I wrote about brand architecture last week and mentioned that a good one includes a powerful branding idea supported by three brand planks. The planks — discrete reasons to believe — when combined, tell a story only your band can tell.
Interestingly, some planks may be at odds with one another and need to be carefully managed. Let’s say cost-competitiveness and product innovation are key planks. The more messages you pump into the market about your leading edge products the more likely the market will be to think you are high-priced. Conversely, the more low price advertising you do, the less you will be seen as an innovator. A number of years ago AT&T used these two planks as part of the architecture for its B2B services. Though the planks were at odds, the research nerds figured out how to modulate them to the point where they could almost predict market share gains based upon the spending allocation. Who says you shouldn’t take statistics at college? Peace!
