Image for illustrative purposes only and does not include whole market.

We have had a number of conversations in the office recently about the development of branding and the products and services it offers. There seem to be a number of branding and business ventures that are coming together to create a rather different type of output.

Firstly lets look at some history. In the Western brand scape it has been quite rare for a brand to move to different markets or sectors. There are probably two that spring to mind that have challenged this view. Virgin and in a similar way EasyJet. These brands have managed to create a strong brand over a range of sectors yet kept their core values in these new ventures. However if we look further afield to the Asia market and in particular the Japanese market. Which for years has had companies that diversify from it's initial product/service to encompass many other products or services. Some examples would be Mitsubishi (air conditioning through to Cars), Or MUJI (electronics right through to the food market). Another line of branding and business strategy is the well publicised Starbuck's strategy of opening as many coffee shops as it can in the area to then drive out other competitors. So for a short term loss per shop there would be a long term gain for the brand and company.

So if we look at companies are combining these two strategies and using this within one market sector. The theory being swamp the market with different brands offering the same product but in a different way, whether that be different through look, age range, values etc. An example close to home is Admiral. A Welsh based company that has a huge protfolio of insurance options. for example Admiral themselves provide car insurance, then there is confused.com that also provide car insurance then there is also elephant who also provide car insurance, Diamond who also provide car insurance, I think you get the message. So each brand is targeted at a specific area of the marketplace, and all of them owned by Admiral.

In the same way, but with a slightly different approach is Ariel who have for many years developed their washing powder range to be the next best thing for cleaning your clothes. Recently they have stretched their brand to Stain removal products. So extending their product range within the same market.

So what is happening?

This scatter gun approach to business seems to be at first highly self defeating (being expensive to develop a brand, and setup an infrastructure for a new company), yet if we look at it another way these companies are already very established within their market they are invariably one of the leaders in their marketplace and they are vigilant about threats and other companies challenging their market share. So instead of fighting through just one offering why not make the offerings multiple and make the offers niche or bespoke to markets within markets?

The rule seems to almost feel (in the Case of Admiral at least) become large and dominant through a wide brand offering (Admiral) then diversify into smaller conversation offerings for smaller groups and niches (confused.com, Elephant etc). This can also be seen in other companies such as Google who have grown into the largest company in the world and now they are refining and developing new ventures that are aiding in the development of niche responses to their market, and also fending off other companies which maybe trying to break into these markets.