I started college as a statistics major. It was short-lived for various reasons, one being that I actually enjoyed what’s called pure mathematics more than the actual application of mathematics. Learning about Gabriel’s Horn — with its infinite surface area but finite volume — was the exciting stuff for me.
But I did learn that within math there’s something called mathematical induction which is one method for proving something is true for every number without having to actually check every number. The oversimplification is: if something is true for a number n, and I’m able to prove it’s also true for n+1, then I know it’s true for every number. You're not proving each specific case; you're proving there's always a next one that follows from the case before it.
I'm about to extrapolate from this fairly aggressively, so manage your expectations accordingly.
I was working with a client and they explained their company had three main brands, broken out by its three main offerings, and they asked for my initial thoughts on how I might frame and prioritize the three.
My immediate response was that they actually had four, including the company itself.
A corporate brand is whatever opinion your target audience is forming about you, and it typically happens well before they get anywhere near specific products or services. Maybe a company has five main offerings or two core services or eight key products, but in each of those cases they have n+1 brands to market. However many products and services you think you're responsible for promoting, there's always one more.
Too many companies market their overall brand only by association, assuming the residue of everything else they market will be enough. But you can’t just rely on proving the value of n; you have to proactively prove the value of n+1.
And the fact is, the corporate brand carries more of the value for most firms, with product-specific branding earning its keep when offerings serve different audiences or need to be kept apart.
Having a clearly established direction and foundation for the corporate brand also makes a marketer’s life much, much easier. Marketing doesn’t decide what a company is, what it stands for, and what it's trying to achieve; founders, boards of direction, C-suites, or whatever leadership group is steering the ship decides that. And if that n+1 framework is in place, it sets the stage for how marketing should move forward to build awareness around specific products and services.
And assuming those corporate strategies are in place, building product-specific framing, prioritization, and marketing campaigns should be simple. It should be paint-by-numbers simple. The n+1 guidelines will provide established direction around the company's purpose, the market it's going after, and its differentiators — allowing marketers to focus on creating and delivering great marketing instead of having to build something from scratch. The hard questions about who you are and who you're for are already answered.
So before you start, make sure you’re keeping the overarching needs, brands, values, priorities, strategies, and direction in mind, and building product-specific campaigns accordingly. It’s possible someone else has already induction-ed the problem for you.
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