We’re currently working on a brand consolidation and it reminded me of a story from the HubSpot days.

When I joined the company in 2015 there was one product and one brand. It was all easy enough to keep track of. Then we launched a new product called Sidekick (eventually it’d become Sales Hub) and for some reason it needed it’s own sub-brand. So 1 brand, 1 sub-brand. Then we launched the HubSpot for Startups program… another sub-brand. Then a bunch of ERGs were created, each needed a sub-brand. New products launched. We had INBOUND. It got to the point where there were double-digit sub-brands to keep track of.

To be clear, all of these programs, projects, and products were great for the company and customers, but did they each need their own sub-brand? Absolutely not! For the organizers and creators it felt like an easy was to stand out but what it actually did was slow down progress because my team didn’t build all the brands, we didn’t maintain all the brands, and we couldn’t keep up with all of the brands.

But then things got really complicated, we started acquiring companies. Now we didn’t just have 1 brand and a dozen sub-brands to consider, we had whole entire brands to consider. Beloved brands like The Hustle and PieSync that we couldn’t just shut down. It was all too much!

It was at that point that we began a large brand consolidation of our own and that was my first introduction to The Lifecycle of a Brand.

Maintaining a brand gets messy, let’s get ahead of that

What is The Lifecycle of a Brand?

It’s pretty much what I outlined above and it’s something that every company deals with eventually.

Core brand

This is where it starts. You have a single, core brand. It’s the main identity that your customers and colleagues know. There’s a defined strategy and brand guideline (sometimes) and it’s all pretty straightforward.

As you grow, you start launching new products, maybe an education platform, a customer conference, some ERGs, a newsletter, and probably a podcast.

Sub-brands

Welcome to the sub-brand era. For various reasons (usually outside of our control), all of those programs end up with a sub-brand. Some look a lot like the core. And some you’d never know were connected at all. You've grown from having a single brand to a single brand and multiple sub-brands to consider.

The company keeps growing... hooray! You make some acquisitions... hooray! You now have to manage even more brands... okaaaaaaay.

Multi brand

This is what we call the multi brand phase. You go from a single, core brand to maintaining a bunch of different brands (and don't forget those sub-brands). There’s no longer a single strategy or set of guidelines to follow. Different pieces of the different brands start to migrate across brand lines. Everything looks a little off—even your core brand.

You're supposed to be telling a single story, but that's impossible to do when a bunch of different brand stories are being shouted at the same time.

It's usually at this point that a new core brand gets defined with all of the sub-brands and acquired brands moving under one roof. Things look aligned and consistent across each product and acquired company, you have a single strategy to follow, and the whole company is finally on the same page.

Then it starts again... Welcome back to the core brand phase.

This happens to everyone

I said it before and it’s worth stating again that this happens to every company that scales. Don’t believe me? Ask Jessie from Clari.

I shared this graphic on Linkedin and Jessie immediately hit me with a “No sub-brands!”

Since HubSpot, I’ve worked on this issue at least a dozen times. Out in the world it happens all the time. Let’s take a look at an example: Atlassian.

Atlassian is a $50B company with over 12,000 employees and 7 core products—Jira, Confluence, Service Management, Rovo, Trello, Bitbucket, and Loom. Those last 3 were acquisitions. Trello and Loom in particular had their own brands, with unique identities, voice, tone, and messaging.

Look at them now

A quick look at some of Atlassian’s products—they’re all using a single, core brand

They’re all using a single, core brand. Different products, different acquired brands, I assume different sub-brands, all living together in peace. This wasn’t an easy lift for the team at Atlassian but they got there.

Do we have to just deal with the lifecycle or can we do something about it?

Yes.

No but seriously, there are parts you need to deal with and there are parts you can do something about.

Get ahead of sub-brands

Sub-brands happen for a number of reasons most of which live under the guise of “differentiation.” The reality is that most sub-brands come from either a place of ego or insecurity.

Ego takes over when someone thinks they’ve done something that’s bigger than or more important than what their colleagues are doing. They want a sub-brand so their project can stand alone. This is the worst reason to create a sub-brand in my opinion because not only is it creating work but there’s usually political hoops to jump through that are even less fun.

Insecurity is the exact opposite. It’s usually labeled some sort of “skunkworks” initiative that no one is sure of so they slap a different logo or name or identity on it to see if it works. If it does, then everyone gets excited. If it doesn’t then it goes the way of the Dodo.

Your job is to get ahead of either situation. To quote the ancient proverb:

You have to assume that someone is going to at some point try to create a sub-brand so the best thing you can do when defining your initial strategy and brand guidelines is to come up with examples of what a sub-brand will look like. It might be a special wordmark, a unique logo treatment, or maybe a secondary palette that’s set aside firmly for sub-brands. Whatever it is, make up a few examples ahead of time—at HubSpot we did this with wordmarks for regions, products, and ERGs. You should also define if and when a unique sub-brand might be worth it. Get those approved by the exec team and you’ll have fewer headaches going forward.

If you find yourself in the situation now, the best way to get ahead of it is to argue why maintaining the core brand makes sense. This is where hopefully you have some data around brand awareness, affinity, and sentiment. If you’ve built out your self-service tools and other systems, that’s a pretty big reason to stick to the core too.

Prepare for acquisitions

I wrote a newsletter a few months ago called The Hidden Cost of Acquistions which was basically a checklist of what to do when an acquisition is made. In most cases, this will just be the way it is unless you’re involved in the M&A conversations ahead of time (I only was once).

That said the idea of acquisitions is rarely a complete surprise. There are usually conversations about how the company has “reached a point of growth” where it makes sense or that “it’s time to grow into a certain space.” That’s when you need to make sure that leadership is accounting (at least somewhat) for the brand side of an acquisition. This could mean setting aside time or budget—I used to tell my CMO to set aside anywhere from $50-$200k depending on the size of the acquisition—or at least to brainstorm the long-term vision of the new brand

The reality that we likely have to accept is that we could potentially skip the sub-brand phase but rarely the multi-brand stage so as news comes out, start thinking about what that new core brand could look like. The sooner you get ahead of that, the easier that consolidation is going to be.

Which phase of the lifecycle are you in? Whether you’re trying to build a core brand that’s extensible enough to prepare for sub-brands and future acquisitions or you’re looking to get out of the multi-brand stage, OhSnap! has your back—we’re currently consolidating a multi-brand public company with 1 core brand, 5 sub-brands, and then a second-tier of sub-brands.

We’re weird and find this stuff fun so if you’re thinking about the future of your brand and visual identity, we’re your team.