Brand & Product Portfolio Strategy

Brand portfolio strategy is the work of deciding how many brands and products a company should carry, what each one is for, where two of them are competing for the same customer, and where the next dollar of investment goes. Vivaldi has done portfolio work since 1999, for companies including Coca-Cola, Swiss Post, Whirlpool, Kellogg’s, Sonova, Del Monte and Ziff Davis.

• Since 1999brand and product portfolio work
• 200+published case studies
• 10 officeson four continents
• 5xWirtschaftsWoche Best of Consulting, Strategy and Innovation
• Brand Leadershipco-authored by our founder

A multi-brand company makes a capital allocation decision every time it funds one asset over another. The question is whether the assets reinforce each other or simply share a parent. This page covers when portfolio work is worth buying, how we do it, what it has produced, and how to tell a portfolio strategy firm from a firm that will redraw your chart.

One boundary first, because the two jobs get sold as one. Portfolio strategy decides which brands and products should exist, what each is for, where they overlap and what gets retired. Brand architecture decides how the surviving assets relate to each other and how they are named and endorsed. Architecture executed on a portfolio nobody has pruned produces a tidier picture of the same cost base.

When companies bring us in

Portfolio strategy is usually bought by a CEO, CFO or chief brand officer, and the trigger is nearly always an event rather than a planning cycle.

• After a run of acquisitions. Several brands now sit under one owner and nobody can say what each is for. Sonova and Nord/LB were both this problem.
• When line extensions have become a second cost base. The range grew one approved launch at a time, and the complexity cost is now visible in supply and trade terms. KitchenAid came to us with overlapping lines confusing both consumers and retailers.
• Before a divestiture. The company intends to sell an asset and needs a rationale for what remains that customers and investors will accept, which is what Siemens needed around its mobile divestment.
• When growth has to come from a new space. The question is whether an existing brand can reach it or a new asset is required, which is the decision Del Monte faced on pet treats and Coca-Cola faced in dairy and plant-based.
• When marketing investment is allocated by habit. Spend tracks last year’s revenue share rather than where an incremental dollar earns most. Kellogg’s coupon programs had been set by convention for years.

Why most portfolio reviews change the chart and not the economics

The standard review produces a better diagram. Brands are grouped, tiers are named, a house-of-brands or branded-house label is applied. Twelve months later the cost base is the same and so is the growth rate. The review treated an economic question as a taxonomy question.

Reinforcement is a claim about money. It is either true in the data or it is not, and it shows up in four places.

• Shared customers, with cross-purchase you can count. If owning one brand does not raise the probability of buying another, the two assets coexist.
• Shared data that improves both. Each brand’s targeting and innovation should be better for the other existing, not merely reported in the same deck.
• Shared cost that is real. Supply, media, distribution and technology sharing examined at the line-item level rather than at the level of intention.
• Coherent meaning. Experience of one asset should raise willingness to consider another. Measured in both directions, since endorsement can cost the parent as easily as it can lift the child.

Separateness shows up just as clearly, as duplicated cost, overlapping positioning and two brands competing for the same occasion with the same argument. Placing those assets under one banner does not make them reinforce each other. It makes the duplication harder to see. Where reinforcement is absent there are three honest options: integrate so the sharing becomes real, divest, or reallocate to the parts of the portfolio that do compound. Most reviews avoid naming any of the three. Treating brand allocation as a question of economic profit is what makes the decision unavoidable, and the difference between a portfolio that compounds and one that merely coexists is where most of the value sits.

What our brand portfolio strategy services include

Five bodies of work. Each can be engaged on its own, and most companies need three of them.

1. Establishing what the portfolio is for

Before any structural decision, the portfolio needs a job stated in demand terms rather than in business unit terms.

• Which demand spaces the company intends to own, and which asset is meant to win each one
• Where two assets are aimed at the same situation, which is the most common source of hidden cannibalization
• Where a situation the company could win has no asset pointed at it at all
• What each brand is expected to deliver financially over a stated horizon

2. Testing reinforcement in the data

This is the part that decides the answer, and the part most reviews skip.

• Cross-purchase and shared-customer analysis, to see which pairs of brands genuinely support each other
• Cost sharing examined line by line, separating what is shared from what is merely budgeted centrally
• Equity transfer between parent and sub-brand, measured in both directions
• A defensible view of which assets earn their capital and which are being funded by the ones that do

3. Deciding composition, then architecture

Composition is the set of assets. Architecture is how the survivors relate. Deciding them in that order is what keeps the exercise from becoming a naming project.

• The retain, integrate, migrate and retire decision for each asset, with the reasoning written down
• Which product lines and variants are generating incremental demand and which are generating complexity cost
• Where a new brand is genuinely required, and where the existing one has the permission to stretch
• The handoff into brand architecture and naming once the set of assets is settled

4. Allocating investment across the portfolio

Allocation in proportion to current revenue funds the past. The useful comparison is what an incremental dollar produces in each brand and each demand space.

• Marketing and innovation spend reset against expected economic profit rather than size
• Concentration rather than spreading, with a stated rationale for each brand’s share
• The cost and customer risk of migration, renaming and retirement, priced before the recommendation is made
• Pricing and tiering implications, since a tier only holds if it commands a preference premium

5. Making the decisions hold

Portfolios do not drift because anyone decided to expand them. They drift because nobody owned the rule.

• Decision rights, so the structure is not renegotiated by each business unit at each planning cycle
• Rules for where new products and acquisitions enter the portfolio, written before the next one arrives
• Measures that track reinforcement over time rather than brand health in isolation

How a brand portfolio engagement works

1. Diagnose. Asset-by-asset review of customers, cost, pricing and equity, with cross-purchase and shared-cost analysis. The output is a view of which assets reinforce each other and which are being carried.
2. Decide. Composition options tested against demand spaces and stress-tested with finance. The output is a retain, integrate, migrate or retire call on every asset, with the exclusions written down.
3. Build. Architecture and naming logic for the surviving set, the investment allocation, and migration plans for the customers of anything being retired.
4. Embed. Decision rights, entry rules for the next acquisition, and a measurement model, so the portfolio holds its shape after we leave.

Brand portfolio strategy results

Ziff Davis: nine properties, one portfolio framework, $93M projected

Ziff Davis was moving from print to digital with nine brand properties that each needed a credible online identity. Without differentiated roles the properties risked cannibalizing each other and failing to command an advertising premium. We built a distinct brand essence, editorial identity and audience relationship for each property inside a coherent portfolio framework, so each could build its own audience while still benefiting from portfolio scale. The strategy was projected to deliver $93 million in incremental revenue across the portfolio. Read the full story: How Vivaldi built Ziff Davis’ digital brand strategy.

Kellogg’s: $75M moved out of spend that was not earning

Kellogg’s marketing investment was weighted toward coupon programs set by convention rather than by evidence. We built a breakeven curve model across the portfolio that showed the majority of those programs were unprofitable, failing to generate the incremental volume needed to cover the discount. Kellogg’s reallocated more than $75 million to higher-return channels without reducing consumer reach. Read the full story: How Vivaldi helped Kellogg’s optimize its marketing spend for growth.

Swiss Post: a portfolio rationalized across logistics and financial services

Brand proliferation across postal, logistics and financial services had reached the point of confusing customers and duplicating cost. We ran a systematic portfolio assessment, defined the principles for which brands to retain and which to retire, and built migration strategies for the affected services with customer communication and risk plans attached. The result was a simplified architecture with clear roles for the master brand, cost savings and better customer clarity. Read the full story: How Vivaldi simplified Swiss Post’s brand portfolio.

KitchenAid: overlapping lines simplified, a premium sub-brand piloted

Overlapping product lines and an inconsistent retail presence were confusing consumers and straining trade relationships, and the complexity was blocking the premium growth where KitchenAid’s equity was strongest. We assessed the portfolio structure, designed an architecture with defined product tiers, and supported the pilot of a high-end sub-brand. Trade relationships improved on the back of clearer differentiation. Read the full story: How Vivaldi helped KitchenAid simplify its portfolio.

Brand portfolio strategy by industry

Why companies choose Vivaldi for brand portfolio strategy

Three reasons come up repeatedly in the briefs we win.

• The recommendation has to survive the CFO. Reinforcement is argued with cross-purchase and shared-cost evidence, because a portfolio case built on stated brand fit does not hold up in an allocation meeting.
• We will recommend a divestiture. Our portfolio work has concluded that assets should be sold, merged or retired, and we price the migration and customer risk of doing it rather than presenting the decision as free.
• Demand spaces rather than the org chart. We organize the portfolio around the situations customers are trying to resolve, which is the only view in which overlap between two of your brands becomes visible.

How to evaluate a brand portfolio strategy consultant

Worth asking of anyone on your shortlist, including us.

• Ask whether they have ever recommended a divestiture. A firm whose portfolio work has never concluded that a client should sell or retire an asset is producing structure, not strategy.
• Ask what evidence they use for reinforcement. If the answer is qualitative or based on stated brand fit, it will not survive a CFO’s questioning. Cross-purchase and shared-cost data will.
• Ask how the portfolio handles the next acquisition. Most rule sets break on the first deal after they are set. The entry rules matter more than the current diagram.
• Ask what they will do with your organizational structure. A firm that accepts the current business unit map as the organizing logic will reproduce today’s duplication in a better-looking chart.
• Ask what the recommendation costs. Migration, renaming and retirement carry real cost and real customer risk. A recommendation presented without them is incomplete.

Portfolio strategy consultancy, branding agency or management consultancy?

Related work

Portfolio decisions take inputs from, and hand off to, three neighboring pieces of work.

• Demand landscape mapping before the portfolio question, because you cannot say which assets overlap until you know which situations they are competing for.
• Brand architecture after it, to settle how the surviving brands relate, endorse each other and are named.
• Pricing strategy alongside it, since tiering only works if each tier commands a preference premium that can be measured.

This work sits inside our competitive strategy group, part of the Business Strategy and Transformation practice at Vivaldi, the strategy firm behind the Demand Landscape and the Interaction Field. Much of the underlying thinking was written down in Brand Leadership, co-authored by our founder Erich Joachimsthaler.

Brand portfolio strategy in the US and worldwide

Our portfolio work runs out of ten offices on four continents, with the US team in New York. Most engagements are multi-market from the start, because a brand that earns its place in one market can be pure duplication in another. Swiss Post, Sonova and Nord/LB were European portfolios, Whirlpool, Del Monte and Ziff Davis were US ones, and the common finding is the same: the asset list a company would build today is shorter than the one it has, and recent portfolio moves across consumer and beauty suggest more boards are now willing to act on that.