For years, marketers have believed that brands should stand for something. Purpose, authenticity, values and consistency have become the cornerstones of modern brand-building. The expectation is simple: know what you stand for and communicate it clearly.
Yet a closer look at some of the world's biggest brand portfolios reveals a more nuanced reality.
HUL’s Dove champions body positivity and challenges conventional beauty standards. Whereas, another product under the same parent brand, Axe has historically built its appeal around attraction and desirability. Tanishq celebrates the rarity and emotional value of natural diamonds, while beYon is betting on the future of lab-grown alternatives. Cadbury Silk turns Valentine's Day into a celebration of love and emotional expression, while 5 Star often approaches the same occasion with humour and irreverence.
Recently, a LinkedIn post by Dmitry Zharnikov sparked a debate around this very phenomenon. Using Dove and Axe as examples, the post questioned whether brands under the same corporate umbrella can successfully champion seemingly different viewpoints. While the discussion centred on contradiction, it also raised a broader question: are companies simply reflecting the many sides of modern consumers through different brands?
Perhaps the more interesting question isn't whether companies are sending mixed signals. It is whether consumers are. “The idea that a single company should have a single worldview is becoming increasingly outdated," says Hayden Scott, Creative Head, Virtue Asia.
For decades, portfolios were built to address different categories, price points and occasions. Today, they are also catering to different mindsets. A consumer who values sustainability may also seek luxury. Someone who celebrates Valentine's Day may also find the occasion clichéd. Tradition and innovation, indulgence and wellness, exclusivity and accessibility increasingly coexist within the same individual. As Scott puts it, "Consumers today are more fragmented than ever, not just demographically but culturally."
That observation is echoed by Pratul Narang, Director of Special Projects, Wife, who believes the marketing industry's tendency to define audiences through neat categories no longer reflects reality. "Consumers aren't a monolith anymore. The days of a company speaking to one version of India are long gone," he highlights. His point becomes clearer when viewed through everyday behaviour. "The same person can buy sustainable products and take ten flights a year. They can celebrate Valentine's Day and roll their eyes at it," Narang illustrates.
This fluidity in consumer behaviour has made the task of brand-building considerably more complex. The challenge now is not just about serving different demographics or income groups. It is about catering to different attitudes, belief systems and cultural perspectives and surprisingly, sometimes within the same individual.
However, the practice itself is hardly new. Sanchari Chakrabarty, National Head - Strategy at 22feet, points out that companies have long built portfolios to cater to different consumer needs, spending capacities and motivations. "Parent companies have historically diversified portfolios to make sure they can gain from different markets and consumers, avoiding locking themselves into a single context," she says.
The differences, she argues, are not merely about communication but also about the audiences brands are designed to serve. A premium detergent brand, for instance, may focus on aesthetic benefits, while another within the same portfolio may emphasise affordability and value. Both operate in the same category, but address different consumer priorities.
That, perhaps, explains why brand portfolios today often appear less like collections of products and more like collections of viewpoints.
"The strategic advantage is this - it allows businesses to participate in multiple cultural conversations simultaneously," says Scott. Take the diamond category for example. For some consumers, the appeal of natural diamonds lies in their rarity, heritage and symbolism. Others are drawn to lab-grown diamonds because of accessibility, technology and sustainability. Neither viewpoint invalidates the other. Instead, they reflect different priorities within the same market.
Scott believes this shift has fundamentally changed the role companies play in culture, "Increasingly, companies are behaving less like brand owners and more like cultural investors, placing bets across different behaviours, identities and belief systems."
The philosophy is visible across categories, but perhaps becomes most apparent when brands engage with the same cultural moment in entirely different ways. For Mondelez India, Valentine's Day serves as one such example. "Consumers don't experience occasions through a single lens, and neither should brands," says Nitin Saini, Vice President - Marketing, Mondelez India.
The distinction is important because it moves the conversation beyond products and into perception. Valentine's Day may be a single occasion, but consumers approach it differently. Saini explains, "Valentine's Day, for instance, evokes a range of emotions, from heartfelt expression to playful indifference. While Cadbury Silk celebrates the joy of expressing emotions, Cadbury 5 Star brings its signature humour and irreverence to the same cultural moment."
Viewed this way, contrasting brand narratives appear less like contradictions and more like different responses to the same cultural moment.
However, this approach is also being tested in ways it wasn't a decade ago. Consumers today are far more aware of who owns the brands they buy than they once were. Information that was previously confined to annual reports and corporate websites is now readily available, discussed openly on social media and frequently brought into public conversations about brand values. The result is that portfolios are no longer viewed only through the lens of marketing strategy. They are increasingly being examined through the lens of corporate intent.
But Chakrabarty believes consumers continue to engage primarily with individual brands rather than the companies behind them. In her view, consumers are more likely to scrutinise companies on issues such as manufacturing, labour practices and sustainability than on the existence of different brand positions within the same portfolio.
On the other hand, Nirav Parekh, Associate President – Planning at Ogilvy Mumbai, highlights a different aspect. The debate, he says, often combines two very different concerns.
"We are mixing 2 different reasons for consumer dissonance here. One comes from advocating outdated points of view and another comes from posturing without proof. And this becomes worse when brands communicate with a holier-than-thou attitude," he says.
His argument shifts the discussion away from portfolio architecture and towards authenticity. In other words, consumers may not necessarily object to companies owning brands that occupy different positions. What frustrates them is when those positions feel disconnected from reality.
According to Parekh, portfolio diversity in itself is rarely a problem. Consumers routinely accept that companies cater to different audiences, price points and technological transitions simultaneously. The automobile sector, for instance, has long demonstrated how businesses can invest in both conventional and emerging technologies without creating confusion, as long as there is a clear rationale behind those choices.
The backlash tends to emerge elsewhere, when actions and messaging no longer align. "But we will be upset if a brand advocates toxic masculinity today, or if we find out that an outspoken human-first services brand is found to be cutting staff by outsourcing to AI outfits," highlights Parekh.
In many ways, that distinction sits at the heart of the debate. The issue may not be that companies own brands with different perspectives. It may be whether those perspectives feel authentic to the audiences they serve. Narang believes the conversation often becomes more complicated than it needs to be.
"A contradiction isn't created by difference. It's created by hypocrisy," he says.
According to him, a company can own brands that stand for very different things and still remain credible, provided each brand behaves consistently within its own universe. The problem begins when a company attempts to project a singular moral position while its portfolio tells a different story.
The examples are hardly new. What has changed is the conversation around them. As consumers become more aware of corporate ownership and more willing to examine brands beyond their advertising, portfolio decisions that once went largely unnoticed are now attracting closer attention. In the process, companies are finding themselves judged not just on what individual brands stand for, but on how those positions fit within a broader corporate narrative.
Yet, as the marketers in this story suggest, the presence of different viewpoints within a portfolio is not necessarily a contradiction. If anything, it may reflect the complexity of the audiences those brands are trying to serve.
Perhaps that is why the most successful portfolios are not necessarily those that speak with one voice. They are the ones that can explain why different voices exist in the first place.
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