Brand strategy is the foundation of a solid brand. All brand elements, from your name and logo, to your visual and verbal style, to your marketing communication tactics flow from your brand strategy.
Understanding the Brandscape
- Before you can articulate a solid brand strategy, you need to do some groundwork
- What think: What they value, what they believe about their current options, and what they need/want
- Product/Service: Features, benefits and experience
- Competitors/Comparables: How they are marketing to your target
- Communications: Current communications including traditional, digital, mobile, social
- Market Trends and Influences
Elements of Brand Strategy
Back Story: For people to believe in your reputation, to care about it and be motivated by it, they must first connect to it. People connect to what they understand and find interesting. The history of your brand, anecdotes and innovations, motivations and inspirations, all create interest and understanding and make your brand more accessible. Just like a person’s reputation is partly built on where they are from, who their parents are, or what they studied in school, so is brand built on details and lore.
Attributes: These are the descriptive words that define your brand and the character traits. Some are attributes all competitors share; the ones that get you into the game. Some are highly valued attributes that begin to elevate your brand. A very few are the attributes that differentiate your brand and make it preferable to others.
Brand Positioning: The unifying and overarching idea in the minds of your audiences that defines your brand and differentiates it relative to other competitors. Why does it exist? Why does it matter? What does it stand for? And why should anyone prefer it, come back to it time and time again—even when other brands cost less money?
Brand Architecture: Brand architecture is the organizing structure that specifies the type, number, relationship and purpose of brands within your business portfolio.