Does your masterbrand matter?
Natasha Murray, chief client officer at media agency UM, discusses whether there is value in putting a masterbrand front and centre.
It’s tough at the top. While names like Unilever or Kraft-Heinz have consumer recognition, this isn’t the case for all masterbrands. Understandably, consumers don’t typically engage with them as closely as they do with the brands they own – Ben & Jerry’s or HP Sauce.
While the masterbrand is often more an internal play than customer-facing, it can be seen as a mark of trust and quality. This is particularly useful if it sits behind a new product launch: “if Heinz made this, it must be good.”
This puts marketers in a quandary: do they hero the masterbrand or the more visible consumer brands that sit beneath it – especially when budgets are tight? Is there really enough value in building up that halo effect, or is this just a luxury?
Find your place
It can be challenging to identify the best role a masterbrand should play, particularly if marketers want to make it more than just a small logo at the base of the packet. It has to stand out more prominently in the audience’s mental landscape.
It doesn’t help that there can be a disconnect between the brands in the minds of consumers. Someone might buy a craft beer brand because it’s perceived as being independent, telling them it’s part of a global conglomerate would likely harm sales.
But in other cases, and this remains the most untapped opportunity, the masterbrand can help guide consumers through an interrelated ecosystem of brands.
We often see this at play within winemakers, they may sell a mass market ‘starter’ wine (sorry ‘plummy red’ fans) and keep consumers within the brand family by introducing them to more complex wines once their familiarity – and budgets – have grown. We see similar strategies at play in the big entertainment franchises, there’s quite a leap between Spidey and His Amazing Friends and Deadpool, for instance!
As consumers move through different life stages, the masterbrand can help keep them ensconced within the same brand family. The trick is to stay relevant at each point by keeping its finger on the cultural pulse.
Keep it in the family
This isn’t necessarily easy. Putting different brands aimed at different ages (for example) in the same retail environment can be hard to accomplish, although it can be more straightforward on the digital shelf. The path can be smoothed by tweaking the communications: ‘name-dropping’ the next brand they might want to try in the marketing for the brand they’re already purchasing.
The first question marketers need to ask is, will consumers pay attention – or indeed care? And then, will there be a payoff on investing time and resource into building the masterbrand?
Brands are a complex and interconnected set of components forming a nuanced network of meanings for different audiences… which is to say, there is no ‘one size fits all’ answer here! As such, the masterbrand strategy needs to be considered through multiple lenses - markets, audiences and the brands that sit beneath it – while also taking the competitive landscape into account.
There are no short cuts, but identifying if there are opportunities to strategically direct customers from one brand to the next in line with their evolving needs and priorities can be well worth the time and effort… If the sub-brands line up in this way and their individual brand meanings aren’t contradictory.
The masterbrand should align to what its audiences care about most, in the same way as a ‘Fairtrade’ logo shows purchasers that a product is being made in equitable conditions. In short, the presence of the masterbrand must act as a genuine differentiator and clearly add value.
With so many factors affecting what consumers buy and how they behave, the masterbrand can play a key part of the overall pattern. It won’t be the right investment for every big company, but those that can match their customers to their broader product portfolio of products – not just the one they’re buying today – will maintain a clear advantage over competitors.
