Building Brands

Journal of Marketing Communications Vol. 15, Nos. 2 – 3, April– July 2009, 139–155

Building strong brands in a modern marketing communications environment

Kevin Lane Keller*

E.B. Osborn Professor of Marketing, Tuck School of Business, Dartmouth College, 100 Tuck Hall, Hanover, NH 03755, USA To help marketers to build and manage their brands in a dramatically changing marketing communications environment, the customer-based brand equity model that emphasizes the importance of understanding consumer brand knowledge structures is put forth. Specifically, the brand resonance pyramid is reviewed as a means to track how marketing communications can create intense, active loyalty relationships and affect brand equity. According to this model, integrating marketing communications involves mixing and matching different communication options to establish the desired awareness and image in the minds of consumers. The versatility of on-line, interactive marketing communications to marketers in brand building is also addressed. Keywords: customer-based brand equity; brand resonance; brand building; integrated marketing communications; interactive marketing communications

Introduction The marketing communications environment has changed enormously from what it was 50, 30 or perhaps even as few as 10 years ago. Technology and the Internet are fundamentally changing the way the world interacts and communicates. At the same time, branding has become a key marketing priority for most companies (Aaker and Joachimsthaler 2000; Kapferer 2005). Yet, there is little consensus on how brands and branding can or should be developed in the modern interactive marketplace. Traditional approaches to branding that put emphasis on mass media techniques seem questionable in a marketplace where customers have access to massive amounts of information about brands, products and companies and in which social networks have, in some cases, supplanted brand networks. New perspectives are needed to...