So if series can be the top item in any family tree what’s the difference between series and brands? In all honesty I’m not sure and I never have been. The series / brand distinction is a hangover from SMEF and nobody seems to remember why it was invented. There was some talk of a brand being a series with marketing value but why that isn’t just a decorated series rather than a separate class of object I’m not sure. People new to PIPs tend to assume the object at the top of the tree is always a brand and talk about brand and series pages but in truth no /programmes code takes any notice of the brand / series distinction