Masterbrand

If we were asked to come up with a slogan for the term “masterbrand,” we’d go with this: “One Brand…One Million Products.” Because that’s basically what a masterbrand is.

Think: Coca-Cola, or Hershey’s, or LG. These aren’t companies that are making and selling one measly little product, oh no. These organizations are big-time, and they’ve got big-time brand recognition to go along with their large selection of product offerings. The brand is the linchpin tethering those products together.

When marketing firms talk about masterbrands and masterbranding, they’re talking about when one of those companies—let’s pick on LG—decides to focus their marketing efforts around their overall brand name instead of their individual products. So one LG commercial might feature an LG smartphone, an LG refrigerator, and some LG solar panels; the goal here is to reinforce attachment to the LG brand more than it is to convince someone to buy a specific product (though that’s always nice, too).

The advantages of this approach are that (a) it tends to be cheaper (costs less to produce one masterbrand commercial than 25 product commercials), and (b) it promotes that all-important brand recognition. Of course, if we’ve got a product line that wouldn’t benefit from a masterbranding strategy—like if our masterbrand is EcoOceanLove but we also produce a line of high-fashion plastic straws—then we should consider that when developing our marketing strategy.