Too many brands.

I just don't understand why so many asset managers think they need a separate logo for each line of business. One for institutional. One for the fund family. One for their high net worth accounts. One for each foreign subsidiary. Sometimes even one for each investment vehicle! No wonder they suffer from unclear, muddled brands.

I think it must be because asset managers hire more lawyers than marketing professionals. The lawyers tell them they need to do business under a variety of legal names. So they think that means each name should be its own brand — and there's no one around to explain otherwise.

In fact, the exact opposite is true.

If you design a logo around the name of one legal entity, it can't be used for any of your other entities. You're better off creating a single brand name that doesn't correspond to any legal entity at all — so it can be used for all of them. 

Over and over again, we find ourselves simplifying a client's brand architecture by consolidating logos into a single brand that's consistent across all businesses and product lines. Take Matthews Asia. It called itself Matthews Asian Funds in the retail market. For institutional investors, it was Matthews International Capital Management LLC. Each name had its own logo treatment. (Yes, it even put "LLC" in the logo — a not uncommon mistake.) And sometimes it was just Matthews.

Our recommendation was to consolidate around a single brand name. Why Matthews Asia? Because "Matthews" has the brand equity, and "Asia' is the simplest possible way of defining its unique value proposition. Dropping the "n" from Matthews Asian Funds was a subtle change that made a big difference. Now Matthews uses "Asia" consistently in its publications, new products and other ways it communicates.

A more common approach is to add the word "Investments" to make your brand broad enough to encompass all your different products, markets and lines of business. Think Fidelity Investments. Or Putnam Investments. That was the direction Ariel chose when it consolidated Ariel Capital Management and Ariel Mutual Funds into Ariel Investments. Some variations on that approach are to use the words "Investors," "Capital" or other broad words that don't align with any existing products or subsidiaries.

Or if you're really feeling brave, you can drop all your descriptors and just use your "real" name. That's what Oaktree did. It came to us as Oaktree Capital Management LLC (in the United States). But in Japan, it was Oaktree Japan. It was Oaktree Capital Management Limited in the U.K. And it used other names for its investment funds.

We suggested that it consolidate and streamline its brand. We gave it two choices: Oaktree Capital or just plain Oaktree. Most companies would have chosen the former. But Howard Marks & company took the plunge and went all the way to Oaktree. The risk? That most people wouldn't know what business it was in. But Oaktree didn't care about most people. It only cared about specific target audiences that already knew very well who it was.

Pretty gutsy, in my book.