Brand portfolio molecule approach

Sam Hill and Chris Lederer

To successfully manage a brand portfolio, a company needs three things: an understanding of its portfolio of brands; a set of tools with which to manage the portfolio; and an organisation designed with this approach in mind.

Brand portfolio molecule approach

Sam Hill & Chris Lederer

To successfully manage a brand portfolio, a company needs three things:

  1. A true visualisation of the entire portfolio depicting all the brands, their characteristics, and the relationships among them;

  2. A set of tools with which to manage the portfolio; and

  3. An organisation designed with this approach in mind.

Hill and Lederer (2001) call this visualisation a Brand Portfolio Molecule (BPM). Each BPM consists of five aspects:

  • First, it defines all the brands that the company uses and should consider in making brand decisions.

  • Second, it reflects the relative value...

WARC subscribers can sign in to keep reading

Not a subscriber?

Schedule your live demo with our team today

WARC helps you to plan, create and deliver more effective marketing

  • Prove your case and back-up your idea

  • Get expert guidance on strategic challenges

  • Tackle current and emerging marketing themes

We’re long-term subscribers to WARC and it’s a tool we use extensively. We use it to source case studies and best practice for the purposes of internal training, as well as for putting persuasive cases to clients. In compiling a recent case for long-term, sustained investment in brand, we were able to support key marketing principles with numerous case studies sourced from WARC. It helped bring what could have been a relatively dry deck to life with recognisable brand successes from across a broad number of categories. It’s incredibly efficient to have such a wealth of insight in one place.

Insights Team
Bray Leino

You’re in good company

We work with 80% of Forbes' most valuable brands* and 80% of the world's top top-of-the-class agencies.

* Top 10 brands