ZAG: The Number-One Strategy of High-Performance Brands

Checkpoint 17: How Do You Protect Your Portfolio?

The era of the stand-alone brand is coming to a close, as more and more companies understand the value of linking brands together. While there’s valuable synergy to be found in brand portfolios, however, they face four dangers that single brands don’t—contagion, confusion, contradiction, and complexity.

CONTAGION, the first of the four, is the dark side of synergy. Just as customer loyalty can spread quickly through brand linkages, so can bad news. If one brand has a problem, depending on the strength of the ties between the brands, the rest of the portfolio can become infected. For example, a number of years ago 60 MINUTES aired a story on the Audi 5000’s tendency toward “sudden acceleration,” ...