Oct 2026
Every growing company eventually faces the same question. You launch a new product, acquire a business or open a new division. What should it be called, and how should it relate to everything else you own?
Answer it one case at a time and you end up with a portfolio that confuses customers, splits marketing budgets and weakens every brand in it. Answer it with a deliberate system and each new brand strengthens the others. That system is brand architecture.
Brand architecture is the structure that defines how a company's brands relate to each other: which name leads, which names support, and how they appear together. It shapes naming, visual identity, marketing investment and even how acquisitions are integrated.
Get it right and customers understand your offer instantly, marketing spend builds shared equity, and new launches borrow credibility from established names. Get it wrong and you pay to build the same trust several times over.
Most portfolios sit somewhere on a spectrum, from one dominant master brand to many independent brands.
In a branded house, the master brand does nearly all the work. Sub-brands are descriptive extensions rather than separate personalities.
Gojek is a well-known Indonesian example: services such as GoRide, GoCar, GoFood and GoSend share one prefix, one ecosystem and one master brand. Each new service benefits immediately from the trust built by the others.
Choose it when your offers serve overlapping audiences with a shared promise, and you want every rupiah of marketing to build one brand.
Endorsed sub-brands have their own names and identities, but the master brand vouches for them, often with the word "by".
Indonesian banking offers clear examples. Livin' by Mandiri gives Bank Mandiri's mobile banking app its own identity while keeping the bank's credibility attached. blu by BCA Digital does the same for BCA's digital bank. In telecoms, Telkomsel's by.U was launched as a digital-native brand with its own personality, positioned for a younger audience.
Choose it when a new offer needs to feel different, younger or more specialized than the parent, but still benefits from the parent's trust.
In a house of brands, each product brand stands on its own and the corporate brand stays in the background.
Fast-moving consumer goods companies often work this way. Unilever Indonesia markets brands such as Pepsodent, Royco and Rinso, each with its own identity and audience. Indofood's portfolio, from Indomie to Pop Mie, is built around strong product brands rather than the corporate name.
Choose it when products serve different audiences, categories or price points, or when you want a problem in one brand to stay contained.
Most large Indonesian groups end up with a hybrid: a master brand for some businesses, endorsed brands for others and standalone brands where history or acquisitions demand it. Hybrids work well when they are designed deliberately, with clear rules about which model applies where. They fail when each business unit makes its own decision.
Work through these questions, ideally with research rather than opinion:
Architecture decisions become urgent during mergers, acquisitions and corporate rebrands. Should the acquired brand be absorbed, endorsed or kept independent? Should the group name appear on every subsidiary?
These are commercial decisions with emotional weight, because people inside each business are attached to their names. Settle the architecture before designing anything, as we explain in Rebranding a Publicly Listed Company. International companies entering Indonesia face a version of the same question when deciding how global and local brands relate. See our brand localization guide.
Brand architecture sits within brand strategy, so it should be decided alongside positioning, as we explain in Brand Strategy vs Brand Identity.
In our work, architecture is settled in the Blueprint phase of our branding process, before any design begins.
TDC Indonesia helps groups, enterprises and growing companies structure their brand portfolios for clarity and growth. Explore our disciplines or start a project.
Brand architecture is the structure that defines how a company's brands relate to each other, including which brand leads, how sub-brands are named and how brands appear together.
A branded house uses one master brand across all offers. A house of brands runs separate, independent brands, with the corporate name in the background.
An endorsed brand has its own name and identity but is visibly backed by a parent brand, often using "by", as in Livin' by Mandiri.
When a new offer serves a meaningfully different audience, promise or price point, and the business can fund the extra investment. Otherwise, extend the master brand.
Architecture determines how many identities you need and how they relate. The visual system must define lockups, endorsement rules and naming conventions for every level of the portfolio.