When one product accounts for more than eighty percent of revenue and customers use it in place of your company name, your brand carries concentration risk: if that product saturates or hits a problem, the whole business wobbles. Getting out of this position takes a step-by-step rebalancing of the brand portfolio, not a new logo.
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Many large Vietnamese businesses grow in a similar way: one product takes off and pulls the whole company up with it, then gradually becomes the name customers use to refer to the entire business.
In the early stage, that is a success worth being proud of. But when one product accounts for more than eighty percent of revenue and is identical with the company name, you are standing on a very narrow foundation.
Signs of over-concentration
Portfolio concentration risk doesn't arrive loudly. It builds up slowly through signs that are easy to overlook.
- Customers use the product name to refer to the company, not the company name.
- The sales team defaults to pitching a single product, even when the portfolio has grown to include other things.
- When something goes wrong with that product, the company's entire reputation gets pulled in.
- When investors or partners ask about your other products, you find it hard to answer convincingly.
- All marketing budget goes into one product because "it's the one that makes money."
If you nod to three or more points, your brand structure needs a second look.
Why a brand wobbles with its product
When a product becomes the "face" of the company, two things become fused: the product's reputation and the business's reputation.
This creates two parallel risks.
First, the product saturates. Every category has a life cycle. When growth slows, the market reads that signal as the whole company declining, even when that is not the case.
Second, a quality or communications incident. A faulty batch, a post that goes viral for the wrong reasons, a policy change that draws backlash.
If that product is the company's "face," the damage doesn't stop at the product.
A brand is how customers perceive a company, not what the company says about itself.
Marty Neumeier, The Brand Gap
When that perception is tied to a single product, the entire brand becomes hostage to that product.
Brand architecture: a tool for rebalancing
Brand architecture (how products and service lines within one business are organized and named) is the tool for solving this problem.
There are two main extremes, and most businesses sit somewhere between them.
The first is a "branded house" (all products carry the company name, like FPT or Vingroup). Advantage: it concentrates strength in a single name.
Drawback: a problem with one product drags the whole name down.
The second is the "house of brands" (each product is an independent brand, such as Masan Consumer with Chin-su, Nam Ngư, Kokomi). Advantage: risk is spread out.
Drawback: the cost of building and maintaining each brand is much higher.
Small and mid-sized businesses usually don't need to choose between these two extremes. A middle structure often fits better.
A rebalancing roadmap, step by step
Rebalancing a portfolio does not mean changing the logo or the company name. It means adjusting how products are positioned, named, and communicated in relation to one another.
Sinh Vũ finds that the following roadmap works best for small and medium-sized businesses.
Step one: Diagnose the current portfolio. Map out every product and service.
Record each product's share of revenue, customer awareness of each one, and how much each is "borrowing from" or "contributing to" the company name.
Step two: Define the role of each product. Which product is the "storefront" that attracts customers, which is the "foundation" that creates steady cash flow, and which is the "future" that needs awareness built early.
Step three: Design the naming and positioning structure. Decide which products carry the company name, which have their own names, and how the relationships between those names are communicated.
Step four: Reallocate the communications budget. Use the strength of your strong product to pull awareness toward the new one. This is when the brand's accumulated assets come into play.
Step five: Measure and adjust. Track customer awareness of each product, not just sales.
A strong product is leverage, not a shackle
When one product is strong, that is the best time to build more. Not after it starts to weaken.
A strong product brings three advantages for rebalancing the portfolio.
- Customers who already trust the company find it easier to try a new product than those who don't know it.
- If your communications budget is working, you can shift part of it to new products without losing too much momentum.
- A confident team finds it easier to launch something new than one that is on the back foot.
Waiting until the flagship product is saturated before building a portfolio means starting from a defensive position. The cost is higher, the timeline is longer, and the market is less patient.
What you need to decide first
Before you begin rebalancing your portfolio, there is one question to answer honestly.
Can your current company name carry several different products, or has it become so closely tied to one product that a new product will be "contaminated" by the old positioning?
If the company name is still broad enough, you can adjust the internal architecture without changing the outward name.
If the company name has narrowed completely, you may need to separate the company brand and the product brands into two clearer layers.
Both paths have a way out. What differs is the time and the cost. Knowing where you stand is the first step.
References
David Aaker, Brand Portfolio Strategy (Free Press, 2004). Marty Neumeier, The Brand Gap (New Riders, 2006). Byron Sharp, How Brands Grow (Oxford University Press, 2010). McKinsey & Company, The Business Value of Design (2018). Kantar BrandZ, Most Valuable Brands Report (~2020).