Brand Resonance Model impact on branding techniques!

Building a strong brand can be thought of in terms of a sequence of steps, in which each step is contingent on successfully achieving the previous step such as: Who are you? (Brand identity), What are you? (Brand meaning), What about you? What do I think or feel about you? (Brand responses), What about you and me? What kind of association and how much of a connection would I like to have with you? (Brand relationships).

Performing these four steps to create the right brand identity, brand meaning, brand responses, and brand relationship is a complicated and difficult process. It is useful to think of sequentially establishing six “brand building blocks” with customers. To connote the sequencing involved, these brand building blocks can be assembled in terms of a brand pyramid like:

Brand salience relates to aspects of the awareness of the brand, for example, how often and easily the brand is evoked under various situations or circumstances. 

Brand Meaning is made up of two major categories of brand associations that exist in customers’ minds related to performance and imagery, with a set of specific subcategories within each. These brand associations can be formed directly (from a customer’s own experiences and contact with the brand) or indirectly (through the depiction of the brand in advertising or by some other source of information, such as word of mouth). These associations serve as the basis for the positioning of the brand and its points-of-parity and points-of-difference. Creating strong, favorable, and unique associations and the desired points-of-parity and points-of-difference can be difficult for marketers, but essential in terms of building brand resonance. Strong brands typically have firmly established favorable and unique brand associations with consumers.

Brand responses refers to how customers respond to the brand and all its marketing activity and other sources of information that is what customers think or feel about the brand. Brand responses can be distinguished according to brand judgments and brand feelings, that is, in terms of whether they arise from the “head” or from the “heart.”

Brand judgments focus on customers’ personal opinions and evaluations with regard to the brand. Brand judgments involve how customers put together all the different performance and imagery associations of the brand to form different kinds of opinions. Brand feelings are customers’ emotional responses and reactions with respect to the brand. Brand feelings also relate to the feelings that are evoked by the marketing program for the brand or by other means?

Brand resonance refers to the nature of this relationship and the extent to which customers feel that they connect with a brand and feel “in synchronization” with it. With true brand resonance, customers have a high degree of loyalty marked by a close relationship with the brand such that customers actively seek means to interact with the brand and share their experiences with others. Examples of brands which have had high resonance include Harley Davidson, Apple, and eBay.

The importance of the brand resonance model is in the road map and guidance it provides for brand building. It provides a yardstick by which brands can assess their progress in their brand building efforts as well as a guide for marketing research initiatives. Brands Should Have a Duality. One important point reinforced by the model is that a strong brand has a duality. A strong brand appeals to both the head and the heart. Strong brands blend product performance and imagery to create a rich, varied, but complementary set of consumer responses to the brand.