices across countries--a system in which "it won't work here" attitudes can be overcome. Second, companies should support a common global brand-planning process, one that is consistent across markets and products. Third, they should assign global managerial responsibility for brands in order to create cross-country synergies and to fight local bias. And fourth, they need to execute brilliant brand-building strategies. Before stampeding blindly toward global branding, companies need to think through the systems they have in place. Otherwise, any success they achieve is likely to be random--and that's a fail-safe recipe for mediocrity.

Costs, market fragmentation, and new media channels that let customers bypass advertisements seem to be in league against the old ways of marketing. Relying on mass media campaigns to build strong brands may be a thing of the past. Several companies in Europe, making a virtue of necessity, have come up with alternative brand-building approaches and are blazing a trail in the post-mass-media age. In England, Nestle's Buitoni brand grew through programs that taught the English how to cook Italian food. The Body Shop garnered loyalty with its support of environmental and social causes. Cadbury funded a theme park tied to its history in the chocolate business. Haagen-Dazs opened posh ice-cream parlors and got itself featured by name on the menus of fine restaurants. Hugo Boss and Swatch backed athletic or cultural events that became associated with their brands.