What is a Brand Pyramid? And how to build it

The branding domain has, in our view, three pillars: architecture, positioning, and design. Naturally, they are interconnected, but we can assume that each post indirectly supports the brand. From a top perspective, one could argue that brand architecture established the relationship between the brand, its products, ranges, and services and the link with other brands in the portfolio (if any). The positioning is the brand’s strategy in terms of its reason for being, and it’s a bridge between consumers and the commercial offering. The design translates each component into a unique, relevant, and compelling offering.

Our consulting practice uses the brand key as a positioning framework because of its sophistication and completeness. However, the brand key is not the only positioning model and — probably — is not the most commonly used approach. Many of our clients use the Brand Pyramid instead.

What is a Brand Pyramid?

The BP is a brand positioning framework in the form of a bi-dimensional pyramid (aka a triangle, but the architectonic reference is probably useful as a selling point), with a more extensive base and multiple layers on top of each other, until a peak.

The BP model we often see in action includes five layers, starting from the bottom: