Editor's note: This is the third installment in a weeklong series on branding. For the earlier stories, click here to see the best brands for small and midsize businesses, and click here to read how design influences brands. Come back Thursday for a profile of FuBu founder Daymond John.

It wasn't too long ago that business travelers had two choices when they wanted to put their heads on beds: They went to a hotel, usually a big-lobbied, over-gilded, big-city palace. Or they went to a motel, a stripped-down, neon-signed, side-of-the-road bunker.

Then someone—no one knows exactly who or when—invented hotel branding and lodging segmentation. Unlike airlines, which generally continue to stuff travelers into the two-sizes-fit-all coach and premium-class model, hoteliers have invented a type of lodging (and a new brand) for every two or three dollars along the price scale. Full-service hotels and no-tell motels are still around, of course, but they compete with a panoply of other concepts: "focused-service" properties like Courtyard by Marriott; all-suite hotels like Embassy Suites; "extended stay" brands like Residence Inn for travelers on longer-term assignments; hip hotels like W; and chained luxury brands like Park Hyatt. There's even a lodging category called "upper upscale," which requires simultaneous degrees in marketing, hospitality, economics, and psychology to fully understand.

Branding and segmentation has been good for business travelers, who can choose exactly the style of lodging they want and the services they want to pay for on a trip-by-trip basis. And it's been great for the major hotel chains, which have grown into worldwide franchising behemoths and now prefer to call themselves "families" of lodging brands.

Hilton, for example, has 3,500 properties and 10 brands. Marriott has 16 brands. Starwood is built around a traditional full-service brand (Sheraton), a studiously hip brand (Westin), and a barrage of new concepts (Aloft and Element) trying to leverage the popularity of its W Hotel line. Now publicly traded and largely free of the Pritzker family drama, Hyatt is developing brands such as Hyatt Place and Andaz. Internationally, Britain's InterContinental Hotels not only controls the company's eponymous brand, but also familiar old names (Holiday Inn) and new chains like Hotel Indigo. Accor of France, with 4,100 properties in 90 countries, has so many brands that it displays them on a price/concept chart for the enlightenment of bewildered travelers.

But just when you think hotel chains have taken branding about as far as it can go, along comes a new concept we might as well call "brand ganging." If you have a blizzard of brands at an array of price points, why not maximize them by ganging them all in one place or one part of town?

That's what's happening in Indianapolis, where a respected management company called White Lodging is pouring five Marriott brands into a seven-acre development called (wait for it)…Marriott Place.

Near several of downtown Indianapolis's leading attractions (White River State Park, the city's convention center, a major shopping mall, and several sports venues), Marriott Place started with White's existing 622-room full-service Marriott hotel. In February, White opened three more properties: a 168-room Fairfield Inn, Marriott's economy brand; the 297-room Courtyard by Marriott; and the 156-room SpringHill Suites, one of Marriott's three concepts in the extended-stay arena. Next year brings the 1,000-room JW Marriott, a glitzier, less-formal take on Ritz-Carlton, which, not coincidentally, is another Marriott brand.

The $450 million complex is cross-marketing everything to meeting planners, convention bookers, and other potential customers: the banquet and meeting space, the rooms, the amenities, and the ability to mix and match accommodations across several price points. If someone is coming to Indianapolis, be it for an auto race, a trade show, a basketball game, or just a weekend getaway, White wants their business and has a Marriott hotel to offer.

"One size doesn't fit all in lodging. It's all about choices and options," says Cory Chambers, a Marriott veteran who is now White's overall director of sales for Marriott Place. "Marriott Place stratifies the market across multiple price points, and I have something for everyone."

An even more audacious example of brand ganging has just been completed in Los Angeles, inside a 54-story tower at LA Live, the mixed-use entertainment complex across from the Staples Center sports arena. LA Live encompasses the Nokia Theater, a bowling alley, a 14-screen cinema, a museum, and more than a dozen bars and restaurants. And, oh, yes, two Marriott-branded hotels: the 878-room JW Marriott and the 123-room Ritz-Carlton. Although they have separate entrances, the hotels share the skyscraper, the spa, and some of the meeting and function space.