VERTICAL-FIRST ARCHITECTURE
It happens a lot in PE-backed companies.
But its not the only place it happens.
Corporate brands get reshaped by ownership changes, new platforms, new leadership. Over time, they lose their original purpose.
Underneath, there are brands that used to be companies.
Real companies: With employees, history, softball teams.
They get rolled up and turned into product brands inside something that no longer has a clear definition of its own.
Employees see it. Customers feel it.
Things overlap. And compete. Or just never seem to fit together.
And all that messiness and confusion?
It lands in the middle.
Between the corporate brand and everything that sits under it.
And when it finally comes time to try and make sense of it all...
Revenue usually calls first.
And so, they start at the bottom. Working to make broken product brands now part of a new system, less broken, and somehow, more relevant.
Or, they start top-down. Creating a portfolio framework that rarely works in practice.
But in these situations, the brand architecture solution is usually found in the middle.
As Einstein noted: “In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.”
The part of the business that actually connects everything.
Where verticals can work to both sharpen corporate brand intent and the relevance of specific products, solutions and assets.
WE CALL IT VERTICAL-FIRST ARCHITECTURE
And we've used it successfully in the right situations, for more than 25 years.
Most companies use brand the wrong way.
And it costs them real business value.
This is the business of Direction.
This is the business of Cohesion.
