Ideas around brands

[kg79]

Hello!
Although I like the way Cap Lab is dealing with brands, especially having the possibility to have corporate-, range- and unique brands, I think there would be room for some improvements.

Mainly I think that a brand could be something like an asset, similar like technology is one, and it should also be possible to buy and sell brands from and to the AI. Brands should also have their own optional logos like companies have. The main setting could be that a new brand gets the logo from its company, but there should be aditional possibilities to use unique brand logos. A real world example: Coca Cola uses its main logo for Coke, but has also different brands for Fanta and Sprite, without those two beeing a subsidiary. If Coca Cola would exist in Cap Lab (or a mod) with these 3 brands and you would aquire Coca Cola as a sub you could merge with it and keep on using their brands, so still they would be on zhe market, but belonging to you. Or you could sell one or two if the AI would be interested. This could lead to nice situations like you or the AI buys a brand, but maybe has not the technonoly to keep up the brand loyality, so the brand would suffer.

Also there could be brands for retail stores, giving a bonus if they are good. So retail focused corporations could also be willing to aquire a retail brand, although they are just selling products of other companies. Such a retail brand could have different aspects which make the brand unique: price, quality and service. So there would be brands focusing on each or a mixture. Example: because you were selling products at a good price but with low quality, the brand would be know for beeing good at price. Acheap products would benifit from it, expensive products would make the brand suffer. Service would be a value which comes from the training levels of the sales units. As a result it would became harder to get a retail chain to run, because you would have to think very wisely which products to pick and at the beginning which way to go. But the same chalange for the AI... So in late game those would survive who find their right spot.

Along with this, the management policies for CEOs and COOs would have to be reworked, as you should then be able to apply different strategies to different brands, because the global setting would not always work good for all of them. Maybe CEO and COO should have their own settings, and even hireining several COOs should be possible.

[saffgee]

This seems like a very good idea - in fact, it feels like this would be a good basis for a game expansion as there is a lot that can be done with branding which would really provide some very enjoyable game dynamics. Would actually make the brand aspect of the game a little more tangible than just being an arms race....

+1

[kg79]

Yes, maybe as a part of a marketing DLC.