[MUSIC] Some of you work for mono brands, or a branded house. As it's been called. Where you basically have one offering, serving one customer type. And some of you work for a house of brands. Where not only are you serving different customers. But often you brand architecture as such. That you're serving them with different brands for each segment. This video is all about managing portfolios of brands. I'm going to focus on one where some of the brands have different names. But you can think of a brand, such as London Business School. Where we're serving diverse customers with different products. Whether it's executives, or on our degree program. We have Sloan program for very senior executives. We have our Master's in Management for people straight out of undergraduate, or the MBA, or the executive MBA around the world. In some sense, those are all different brands, or it's a portfolio of products if you will. That cannot all be delivered in the same way. And it introduces a lot of complexity into the organization, at least for some companies. So, this is really to reflect on two things. One is how do we conceive of a portfolio of brands, and then let's think about. Well, what does it take to deliver on those brands from an internal focus? So one of the case studies I wrote was on Unilever's hot brand, the ice cream. They're the biggest manufacturer of ice cream in the world. And they were going through this radical transformation. Where they had all these local businesses, 75% of their brands were present only in a single market. They've grown through mergers and acquisitions. So many of their brands were not even present around the world. And most of their sells maybe 80% were made up by their power brands. You might have heard of Magnum, or Carte D'or, or Salerno. Now there wasn't real clarity even within Unilever about exactly who did these customers serve. To make matters more difficult, it's not like Carte D'or was bought by this group of customers, and Solero by this, Magnum by this group of customers. The case was that the same customer bought these brands on different occasions. So you know have to have a different value proposition for the same group of customers. Now what they did also, is they reinvigorated the entire ice cream category which was kind of stuck in people's childhood. And of course, with birth rates going down across the world in emerging and developed markets. They wanted to make the brand more mature. To cut a long story short. They had to be very, very clear about what are the segments these different brands are serving. Well one segment and again, these are not different people. But these are different people when they're in a different state, is when I look for indulgence. Which ice cream do I go for? The ice cream that Unilever put against at the power brand was Magnum. This is all about indulgence. They face different competitors for that indulgence segment, maybe Haagen-Dazs. But also non ice cream products, such as chocolate for example. Now if you think about the refreshment segment. Now it's a hot day. I might have bought a Magnum last week. Now I'm looking for something to refresh me. Their brand Solero was place against that segment. Not only are they competing with other water based ice creams, rather than cream based ice creams. They're also competing for example, with Coca Cola. But it's the same customer. Carte D'or was about sharing. What do we do to share amongst each other? Maybe there you are competing with a bag of crisps, or chips as you might call them. So, the clarity had to come with which brands served which of these segments. And it was all about the economics of scale and taking the marketing muscle that you have and putting them behind these brands across markets. Which became especially important because of at least Pan-European, if not global, media. So if you're advertising, let's say Magnum at a soccer match, a football match. This is seen across Europe if it's one of the banners. But because I'm dealing with the same customer, I also have to unify that brand portfolio. And that introduced a little bit earlier actually a heart brand logo. Now each of these different brands had to have a different meaning. The Heart brand after some customer research was all about fun, euphoric fun. And the key inside was, ice cream is not just about childhood. But it's about connecting to the fun you didn't have as a child. So Magnum became not just about indulgence. But it became much more sensual indulgence, almost sexual indulgence. Carte D'or is not just about hanging out, sharing. It became a bonding, and coming together in a more intense way. Solero was not about refreshment as in a relaxing refreshment. But it became one that's very energetic. Now these simple differences are quite important because everything had to change. You went from a whole bunch of local fiefdoms. Where you had local, I'd call them princes. Who managed their brands locally with local suppliers, to having Pan-European at the end global brand management. They created new global brands headquartered in Rome. The inside was completely different, red leather sofas, open partitions, fun colors. They put younger people in that, or funkier people, more fun people I should say. Their internal values changed, people had to become DJs of fun. So they're labeled not as creating ice cream, which in the past was really about food quality. So people in white lab coats were really at the center of making sure the ice cream had the right quality to being more fun. Their whole activation had to be run fun. And they had internal movies to get people on-board, to really change their thinking. And so they could be creative around having fun. On the product side this lead to some innovations for Cornetto. They said how much fun is packaged ice cream? And they came with a self-serve machine, which was a huge success. It's a lot more fun. They come up with ice cream bars in my hometown Hamburg, Germany. They introduced the summer lounge, where you could have your own different ice creams. They competed with the summer lounge. Actually they competed with bars and clubs, if they're going to be more adult. Maybe we can mix ice cream with alcohol, even. They brought in mixologists from around the world who came up with their own frozen cocktails creations. And across all their brands, music became the unifying theme. They sponsored music events in the summer lounge. They would bring in deejays from around the world. And everything changed, down to even their business cards, which were all around fun. And of course, you had to have the HR function stand behind it as well. All, if you think about the brand architecture, to have the heart of fun if you will as the master brand. But then to have clarity with the different sub-brands. In terms of which need segments that they serviced. Now to take this one step further. Think about the brand Ben & Jerry's, which Unilever acquired. Now Ben & Jerry's is a very, very different kind of brand. It's very much about sustainability, the environment. It's got this kind of New England American, I wouldn't say hippie. But very sort of down-to-earth attitude. Now, when they did their analysis, they realized. You know what? That brand doesn't actually fit into this umbrella brand. Right? You can't think of this sort of down-to-earth hippie brand, with this euphoric fun. That doesn't mix. So they kept that brand quite separate. It had a different culture. Why? Because at the end of the day, the culture shines through. [MUSIC]
