Brand Pyramid: Get Your Brand Strategy Right
Tronvig Brand Pyramid Test
To determine if your organization needs a Brand Pyramid, ask five to ten individuals at different levels within the organization to write down their unprompted answers to these five questions:
- What business are we in?
- How do we deliver value—and how do we do so differently from our competition?
- Why does our core customer (client or audience) care about us?
- What are our Core Values?
- What is our Brand Idea?
If the answers you get are all consistent, you don’t need one. If they are widely divergent, you do.
What is a Brand Pyramid?
“Everything should be as simple as possible, but no simpler.”
—Albert Einstein
A Brand Pyramid is the result of sorting through a set of core questions that must be answered succinctly if you are to have the focus and differentiation you will need to thrive in your chosen marketplace.
Its simplicity forces a reckoning with the complexity and indecision that is the Achilles heel of all brands. Your brand must support and occupy a meaningfully differentiated position in the marketplace—in the mind of the customer. To do this it must be intuitively obvious, true, and simple. This simplicity is hard to achieve and it is usually the result of a concerted effort. The Brand Pyramid is a framework that ensures the right level of simplicity is achieved.
We really got what we wanted and came out of the strategy sessions in a much better place. We would not have been prepared to kick off a new brand without this core foundational work.
—Peggy Martin, Senior Director of Design and Communications, Lincoln Park Zoo
The Tronvig Brand Pyramid facilitates alignment, but it also incorporates an organization’s overall strategic direction so that your brand strategy is linked to your organizational (or corporate) strategy. By clarifying brand questions along with larger strategic questions, it facilitates awareness and builds consensus around both your brand strategy and your organization’s strategic direction. This means you can more easily do what you say and thus keep your brand promise.
Why do I need one?
The Brand Pyramid gave us focus on our overall marketing and branding efforts. The museum has been substantially bettered.
—Faust Gertz, Vesterheim: National Norwegian-American Museum
The Tronvig Brand Pyramid frames and organizes the key elements of your brand into a simple framework so that you can cultivate consistency. Regardless of your size, this internal consistency and a shared understanding of your brand is essential in order to proactively cultivate how you are perceived in the marketplace. Getting your brand right internally is actually the key to getting it right out in the world.
The Tronvig Brand Pyramid is also a foundational tool in developing other essential tools for your business or organization such as your visual brand system and messaging framework. Finally, it directly supports our more advanced work such as organizational alignment and management consulting.
Can I create my own?
Yes, you can get started on your own using our Brand Pyramid Tutorial. We have created this tool in this in the hope that organizations, especially smaller ones that many not be able to afford live in-person Brand Strategy Workshops still have access to the benefits of this powerful strategic tool.
The seven-part video walk-through explains each level of the Brand Pyramid and asks the same questions we ask in our live workshops. It also features some of the stories that we tell to help you communicate the importance of a good answer to each question. With this video, you will be able to understand the Tronvig Brand Pyramid and know how it is built, and with the three consulting sessions, you will be well on your way to being able to put yours to immediate good use.
I really like this product, and the way it neatly emerged from a quick labor nicely wrapped in a cute blanket … accurate and streamlined.
—Katherine Sarkis, Director, Brand Marketing and Creative, International Rescue Committee
