Changing brand architecture during rebranding (mono- and sub-brands)
What actually changes during architecture change
Most articles about brand architecture describe it as a set of ready-made constructions: Branded House, House of Brands, sub-brands, hybrid. This is reference information, useful at the stage of choosing a model. But rebranding is not about choosing a picture from a catalog, but a managed transition from one point to another, and it is here that real difficulties begin. The company changes not the visual shell, but the decision-making system: which products receive a separate name, which are subordinate to the parent brand, and which disappear entirely.
A telling example is Sberbank in 2020 year. Formally, this was a transition from the classic financial Branded House to an ecosystem of sub-brands. The tool of architecture was the font: sub-brands such as SberMarket and SberLogistics were built through the prefix 'Sber' plus the name of the sphere, which allowed to immediately read the belonging to the ecosystem without losing the specificity of the product.
Stages of transition from a portfolio model to a monobrand or sub-brands
The mechanics of transition are almost always the same, only the timelines and depth of changes at each step differ.
- Audit of the current portfolio — which brands bring recognition and which only confuse the audience.
- Definition of the target architecture and naming rules for new products within it.
- Development of a unifying visual and verbal code (font, color, descriptor) that will mark affiliation with the parent brand.
- Phase of parallel existence — old names remain on packaging, in interfaces and contracts, the new logic is introduced selectively.
- Phase-out of outdated associations — gradual disappearance of old names from communication, legal documents, and interfaces.
- Establishing the new architecture in the brand book and internal regulations, so that new products are born from the start following the correct logic.
The phase of parallel existence — the most risky part of the process. It is on this phase that companies either lose their audience due to confusion, or, conversely, give them time to get used to it.
Communication with the audience: how not to lose customers during the transition
The mistake that most companies make is a sudden name change without a transition period. The audience perceives the disappearance of a familiar brand as the disappearance of the product or service itself, especially if it concerns b2c and recurring purchases.
- Introduce the new name side by side with the old one for no less than 6-12 months, if the product is linked to regular transactions.
- Maintain recognizable visual anchors — color, logo shape, tone of communication — even during a name change.
- Explicitly explain the reason for the changes to the audience through product interfaces, not only through press releases.
- Test the reaction to the new name on a limited segment of users before mass switching.
Yandex.Lavka, Yandex.Music, Yandex.Disk — examples of sub-brands that did not undergo a sudden name change, because they were originally built on the unified logic of «Yandex + sphere». This reduces some communication risk from the start, but does not eliminate the need to explain the connection between services to the audience when launching each new one.
Risks of transitioning from independent brands to sub-brands
Transition from a portfolio architecture, where brands are not related to one another, to subbrands under a common name carries three typical risks.
| Risk | How to minimize |
|---|---|
| Loss of loyal audience of an independent brand that does not identify itself with the parent company | Maintain recognizable elements of the old brand within the new name, introduce a transition period |
| Reputational contamination — a problem of one subbrand affects the entire ecosystem | Clearly separate operational responsibility while maintaining visual linkage |
| Internal conflict among teams losing autonomy and product identity | Involve subbrand teams in architecture development before announcing changes |
Tek-com in 2022 year abandoned the portfolio model in favor of a monobrand with sub-brands differentiated by color and descriptor — this made it possible to maintain the difference between business directions without creating the impression of a set of unrelated companies.
When it's time to change the architecture: metrics-signals
There is no formal date for re-architecting, but there is a set of metrics that together indicate that the current structure has run its course.
- Product company recognition is declining as the product line grows — the audience does not understand that the services belong to one company.
- The cost of promoting each new brand grows faster than its revenue — the portfolio stops generating synergy.
- Internal research shows confusion in the perception of positioning between company brands.
- Large M&A or launching new directions are underway, for which a single platform is needed — as in the case of MOEX Group, where the parent brand was brought to the foreground precisely to facilitate the consolidation of assets.
Why companies settle on a hybrid model
Hybrid architecture is rarely a planned final solution — it is more often a compromise arrived at during transformation, not a strategy chosen from scratch. For Amazon and the Gromov Branding Group, the hybrid emerged as a result of different integration speeds of different business directions: some assets are easily translated under the parent brand, while others require maintaining independence due to the specificity of the audience.
Sber is a good example of a conscious choice of subbrands, not a hybrid for the sake of compromise: the financial product and the e-commerce service have different communication tonalities, and attempting to force them into a single visual and verbal logic would have destroyed trust in both segments. Apple, on the other hand, maintains a Branded House with light product names such as iPhone and iPad, because all products are grounded in a single value promise and do not require different tonalities.
The hybrid model works when the business combines heterogeneous directions faster than it can establish a common brand language for them. This is not a final point, but a working state — and it is not always worth striving to bring it to a 'clean' architecture if the business structure itself continues to change.
What actually changes during architecture change
Most articles about brand architecture describe it as a set of ready-made constructions: Branded House, House of Brands, sub-brands, hybrid. This is reference information, useful at the stage of choosing a model. But rebranding is not about choosing a picture from a catalog, but a managed transition from one point to another, and it is here that real difficulties begin. The company changes not the visual shell, but the decision-making system: which products receive a separate name, which are subordinate to the parent brand, and which disappear entirely.
A telling example is Sberbank in 2020 year. Formally, this was a transition from the classic financial Branded House to an ecosystem of sub-brands. The tool of architecture was the font: sub-brands such as SberMarket and SberLogistics were built through the prefix 'Sber' plus the name of the sphere, which allowed to immediately read the belonging to the ecosystem without losing the specificity of the product.
Stages of transition from a portfolio model to a monobrand or sub-brands
The mechanics of transition are almost always the same, only the timelines and depth of changes at each step differ.
- Audit of the current portfolio — which brands bring recognition and which only confuse the audience.
- Definition of the target architecture and naming rules for new products within it.
- Development of a unifying visual and verbal code (font, color, descriptor) that will mark affiliation with the parent brand.
- Phase of parallel existence — old names remain on packaging, in interfaces and contracts, the new logic is introduced selectively.
- Phase-out of outdated associations — gradual disappearance of old names from communication, legal documents, and interfaces.
- Establishing the new architecture in the brand book and internal regulations, so that new products are born from the start following the correct logic.
The phase of parallel existence — the most risky part of the process. It is on this phase that companies either lose their audience due to confusion, or, conversely, give them time to get used to it.
Communication with the audience: how not to lose customers during the transition
The mistake that most companies make is a sudden name change without a transition period. The audience perceives the disappearance of a familiar brand as the disappearance of the product or service itself, especially if it concerns b2c and recurring purchases.
- Introduce the new name side by side with the old one for no less than 6-12 months, if the product is linked to regular transactions.
- Maintain recognizable visual anchors — color, logo shape, tone of communication — even during a name change.
- Explicitly explain the reason for the changes to the audience through product interfaces, not only through press releases.
- Test the reaction to the new name on a limited segment of users before mass switching.
Yandex.Lavka, Yandex.Music, Yandex.Disk — examples of sub-brands that did not undergo a sudden name change, because they were originally built on the unified logic of «Yandex + sphere». This reduces some communication risk from the start, but does not eliminate the need to explain the connection between services to the audience when launching each new one.
Risks of transitioning from independent brands to sub-brands
Transition from a portfolio architecture, where brands are not related to one another, to subbrands under a common name carries three typical risks.
| Risk | How to minimize |
|---|---|
| Loss of loyal audience of an independent brand that does not identify itself with the parent company | Maintain recognizable elements of the old brand within the new name, introduce a transition period |
| Reputational contamination — a problem of one subbrand affects the entire ecosystem | Clearly separate operational responsibility while maintaining visual linkage |
| Internal conflict among teams losing autonomy and product identity | Involve subbrand teams in architecture development before announcing changes |
Tek-com in 2022 year abandoned the portfolio model in favor of a monobrand with sub-brands differentiated by color and descriptor — this made it possible to maintain the difference between business directions without creating the impression of a set of unrelated companies.
When it's time to change the architecture: metrics-signals
There is no formal date for re-architecting, but there is a set of metrics that together indicate that the current structure has run its course.
- Product company recognition is declining as the product line grows — the audience does not understand that the services belong to one company.
- The cost of promoting each new brand grows faster than its revenue — the portfolio stops generating synergy.
- Internal research shows confusion in the perception of positioning between company brands.
- Large M&A or launching new directions are underway, for which a single platform is needed — as in the case of MOEX Group, where the parent brand was brought to the foreground precisely to facilitate the consolidation of assets.
Why companies settle on a hybrid model
Hybrid architecture is rarely a planned final solution — it is more often a compromise arrived at during transformation, not a strategy chosen from scratch. For Amazon and the Gromov Branding Group, the hybrid emerged as a result of different integration speeds of different business directions: some assets are easily translated under the parent brand, while others require maintaining independence due to the specificity of the audience.
Sber is a good example of a conscious choice of subbrands, not a hybrid for the sake of compromise: the financial product and the e-commerce service have different communication tonalities, and attempting to force them into a single visual and verbal logic would have destroyed trust in both segments. Apple, on the other hand, maintains a Branded House with light product names such as iPhone and iPad, because all products are grounded in a single value promise and do not require different tonalities.
The hybrid model works when the business combines heterogeneous directions faster than it can establish a common brand language for them. This is not a final point, but a working state — and it is not always worth striving to bring it to a 'clean' architecture if the business structure itself continues to change.
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