The “building a brand identity” core of brand strategy formulation. The framework used is a framework called “Brand Prism”, developed by a French university professor Below, I will explain the components of the brand prism.

Target Persona

The first component of the brand prism is the “target persona”.the worksheet of Brand Prism often includes the following.

• Target persona synopsis
• Value keywords for persona (e.g. humour, discovery, excitement, adventure, etc.)
• Persona’s emotional keywords (e.g. anxiety, pressure, impatience, loneliness, etc.)

Value Provided By Brand

“Brand value proposition” refers to the practical and emotional pleasure that a brand can provide.

In other words, it is a “reason to be chosen” and is a core element in formulating a brand strategy.

As you can see from many TV commercials, most brands try to talk about “we…” and “we” as the main characters. However, for many personas, the leading role is “my lifestyle”, and the brand is just a “supporting role” to enrich the lifestyle.

If so, the brand should not be centred around “us” but “for you”. It is precisely the “proposition (= value conversion)”, and it is the part that requires a change from a corporate perspective to a consumer perspective.

At workshops, we often divide the value provided by the brand into three categories and discuss them.

Practical Value: What ” Pragmatic Benefits ” Does The Persona Get From The Brand?

The most basic joy for consumers is the “joy of getting actual profit” from the brand. Many companies must be racing to develop this pleasure better than their rivals.

In the case of mineral water, both “brand “and”practical value” is recognized, the active purchase intention rate increases by 16% and the price premium (= the percentage of people who want to buy even if it is slightly higher) ) is known to increase by 9%.

Mineral water is “water” inside and has almost no functional differentiation. However, purchase intentions and price premiums change significantly depending on whether or not the practical value is recognized.

Emotional Value: What Kind Of “ Positive Emotions ” Does The Persona Evoke For The Brand?

Everyone wants to be “positive” rather than “negative”. And when people get “positive emotions”, they feel joy.

In the example of mineral water mentioned earlier, we know that the positive purchase intention rate rises by 21% and the price premium rise by 22% when “emotional value” is recognized, not just brand recognition.

When we conduct workshops on the value provided by a brand, clients who can speak fluently about “actual value” often stop thinking and get lost in “brand x emotional value.” I use the “111 emotion cards” mentioned above as an inspiration tool in such a case.

Self-Actualization Value: What Kind Of “ Positive Self ” Will The Brand Change?

How can that brand transform your persona into a positive self?

In workshops on the value provided by a brand, we often have a “From→To” session where “I was like this before I got the brand” → “I’ll be like this after I got the brand”.

In the example of mineral water mentioned earlier, it is known that if not only the brand is recognized but also the “self-realization value” is recognized, the active purchase intention rate will increase by 24%, and the price premium will increase by 30%.

Brand Life Vision

Once you have defined the three values ​​your brand provides, follow that flow to determine your “brand life vision.”

“Brand life vision” refers to “a future image of society and lifestyle that can be realized by spreading the value provided by the brand to the world.”

In other words, it is a “social existence value”, and in recent terms, it can be rephrased as “brand purpose”.

Since “value” means “joy” and “happiness”, “social existence value” is synonymous with the “joy” and “happiness” that a brand can bring to society. The image of the future when this permeates the community is called the “Brand Life Vision.”

Taking steps to consider the “brand life vision” after considering the “value provided by the brand.”

• Practical Value: People who received tangible benefits through the brand
• Emotional value: people who are with positive emotions through the brand
• Self-actualization value: People who have transformed into positive selves through brands

What kind of ideal society can realize if the world is full of Because consistency is essential.

In this way, by setting a “brand life vision” based on the defined “value provided by the brand”, it becomes possible for the brand and society to co-create the same purpose (= life vision).

• Choosing, recommending, and supporting that brand is the same as changing society for the better.

Then, the brand transcends the barrier between products and consumers, plays a role in society, and can elicit sympathetic emotions from consumers.

It also enables us to write a coherent story about how brands transform society and markets and how they create customer experiences.

Furthermore, those involved in brands with a “brand life vision” will feel the significance and pride of the mission of realizing the life vision together with consumers and society.

Ultimately, the brand will be a supportable brand that is “trying to make the world a better place” and will become an irreplaceable presence for consumers.

The result is an empathy that makes many consumers and stakeholders feel that “only this brand is special.” And that empathy creates a long-selling brand that continues to be bought by nomination.

Brand Personality

“Brand personality” refers to the “individuality and personality unique to the brand”.

Properly building your brand personality will dramatically increase your empathy for that brand. As a result, it is not a dream to become a powerful brand that creates strong feelings of attachment and brings about nomination purchases.

Several items should be set in brand personality, but the following two are particularly important.

• Values: What “values” does the brand stand for?
• Attitude: What kind of “attitude” does the brand have when interacting with consumers?

“Brand values” not only determine the brand’s distinctive personality but also elicit resonance from consumers.

In the beginning, I said that “brand strategy is a guideline to bring about empathy”, but because “brand values” go beyond “good” and “like” to bring about strong empathy that “can resonate”, This is an item that must be set.

In addition, the “attitude of the brand” determines the “Personality” of the brand.

A Unique Role

“Unique role” refers to “a unique role that the brand can only fulfil from the persona’s perspective”. In marketing terms, it’s called “positioning.”

When we think of “positioning,” we tend to think of it as “differentiation,” but that is not the case.

“Differentiation” assumes that there are competitors, but “compete” means challenging physical strength’s exhaustion while being constantly compared within the existing competition rules.

The original purpose of the positioning is not to “win the competition” but to find “areas where you can win without competition” and to cleverly win.

Brand Characteristics

“Brand characteristics” refers to the “facts that give credibility” to the “value provided by the brand,” “brand life vision,” “brand personality,” and “unique role,” which have been considered so far.

No matter how wonderful brand prisms are defined, if there are no facts that directly or indirectly support them, they end up as mere “bad words”.

Therefore, we discover “facts supporting the brand prism” from all aspects such as “quality”, “performance”, “technology“, “usability”, “UI”, “history”, “third party evaluation”, etc. It is necessary to add “reinterpretation”.

Brand Symbol

A “brand symbol” refers to “a visual element that symbolizes the brand.”

Since “brand symbol” corresponds to “construction of visual identity”, if “how to show the brand” is also changed significantly, it is often a separate project as Phase 2.

If you want to know more about visual identity, please refer to the article below.

In recent years, there has been an increase in the following consultations related to brand strategy.

• I feel that there is a limit to the current digital marketing that continues to pay advertising expenses like taxes every time you acquire several CVs.
• We plan to invest significantly in advertising, such as TV commercials, but we would like to formulate brand strategy guidelines so that the measures will not be sporadic.
• Brand sales are sluggish, and we are considering rebranding.

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