To make clear what a brand stands for. According to ESCH., customers could do without 75 percent of all brands. These brands get lost in the sea of offers, because it is not clear what they stand for and what added value they offer. A brand identity gives a clear answer to exactly these questions (ESCH. The Brand Consultants, 2026, "Wofür steht Ihre Marke?"). When brands are weak and interchangeable, the cause often lies in the strategy, not in how it is carried out. Just as a tree needs strong roots to grow, a brand needs a clear identity as the soil in which it can grow over time. The identity describes the brand's distinctive DNA, sets the direction for putting the brand into practice and serves as "an anchor in the sea of interchangeability" (translated) (ESCH. The Brand Consultants, 2026, "Was ist eine Markenidentität und warum ist sie so wichtig?").

To capture the whole identity in a systematic way. The wheel is "a tool for the systematic and holistic capture of the identity of a brand" (translated). ESCH. sees it as the basis of an effective strategy process and of putting the brand into practice with customers and other stakeholders, effectively and efficiently. Research and practice offer many approaches to brand identity, ESCH. notes, but only a few are well documented, built on solid theory and proven in practice. ESCH. counts the wheel among these few (ESCH. The Brand Consultants, 2025, "Markensteuerrad"). For ESCH., a brand identity includes the brand's objective and rational added value, which it calls the hard facts. It also includes the brand's soft and emotional facets, which the wheel captures as the soft facts (ESCH. The Brand Consultants, 2026, "Was ist eine Markenidentität und warum ist sie so wichtig?"; "Soft Facts").

To steer the brand, not only to describe it. The wheel serves to develop the brand identity, but also to steer the brand and develop it further. It defines "the guardrails for managing the brand" (translated). Everything in the wheel stays within these guardrails and is "on brand", meaning it fits the brand. Whatever the wheel leaves out is "off brand". So the wheel can also serve as the basis for brand controlling, which keeps track of how the brand is doing. Results feed back into the wheel, and the market and the competition change. That makes the wheel "a living system" (translated) that can be reviewed and developed further on a regular basis (ESCH. The Brand Consultants, 2025, "Markensteuerrad").

The wheel is built around the way customers deal with brands. Most of the time, they do not engage with a brand actively, but "passively, casually and fleetingly" (translated). Even then, a brand can leave its mark and win their preference. To explain this, ESCH. draws on Daniel Kahneman's two systems of thinking and pictures them as an autopilot and a pilot. System 1, the autopilot, is fast, automatic and always active. It is emotional, thinks in stereotypes and works unconsciously. System 2, the pilot, is rarely active. It works slowly, logically, analytically and consciously. Using it takes effort and is tiring. Many decisions are made on autopilot. Before people weigh the pros and cons, the autopilot has long since decided. Afterwards, the pilot finds reasons for the choice, most often quality or good value for money (ESCH. The Brand Consultants, 2025, "Markensteuerrad").

ESCH. pairs these insights with research on the two halves of the brain, which it attributes to Paivio. According to this research, put simply, the left half is responsible for rational processes and the right half for emotional processes and for those that involve several senses. The wheel follows this split. Its left side holds the hard part of the brand, which can be checked. ESCH. calls it the hard facts. Its right side holds the soft, emotional and sensory part, the soft facts (ESCH. The Brand Consultants, 2025, "Markensteuerrad"). Five principles shape the wheel:

• Hard facts – "What's in it for me?": the left side holds brand attributes and brand benefits. Keeping them apart matters in two ways. Customers do not buy attributes but benefits: not twelve airbags, but a safe car. And the attributes explain the benefits. The car is safe because it has twelve airbags (ESCH. The Brand Consultants, 2025, "Markensteuerrad").
• Soft facts – "How do I feel about it?": the right side holds brand tonality and brand image. The tonality covers the feelings and emotions the brand should trigger. The brand image covers the impressions that people should link with the brand through seeing, hearing, smelling, touching and feeling (ESCH. The Brand Consultants, 2025, "Markensteuerrad").
• A lasting core: brand competence sits at the centre. It sums up what is essential about the brand, can hold emotional as well as factual content, and forms the lasting core of the brand identity (ESCH. The Brand Consultants, 2025, "Markensteuerrad"). The four elements around it, which ESCH. calls quadrants, make it concrete (ESCH. The Brand Consultants, 2025, "Markenkompetenz").
• Quadrants that back each other up: attributes make benefits credible and tangible. This matters because when the pilot takes over, customers check offers logically and rationally. The brand image lets people experience the tonality. If the wheel is used correctly, the brand image can also translate benefits and attributes into impressions for several senses. ESCH. sees the wheel as a way to compare the quadrants closely with each other "in order to achieve maximum coherence" (translated) (ESCH. The Brand Consultants, 2025, "Markensteuerrad").
• Identity as the self-image: the wheel describes the brand as the company defines it from within, which ESCH. calls the brand's self-image. The picture of the brand in the minds of external stakeholders, the Markenimage, is a different thing. It serves as the main measure of whether the identity has reached people outside (ESCH. The Brand Consultants, 2026, "FAQs zur Markenidentität").

ESCH.'s website calls the tool the "Markensteuerrad nach Esch", Esch's brand steering wheel, and says that the firm developed it. For further reading, the pages point to the textbook Strategie und Technik der Markenführung by Franz-Rudolf Esch and Dennis Esch (10th edition, 2024) (ESCH. The Brand Consultants, 2025, "Markensteuerrad"; 2026, "Wie entwickelt man eine klare Markenidentität?"). ESCH. also notes that there are now several variants of the wheel, and that these often no longer do justice to the original idea (ESCH. The Brand Consultants, 2025, "Markensteuerrad").

ESCH. recommends developing the brand identity from the inside out, starting within the company. Just as people do not find their personality in others, ESCH. argues, a brand does not find its personality outside. First, management works out the identity of the brand. This can then be compared with the view of external stakeholders. From this, an identity that looks to the future can be derived, taking into account the brand's roots, the market and market trends, and the competition (ESCH. The Brand Consultants, 2026, "Wie entwickelt man eine klare Markenidentität?"). From its consulting work, ESCH. names five points to keep in mind. Strong brands grow from within, and there is no future without origin. A brand should recall its relevant strengths and separate the wheat from the chaff. It needs coherence, and it needs room for future growth and ambition (ESCH. The Brand Consultants, 2026, "ESCH. ist der beste Partner").

When the wheel is filled in, the first step is to identify what already applies to the brand today, seen from the inside and from the outside. The two views are then compared, taking into account the market situation, the competition and future trends. From this, the target identity can be derived. It describes the brand as it should be. In the end, the wheel holds all the features that define the brand, on the rational as well as on the emotional side (ESCH. The Brand Consultants, 2026, "Wie entwickelt man eine klare Markenidentität?"). In its projects, ESCH. always captures both attributes and benefits, to make sure that the benefits are well enough supported (ESCH. The Brand Consultants, 2025, "Markennutzen").

The wheel is a tool for experts. It covers too much to be passed on to all employees, so ESCH. condenses it further to the essential brand values and the brand positioning (ESCH. The Brand Consultants, 2025, "Markensteuerrad"). ESCH. speaks of two "operating systems" (translated). One is for specialists, who put the identity into practice in concrete terms. The other is a simple one for all managers and employees. The art lies in condensing the identity with effective methods (ESCH. The Brand Consultants, 2026, "ESCH. ist der beste Partner"). The positioning focuses the identity on a few central features. ESCH. calls it "the absolute condensate of the identity" (translated). It sums up in one sentence the central reasons for choosing the brand (ESCH. The Brand Consultants, 2026, "FAQs zur Markenidentität").

Once the brand is successfully anchored inside and outside the company, people outside can feel its self-image, and so it can be measured. The picture of the brand in people's minds, the Markenimage, is the main measure of this. The aim is that, in the end, the target group has the same associations in mind that were planned in the strategy (ESCH. The Brand Consultants, 2026, "FAQs zur Markenidentität"). Identity and brand values should be reviewed regularly, so that the brand stays true to itself and stays relevant as market conditions change (ESCH. The Brand Consultants, 2026, "Was ist eine Markenidentität und warum ist sie so wichtig?").

ESCH. warns of mistakes in developing a brand identity and in using the wheel:

• Settling for the lowest common denominator: for ESCH., the biggest problem in developing an effective brand identity is agreeing quickly on the lowest common denominator. ESCH. describes this as "too much content, neither one thing nor the other" (translated) (ESCH. The Brand Consultants, 2026, "ESCH. ist der beste Partner").
• Features instead of benefits: one of eight classic mistakes that ESCH. lists is to focus on attributes instead of benefits (ESCH. The Brand Consultants, 2026, "FAQs zur Markenidentität"). Customers buy a benefit, not attributes. ESCH.'s glossary page sums this up in the heading "Sell Benefits, no Features" (ESCH. The Brand Consultants, 2025, "Markennutzen").
• Too little emotion: another classic mistake is to neglect emotional aspects and to focus too much on rational added value (ESCH. The Brand Consultants, 2026, "FAQs zur Markenidentität"). An effective identity speaks to "heart and brain" (translated) alike and brings the two into harmony (ESCH. The Brand Consultants, 2026, "Wofür steht Ihre Marke?").
• Six further classic mistakes: revolution instead of evolution, a lack of authenticity or promises that cannot be kept, too little focus on customers, copy-and-paste strategies instead of real differentiation, too much or too little ambition, and campaigns without a strategic basis (ESCH. The Brand Consultants, 2026, "FAQs zur Markenidentität").
• Using the wheel without training: the wheel is easy to grasp, but it is often used the wrong way, because users are not trained well enough or misunderstand it. This wastes its potential. In practice, the complex links between the quadrants are not always fully taken into account. For ESCH., getting the most out of the wheel therefore takes professional guidance and deep expertise (ESCH. The Brand Consultants, 2025, "Markensteuerrad").