The brand platform canvas: purpose, positioning, personality and proof on one page

A brand platform is the short, agreed description of what a brand stands for and how it shows up. The canvas puts it on one page in eight boxes, so that every brief, every agency and every new hire starts from the same words. It sits upstream of the message house and of every campaign: the platform changes rarely, campaigns often.

No single author owns the brand platform; its parts come from three bodies of work. David Aaker's Building Strong Brands (Free Press, 1996) defined brand identity as the image brand strategists aspire to create or maintain, and the brand position as the part of that identity actively communicated¹. Aaker's identity model, introduced in that book and refined in Brand Leadership, includes organisational values, symbols, personality, and functional, emotional and self-expressive benefits². Kevin Lane Keller's Strategic Brand Management, now in a fifth edition with Vanitha Swaminathan, approaches brand equity from the customer's point of view, with a framework to define and measure it³; with Brian Sternthal and Alice Tybout, Keller set out positioning as a frame of reference, points of parity and points of difference⁴. Jean-Noël Kapferer's The New Strategic Brand Management, in its fifth edition, is the third standard reference⁵.

Two newer strands complete the canvas. Jenni Romaniuk's Building Distinctive Brand Assets treats the cues that identify a brand as assets to be measured and managed⁶. And voice can be written down: Kate Moran of the Nielsen Norman Group describes four dimensions of tone⁷, and Mailchimp's public style guide separates a constant voice from a tone that changes with the situation⁸.

• Purpose and vision should survive a change of product line. If they describe this year's range, they are positioning.
• Values are behaviours you would keep even at a cost. Three to five, each with an example of what it rules out.
• Positioning names the frame (the category or alternative people compare you with), the parity points you must match, and the one or two differences that matter to buyers⁴.
• Promise and proof one benefit, plus facts a sceptic could check.
• Personality three to five traits, each written as "this, not that", with a tone position for selling, explaining and apologising^7, 8.
• Distinctive assets list the ones you own today and the ones you are building, and measure how many people link each to you⁶.

Illustrative: the fictional Ourika Roasters.

• Purpose to make great coffee an everyday thing at home, not a café treat.
• Vision every bag traceable to the farm it came from.
• Values freshness over shelf life; name the farm; small batches, never shortcuts.
• Positioning frame, specialty coffee for home; parity, quality beans and reliable delivery; difference, roasted the week you receive it.
• Personality warm, not sugary; expert, not snobbish; plain-spoken.
• Promise coffee that tastes as fresh at home as at the counter.
• Proof roast date on every bag; farm named on every bag.
• Distinctive assets the terracotta bag colour; the hand-drawn roaster mark; the phrase "roasted this week".

• Values nobody could disagree with "Integrity" and "excellence" rule nothing out.
• Positioning without parity A difference only matters once the brand is seen as a legitimate choice in its frame⁴.
• A new look every campaign Assets earn recognition only through consistent use⁶.
• A platform in a drawer If the people who write briefs cannot recite the promise, it will not survive the brief.

• Aaker's Building Strong Brands¹ and his identity model²; Keller's Strategic Brand Management³; Kapferer⁵.
• Keller, Sternthal and Tybout on positioning⁴; Romaniuk on distinctive assets⁶.
• Nielsen Norman Group on tone⁷; Mailchimp on voice and tone⁸.
• On IMC Report: the brand platform and the message house and consistency and adaptation.