Kapferer’s Prism and the Shifting Ground of Brand Identity

Since the concept of branding first came into vogue in the 1990’s, its practitioners have insisted that brand relationships are inherently reciprocal, and that the brand identity itself exists in the collaboration of marketers and consumers. But in practice, brand definition has largely been in the hands of marketers and has been transmitted through one-way vehicles like advertising. The social media arena provides the first practical means of true collaboration between marketers and consumers on brand definition. Just as human identity is increasingly defined by social relationships played out in virtual space, brand identity is increasingly defined by a decentralized set of networked perceptions and feedback mechanisms. Jean-Noel Kapferer’s Brand Identity Prism, which holds that brand identity occurs in a nexus between corporate image and consumer perception, forms the basis for examining the profound shift in the power dynamic toward crowd-based brand identity. Consumers now exert far greater authority over brand perception in the myriad brand conversations taking place in social media, challenging the predominance of well-financed and distributed brand campaigns.