Brand resonance is a term that refers to the relationship between consumers and products, describing the ways people identify with and relate to the products in their lives. There are many ways of delineating this relationship, including the factors of loyalty, attachment, and engagement. To the extent that consumers feel loyal toward a product, they will be likely to continue purchasing that brand, exhibit an increased attitude of attachment to it, and be willing to expend resources in order to maintain its consumption. Initially, a brand must enter an audience’s field of awareness, creating an identification and projected sense of need for it. After that, a brand can establish itself in consumers’ minds as something they will remember. Following this association, marketers can collect data from consumer responses that can be used to further strengthen their relationship with the brand.
“We don’t buy brands because of what they do. We buy them because of what they mean.” (Paul Bailey of Brand Strategy Insider) The majority of consumers make their decisions based on emotional responses, rather than on purely practical considerations. This is why it is so crucial for marketers to cultivate an awareness of these responses in order to make optimum use of their brand identity and targeted advertising campaigns. According to Andrea Coville, author and CEO of a global communications firm, “If your product, service, or idea resonates with a customer, if it means something to them—in addition to being utilitarian—then the relationship will be deeper, longer lasting, and more profitable.” (BusinessJargons.com). With this in mind, strengthening a brand’s resonance in order to build and maintain a dependable consumer base should be a prime marketing objective.
The Brand Resonance Pyramid
Kevin Lane Keller, a marketing professor at Dartmouth college, came up with a widely used model, called the Customer-Based Brand Equity Model, published in his textbook, Strategic Brand Management. He is quoted as saying, “Is marketing management an art or a science? Some marketing observers maintain that good marketing is more of an art and does not lend itself to rigorous analysis and deliberation. Others strongly disagree and contend that marketing management is a highly disciplined enterprise that has much in common with other business disciplines.” (ToolsHero.com). His pyramid model is can be seen as an attempt to reconcile these two factors. It remains an effective way to clearly visualize marketing goals. As the late businessman Allen Klein once remarked, “It has been said that 80% of what people learn is visual.” (Canto.com)
The Keller pyramid delineates the following “steps”: salience, performance, imagery, judgements, feelings, and resonance. Salience refers to the degree of awareness consumers have about a product, reflected in their ability to recall it. Performance is about determining to what extent the consumers’ needs are being met by a brand. Imagery is the aspect that best describes consumers’ feelings about products. In terms of judgements, consumers make decisions about products, based on the perceived quality of them. The feelings step centers on consumers’ emotional attachment to a brand, often expressed in terms of enjoyment and social acceptability. And finally, there is resonance, which has to do with the ultimate creation of a substantial and lasting bond between consumers and the brand. “Brand resonance is like the very top of a skyscraper – a towering building high in the sky. You can’t expect to reach it by jumping or climbing up a small ladder. Instead, it takes incremental steps, generally beginning with entering a building then working your way up many flights of stairs. Only then can you reach the top of a skyscraper.” (Cory Schmidt of Canto.com)