Branding pentagram

The branding pentagram translates corporate strategy into a managed brand system. It defines brand principles, selects a position, makes every brand carrier consistent, embeds the promise in daily behaviour and establishes a planning-and-control cycle.

When to use it

Use the framework to create, clarify or improve a brand by answering three basic customer questions:

Who

should the product or service serve?

What

job or benefit does it provide?

How

does it create value for the client?

A brand comprises all signals surrounding a company, service or product. Branding manages those signals deliberately and consistently. The pentagram integrates five factors that influence whether intended identity becomes experienced reality.

Its five connected points are:

1. brand principles;
2. positioning;
3. consistency across brand carriers;
4. organisational embedding;
5. planning and control.

Working through every point turns brand policy into daily operating practice rather than leaving it as a communications statement.

Origins

The pentagram appeared in late-1990s product-and-brand-management literature and is associated with Michael Baker and Susan Hart’s Product Strategy and Management (nineteen ninety-nine). Its contribution was integrative: five concerns often managed separately—principles, position, carriers, organisational embedding and control—became one recurring system connected to corporate strategy.

What it is