Brand architecture serves as a navigation tool for customers. It helps minimize customer confusion by laying out the product structure in a way that makes it easy for customers to find what they are looking for and to understand what the company has to offer.
An example:
In 2001, AT&T’s “Managed Services” division was facing a trend in downward sales. It had over 12,000 offerings, the majority of which were sold to customers under the “Managed Services” brand. They quickly noticed two major problems:
1) customers and sales force were confused by the vastness of the offering
2) customers saw AT&T as a product company rather than a company capable of providing value-added services as the “Managed Services” name implied.
AT&T had to figure out what their target customers wanted from a telecommunication solutions provider. They found two distinct customer segments, each with fundamentally different needs and ways of thinking about telecom solutions.
1) “Product Buyers” look for specific product sets and sophisticated components and thus require a wide variety of distinct products
2) “Solutions buyers” are less expert and seek holistic business solutions that are all-inclusive and off-the-shelf.
With this insight, AT&T developed a dual brand architecture model that presented the same products in two different ways (enabling each segment to find what they were looking for). This new structure allowed “Product Buyers” to navigate offerings by product category and type, while “Solutions Buyers” could choose between different groupings of offers that met their overall needs. As a result, customers could more easily speak about and explain what AT&T could offer.
AT&T also renamed the division “AT&T Enterprise” in order to reflect the broader focus.
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