Three Level brands?

Something strange seems to be happening in the world of brand management.

We are all use to two level brands. That might not be the right term, but by that I mean names like "Microsoft Excel" or "Kellogg's Cornflakes". A company name followed by a product name. Apparently this has good legal reasons as a sensible thing to do (Joel's explanation - see "The Name"). But recently I've seen two three level brands emerge. They are things "Cadbury's Dairy Milk Caramel" and "Kellogg's All Bran Bran Flakes".

Until recently there used to be "Cadbury's Caramel" and "Cadbury's Dairy Milk" and "Cadbury's Fruit and Nut" but now they have all been renamed into "Cadbury's Dairy Milk X". Kellogg's have done a similar thing with All Bran, Bran Flakes, and Sultana Bran. I wonder why this was done. I could speculate, and probably will, but the best way of finding out has to be ask the companies involved, so I've done that using their online forms.

This article seems to suggest that it is because when launching new products, a brand extension is easier to get underway than an entirely new product.

Meanwhile, I'll keep my eye out for other examples.