Poll: New Brand Creation

[buells]

I have been having issues where I attempt to buy a large conglomerate and then break it down into more manageable pieces. Usually I will have a ParentCo that is the holding company for all of my operating subsidiaries. The ParentCo will have some operating businesses of its own. Then I will have specialized subsidiary companies focused on say automotive, apparel and leather goods, or food, beverage, and snacks.

When I complete an acquisition of say, Big Conglomerate Corp, I can transfer some of its firms and technologies to my more focused subsidiaries. The problem is the brands stay with the Parent Company even if the old company was using a range brand strategy. That means I basically have to start from scratch with building their market share back up in those businesses. I think brands need to be reworked such that a brand is more like something you own. I would get rid of the corporate, ranged and unique brand options. Instead, brands could cover anywhere from zero to all products depending on which you choose to incorporate into the brand.

Basically, each company would have a brand portfolio. It can only have one brand per city covering a given product. It can remove a product from a brand, but that will remove the brand rating from the product. A product can be added to a brand and inherit a portion of its brand rating depending on how similar it is to the other products in the brand and its quality. Brand rating would still be determined in broadly the same way and change according to product quality, advertising, product compatibility etc. Companies could buy brand portfolios from each other similar to how technologies are traded. The price of doing so should be quite high; I think the price of technologies should be increased as well.

Buying another company you could choose which of its brands to keep upon acquisition and (remove products from existing brands when their are conflicts).

Separately, brands could have an intercity element. In real life, there are certain global brands like Coca Cola and Starbucks that enjoy amplified effect due to their global presence. I will think more about how an element of customer captivity could be modeled in. If you look at writings and speeches by legendary investor Tom Russo, you will see that customer captivity for consumer brands is one of the couple most potent competitive advantages companies can possess. I think that can be incorporated more deeply in the game in a way that creates fun challenges and does not harm balance or create excessive micromanagement.

[chengtsai]

Technology does not get automatic transfer from a parent company to a child company. The same is true for brand. Perhaps the best way to do this, is to inject capital to the child company and let the child company merge with the targeted company.

[buells]

My point is that sometimes I want to split up the business of the acquired company between my ParentCo and its subsidiaries. There is no way to allocate the brands in that case among the different companies held by the acquirer.

[de1irium]

Companies could buy brand portfolios from each other similar to how technologies are traded.

I like this idea ^^

[standardplayer]

Companies could buy brand portfolios from each other similar to how technologies are traded.

I like this idea ^^

I agree It would definitely be interesting to have the ability to create, buy, and sell brands.

Maybe it could be a Trademark system where you create a trademark name for a product or line of products and "file" a trademark application with the government.

buells could you put up a poll on this post to try to get an idea of how much interest there might be for this to get the developers attention?

[buells]

Poll added. I think this could be interesting, but it needs more meat on the bones. I hope others can help fill in the gaps. I will throw in some other brand related brainstorming below in addition to the first 2 key concepts:

Key concepts that could be reworked:
-Brands that can be bought sold and transferred between affiliated companies
-Products could be moved between different brands (perhaps merge, say cereal bar with a strong standalone brand into a brand covering all snacks... effect would be to weaken cereal bar for a time while strengthening the range brand over the long term)
-Global brand bonus: maybe some products or branding strategies get a bonus for global reach when combined with certain promotional activities)
-New marketing investments: promotional campaign with local media, sponsor a sports stadium, etc. These can serve the purpose of creating opportunities to make strategic decisions regarding in which brands to invest
-Co-branding opportunities: perhaps some branding element could be added for finished goods that use new branded semi-products. This might be tough, but think Hemi engines, Intel inside, etc. Also, this would add some ability for companies to challenge established competitors who already have high quality and strong brands.
-Take advertising spending out of retail or split advertising spend between local retail activities and regional marketing. Certain products could benefit more from store level campaigns amplified by retail footprint, while others could benefit from regional campaigns you could run without having any stores at all focused on building the brand. Compare grocery store circulars with this week's discounts and Apple ads aweing folks with the new paradigm in computing.

[chengtsai]

I definitely welcome this feature if developed