6 E framework to build brands

Strong brands must go beyond product design and communication

Strong brands are critical for any business to grow. People trust brands which form the basis of their purchase and loyalty over time. Branding as a discipline borrows heavily from social sciences and psychology. Strong brands are not created just through product design and communication but by finding a place in the consumer’s heart.

Marketers can follow a simple six-step checklist to determine if they are nurturing their brands well and if their relationship with the brand is enduring enough.

• Essence: It is the intrinsic nature or indispensable attribute that determines the brand character. The essence is the core identity of a brand. It reflects what the marketers want their brand to stand for? For example, the essence of brand Fevicol is “sticking together” or building bonds. The core essence of Google is “search”.

• Efficacy (promise): The unique and differentiated advantage of a brand defines the promise made by it. The promise a brand makes and the value it bestows on customers signifies its positioning. The brand’s value proposition can be functional (when it is a new category, market or competitive advantage) or emotional (when product is a non-differentiator). The value proposition of Dell is its superior customer service and customisation, which is functional. Dettol, on the other hand, owns the proposition of “protection like that of mother”.

• Emotion: Branding is a process of taking product from the left side of the brain to the right. Irrespective of the fact that a brand differentiates itself on functional or emotional benefits, it needs to identify an emotion through which consumers can connect with it. Today, it’s not just the business-to-consumer brands but even technology and corporate ones that are trying to find an emotion to associate them with the consumers. 

• Employees: Before the brand interacts with external customers, it needs to build association with its internal customers, that is employees. If your employees do not believe in you, the customers would not. The people who deliver the brand experience or are at customer touch points need to be as knowledgeable and passionate about the brand as they actually make the brand.

• Experience: This stage involves creating brand experience at every touch point. Brand experiences are created through appropriate communication media including mass media and activations. Distribution channels and intermediaries play an equally important role in creating the right experience for consumers. This stage would include most of the steps in brand implementation plan including communication, distribution, packaging and promotions. The experiences created at every touch point help building associations with the brand and go a long way in creating purchase intention. Coke designs campaigns around building experience — whether it was “open happiness” or “taste the feeling”.

• Engagement: To have a large base of loyal customers, it is critical to engage them with the brand. This instils a sense of co-creation. In a connected world, companies don’t utilise the potential of social media by using it only as a vehicle for information dissemination. When you engage with consumers effectively, you build a sense of ownership for the brand and hence deeper commitment.

These simple 6E steps can help marketers plan their brand strategy across these layers and ensure the brand image built is consistent with what marketers want.


Ashita Aggarwal, Associate professor, marketing, S.P. Jain Institute of Management & Research