# BRD-015 — A brand covers exactly one sender

> Each brand must be scoped to a single message sender — one brand per company, client, franchise or subsidiary, and no number shared between brands.

- **Rule ID:** BRD-015
- **Layer:** Brand (`BRAND`)
- **Checks:** `the brand record`
- **Severity:** BLOCKING — Breaking this rule gets the submission rejected outright.
- **When it bites:** Gates approval — get this wrong and registration is refused
- **How it is detected:** AI judgement over the submitted form
- **Fix type:** Fix the field — a better value in the form clears it
- **Required by:** Twilio, Bandwidth, Telnyx
- **Applies:** Applies to every 10DLC registration.
- **Canonical URL:** https://ekas.io/rules/10dlc/brand/brd-015/

## Why this rule exists

The brand is what a consumer would use to work out who texted them, so a brand covering several companies makes that question unanswerable and puts each company's complaint history on the others' record. Franchise groups and agencies reach it by economy: one registration is cheaper than forty, and the Agents & Franchises use case sounds like permission to do exactly that. It is not — it describes messaging on behalf of franchisees, not registering them as one brand.

## How to fix it

Register one brand per legal entity that sends, each with its own EIN, website and contact details, and give each brand its own numbers. Where you manage many of them, that relationship belongs on the CSP record rather than being folded into a single brand. Done when every company named anywhere in the campaign has its own brand.

## Example of a compliant value

```text
One brand for Acme Coffee Co, LLC and a separate brand for each franchisee — not one "Acme Coffee Group" brand covering all of them
```

## Common mistakes

- Sharing one phone number across brands fails for the same reason from the other direction: the number is what the carrier attributes traffic by, so two brands on one number cannot be told apart.

## Provider rejection codes

| Provider | Code | Resubmission allowed |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Twilio | `30926` | yes |
| Telnyx | `710` | yes |

## Notes

Absorbs BRD-162 (one brand per end customer, stated as the ISV-side obligation) and OPS-367 (no number shared across brands). Distinct from BRD-160, which asks whether the RIGHT entity was registered; this rule asks whether ONE entity was.