Building a brand house

- If you think of any of the great public figures in history, you can probably described their mission in a short phrase, and their beliefs in a few bullet points. It's not coincidence, whether or not it was planned on each of their parts. This is the benefit of perception consistency and cohesion of strong complex beliefs. I can take each of their public perceptions and put it into a structure called a Brand House, which is a method to organize the complex beliefs, messages, and positioning, of a brand. A Brand House has five main components, a Big Idea, Positioning, Attributes, Pillars, and Proof Points. This is often a structure used by brand marketers and agencies, but I think it's absolutely transferable to a product marketers toolbox. Starbucks is a fun example because they have both stellar physical and digital products. Here's by best guess about how their business fits into a Brand House. The Starbucks Big Idea might be the third space, meaning that Starbucks in the third space in a consumers life. First space is home, second space is work, and third is the Starbucks location. To position this Big Idea the product marketer would craft a perceptual map to understand the core values needed to be communicated. Pain points need to be solved, and relationship to competition. For Starbucks the values might be quality of experience and convenience of getting beverages. The attributes are the primary ways the big idea and positioning will be communicated. Sometimes this is expressed as just a handful of words to define the voice and tone. Sometimes it's a full messaging guide. A Starbucks handful of attributes might be nurturing, welcoming, bold, and charming. The combination of these words defines the voice and tone. More importantly, it provides guidelines for all other stakeholders when developing messaging. This is a very boiled-down version of a product marketers core messaging guide. The pillars are often the product pillars when a product marketer is building a Brand House. This might be the strategic locations of each shop, the focus on amenities within each shop like Wi-Fi and comfortable furniture, and the Starbucks app, which allows customers to spend more time enjoying the location than just waiting in line. Finally, the foundation of the house is made up of proof points, which are also known as reasons to believe. These are usually supporting pieces of information and data that prove the validity of the pillars, attributes, positioning and big idea. Each of the example pillars can be supported by data. Strategic locations can be the heart of each city or the most locations. Amenities can be supported by the speed and stability of the Wi-Fi. The app can be proved through the total amount of reduced wait times. To be honest, this isn't something commonly part of every product marketing organization, however having a clear way to structure and contain information is highly valuable. The positioning, attributes, and proof points, should be provided using baseline research, the pillars from product managers, and big idea from your brand team.