Death By Brand Pyramid

I was sitting through the research done by a fairly well-known, national research firm recently, and before they went through the numbers they whipped out their brand pyramid model, reminding us that there was much work to be done to get our customers and prospects up the brand hierarchy.

It got me thinking about how consumers (and businesses for that matter) really make decisions in the real world.

A few brand pyramids that I had laying around.

Brand Pyramids seem to oversimplify the emotional and totally irrational beings that we call consumers.  I think we sometimes devalue  marketing when we try distill the consumer decision and thought process into a PowerPoint slide.  Do we really believe that if we can move a buyer up the pyramid through clever communication and brand touch points that they will be bonded with our brand  and have some type of lofty “Apple State of  Self-Actualization”?  I don’t buy it anymore.

If you’ve ever sat in a focus group, followed a consumer around on a shopping trip, or had a normal conversation with a friend about their last big screen TV purchase, you’ll know people just don’t work like those brand pyramids say they do.  But brand experts propagate them anyway.  Our job is to bring salience and understanding to the confusion and those brand pyramids are not cutting it anymore.

Ok, now what?  Brand Pyramids are dead.  What should replace them?  I don’t think we need to replace them with something else.  I’ve been re-reading David Aaker recently and I can’t help, but think how simple he makes it.  Make your product relevant, engage with your consumers, be yourself.

Aaker wrote in 2004, “Brand Management in the past focused on achieving preference the basis of differentiation, benefits, customer satisfaction, among a set of brands under consideration for a given application.  But in today’s environment, unless a brand can maintain its relevance as categories emerge, change, and fade, narrow application preference may not be sufficient.” In other words, if all you’re focused on is achieving preference and differentiation with new updates or campaigns, you may miss the major shifts in the marketplace such as AOL did in the early 2000’s.

This of course means an organization has to be more outward focused, nimble, and innovative to stay in the sweet spot of relevance…those are posts for another day.