Brand Resonance Pyramid (Philip Kotler Summary) The brand

resonance model also views brand building as an ascending, sequential series

of steps, from bottom to top. The steps are as below:

1. Ensuring identification of the brand with customers and an

association of the brand in customers’ minds with a specific product
class or customer need
2. Establishing the totality of brand meaning in the minds of
customers by strategically linking a host of tangible and intangible
brand associations
3. Eliciting the proper customer responses in terms of brand-related
judgment and feelings
4. Converting brand response to create an intense, active loyalty
relationship between customers and the brand.

According to the Brand Resonance Pyramid, enacting the four steps

involves establishing six “brand building blocks” with customers. These brand
building blocks can be assembled in terms of a brand pyramid. The model
emphasises the duality of brands—the rational route to brand building is the
left-hand side of the pyramid, whereas the emotional route is the right-hand
side
Example:

MasterCard is an example of a brand with duality, as it emphasises both the

rational advantage to the credit card, through its acceptance at
establishments worldwide, and the emotional advantage through its award-
winning “priceless” advertising campaign, which shows people buying items
to reach a certain goal. The goal itself—a feeling, an accomplishment, or
other intangible—is “priceless” (“There are some things money can’t buy, for
everything else, there’s MasterCard.”).
The creation of significant brand equity involves reaching the top or pinnacle
of the brand pyramid, and will occur only if the right building blocks are put
into place.

 Brand salience relates to how often and easily the brand is evoked
under various purchase or consumption situations.
 Brand performance relates to how the product or service meets
customers’ functional needs.
 Brand imagery deals with the extrinsic properties of the product or
service, including the ways in which the brand attempts to meet
customers’ psychological or social needs.
 Brand judgments focus on customers’ own personal opinions and
evaluations.
 Brand feelings are customers’ emotional responses and reactions
with respect to the brand.
 Brand resonance refers to the nature of the relationship that
customers have with the brand and the extent to which customers
feel that they are “in sync” with the brand.

Resonance is characterised in terms of the intensity or depth of the

psychological bond customers have with the brand, as well as the level of
activity engendered by this loyalty. Examples of brands with high resonance
include Harley-Davidson, Apple, and eBay.

What are the basic elements of a Brand Identity System?

The basic elements include a set of well-prepared guidelines that anticipate all of the expected
encounters with your Brand Identity. It is a system, containing multiple elements, that allows your
communications to speak in one consistent voice. Visual distinction is an important tool in this
management process. It should incorporate much more than what your logo looks like.

Brand Promise Overview — Explain the business mission and values. What are the philosophy and
goals of your company? This information should be understood and accessible to all employees and
representatives.

Logo Guidelines — Provide size, spacing requirements and standards for formatting. A good way to
depict this information is through examples of real world applications including the dos and don’ts of
logo usage. The logo is considered as a final piece of art, not to be modified or duplicated without
authorized oversight or approval.

Color Palette — Define a standard for the use of color. This is a powerful tool in your brand identity.
A primary and secondary palette should be designated for print and web standards. This is usually
indicated with formulations in Pantone, CMYK, RGB and HSB.

Font Standards — State primary font options for a consistent text standard that can be maintained
in deploying company content. Choose a robust font family with a variety of weights for headlines
and a readable font for blocks of text. Make sure there are matching web fonts. And most of all,
follow proper licensing procedures.
Templates — Offer designed layouts of content style, grids, margins, font usage and white space.
Print collateral, signage standards and requirements for media usage are examples of real-world
demands on your brand identity.

Web Standards — Name a webmaster educated in the company’s role for users of the website.
Specify a strategy for the use of social media tools and formalize a hierarchy of messages. Company
size, as well as target prospects and clients, plays a large role in the degree of responsibility for social
media strategy.

Assets — Create a library of file formats with access through a designated authority. These assets
should be maintained and updated as the company grows and new requirements need to be
addressed. The content can include photographs, design elements, font folders (properly licensed),
and file formats such as PNG, EPS, JPG, TIFF and RGB.
The Kapferer Brand Identity Prism

Inscribed on the hearts of marketing graduates worldwide, Jean-Noel Kapferer’s Brand Identity
Prism is a model that helps businesses build strong, enduring brand identities that reflect their core
values. It proposes that a brand’s success is driven by a company-wide utilisation of the following
elements:

Physique

The physical characteristics and iconography of your brand. Think of the dynamic Nike swoosh, the
sleek styling of Apple or the bold orange pantone of easyJet. Kapferer said the physique should be
considered the basis of the brand; it is the clearest visual representation of your brand’s aspirations
and how you wish it to be perceived.

In determining your brand’s physique you should consider what your products or services look like,
what emotions they inspire and how that might look like in their physical form.

Personality

How a brand communicates with the outside world, which is expressed through its tone of voice, its
design and its copywriting. Coca-Cola’s happy and playful persona is expressed through its bold
colour choices, scripted font and brand messaging that centres on having a great time with friends
and family.

A brand needs to define its tone of voice and its design assets and then integrate this into all
communication touchpoints: website, apps, direct mail, emails, internal comms and so on.

Culture

The value system and the principles on which a brand bases its behaviour. Tesla’s culture, for
example, encourages its workforce to innovate and throw in ideas to keep the brand at the forefront
of technological change. Google’s culture, recently voted as the best in the tech industry, promotes
flexibility, creativity and a fun environment – all things that it wants to be known for outside of its
colourful and inspirational offices.

Relationship
The relationship between the brand and its customers, and what the customer hopes they are
getting from the brand beyond the actual product or service. John Lewis are famed for their product
warranties and after-sales service, which has helped them foster a relationship of trust and mutual
respect between buyer and seller.

Reflection

The stereotypical user of the brand. A brand is likely to have several buyer personas but they will
have a go-to subset of their target market that they use in their messaging. Apple, for example,
appeal to all kinds, but associate their products with vibrant, adventurous and energetic people,
irrespective of age, weight, race, etc.

Self-image

How the customer sees their ideal self. By understanding a customer’s ‘ideal identity’ – how they
want to look and behave; what they aspire to – brands can target their messaging accordingly. Is
your customer’s ideal self outgoing, intellectual, extroverted, refined, cheap-and-cheerful, rich-and-
also-cheerful-on-account-of-how-rich-they-are? Work out what your customer wants to look like
and make your brand’s aspirations reflect theirs.