Every company, in every industry, should consistently revisit the architecture of their brand. What parts of your brand are driving revenue for your company and which aren’t??We looked at 5 situations where bad branding practices occurred and explained what you can learn from each of them.
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	<li><strong>The Spandex Rule of Branding</strong>- This is definitely one of our personal favorite <a href="http://www.brandiron.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/virgin_brand_stretching.gif"><img class="alignright size-medium wp-image-1968" src="http://www.brandiron.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/virgin_brand_stretching-300x277.gif" alt="" width="300" height="277" /></a>rules of Branding: just because you can, doesn’t mean you should! We have seen this done poorly with companies like Special K, whose name appears on everything from bottled water and protein shakes to cereal bars. We have also seen this dilution with the Virgin brand, extending themselves every industry without discrimination from casinos and airline to healthcare service. One size does not always fit all, sometimes smacking your logo on everything under the sun only adds to brand dilution.</li>
	<li><strong>Shut a Window to Open a Door</strong>- Are you still arguing with your kids on whether your father’s Oldsmobile is still cool? Products have lifecycles and some brands deserve to die. It can be a very emotional decision to retire a brand, but sometimes that is the best move to free up resources for a new, more promising brand.</li>
	<li><strong>Less is More</strong>- Have you ever been flipping through a magazine and come across an article with a company name, brand name, parent brand, partner or subpartner name and a new product flavor all crammed onto one page? Be clear and concise so your target market knows what message you are trying to convey. A “TM” doesn’t need to be placed after every product feature, unless you have the next Heavenly Bed or Beats Headphones.</li>
	<li><strong>iMarketing, iBranding, iEverything</strong>- Even Apple has to think carefully about their product names to avoid brand proliferation. Apple started using the product name of “i” to separate the iPod from their product line of computers that had the preceding word “Mac”. The iPod could have easily been named the MacPod (and been far less successful), but Apple very strategically created distance from its computer business by renaming the product line proving to be one of the most successful ideas in product history.<a href="http://www.brandiron.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/sprint-nextel-01.gif"><img class="alignright size-medium wp-image-1967" src="http://www.brandiron.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/sprint-nextel-01-300x224.gif" alt="" width="300" height="224" /></a></li>
	<li><strong>Transaction Branding, what to do when a merger or acquisition happens</strong>- When two entities combine, sometimes one or both names must be dropped to avoid redundancy. Examples of this are Sprint and Nextel, going to just Sprint in 2007, or AT&amp;T and Cingular going to just AT&amp;T in 2005. However, in some cases both Brands’ names have such strong Brand equity that dropping a name would hurt the overall entity. We saw this with Whirlpool-Maytag.</li>
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