Finalize how many message pillars to ensure the content does not drift.

Brand pillars exist to solve a specific problem: keeping content focused on what matters most, rather than chasing every trend or random topic. However, if too many pillars are established, the problem is not solved but rather compounded.

Three to five pillars: why that range

There is no magic number, but there are practical reasons. Three pillars are sufficient to cover the most important aspects for a simple brand, one product line, and one customer group. Five pillars are appropriate when the brand is more complex: multiple product lines and customer groups needing separate themes. Issues start to arise from the sixth pillar onward, as no content team can maintain consistency with too many things to remember simultaneously.

With fewer than three pillars, the content often revolves around one or two points, missing important reasons for customers to trust and choose the brand. Industry best practices typically involve three to five accurate pillars for this reason.

Which factor determines the real number?

• Brand complexity. One product line, one customer group: choose three. Multiple lines or many customer groups with different needs: it could go up to four or five.
• Team memory capability. The pillars are only valuable if the content writers truly know and use them. If the team has to open files to reference each time they write, the number of pillars exceeds what is necessary.
• Each pillar truly has a different meaning. Two pillars that are often grouped together during implementation should be combined into one. The actual number of pillars is fewer than what is written, indicating a need for review.
• Each pillar has supporting evidence. A pillar without a proof point, meaning a reason to believe, is an empty pillar. It is better to remove some and keep only those with real evidence.

Common mistakes when finalizing the pillar

• Set many pillars to cover all points. The result is that no one remembers, and the content remains scattered just as it was before the pillars. The goal of the pillars is to eliminate what is unimportant, not to list everything.
• Redundant pillars. They may have different names, but when implemented in content, they convey the same idea. This often happens when pillars are finalized based on intuition rather than tested by writing actual content for each pillar.
• Core is just a beautiful adjective. "Credibility", "dedication", "professionalism" are adjectives that cannot stand alone as a core because no one can refute them and no one remembers them. A core needs to be accompanied by specific evidence.
• Finalize the pillar but no one uses it. The pillar is in the positioning file, but the content team is unaware or does not apply it in the writing. This is an implementation error, not a quantity error.

Brand pillars are a way to expand the "reasons to believe" within the positioning framework into several themes that the entire team can use daily.

Geoffrey Moore's positioning framework, Crossing the Chasm; message architecture framework

Sinh Vũ's viewpoint

Sinh Vũ delivers a message pillar as a separate item in the branding project, not combined with positioning or tagline. The reason: the pillar is an internal tool used for consistent operations, while positioning and tagline are external communications with clients. These are two different roles that need to be clearly separated.

The number of pillars at Sinh Vũ is determined by the actual complexity of each brand, not by a pleasing number. Each pillar must be accompanied by specific evidence: a process, a verifiable result, a real differentiator. If a pillar lacks supporting evidence, Sinh Vũ suggests removing or consolidating it, no matter how appealing you find it.

Once the pillars are finalized, the simplest check is to ask the team: without looking at the documents, can they repeat the three pillars? If not, either there are too many pillars, or the pillars are not clear enough to remember.