Brand Strategy

Brand strategy is the answer to one question.

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The short version: definitions, not opinions. For the argument behind them, the examples and the agency research, read the companion piece, "Brand" Is Doing Too Much Work.

What is brand strategy?

Brand strategy is the answer to one question: what does this business want to be known for, to whom and why should that matter commercially? Everything else, logo, tone of voice, campaigns, packaging, is built on that answer.

Marty Neumeier's definition still says it best: a plan for the systematic development of a brand in alignment with business strategy. It's a plan, not an artefact, a set of decisions that keep getting applied rather than a document that gets framed and forgotten. And it exists in alignment with the business strategy, not instead of it. Brand strategy doesn't invent what a company does. It works out how that company should be understood, competed on and remembered.

Marketing and design are the tools that carry that answer into the world. Neither can generate the positioning itself. They can only express one, well or badly, once it exists.

Where does brand strategy fit in a business?

Closer to the boardroom than the brief. It isn't a function of the marketing department, though marketing works from it every day. It's a leadership-level decision, because it constrains and directs decisions across the whole business, product, pricing, recruitment, partnerships, expansion, not just how the next campaign looks.

That's why more organisations now have a Chief Brand Officer or equivalent sitting close to the CEO rather than several rungs down inside marketing. A small business doesn't need that title to have a working brand strategy, but it does need someone with authority over the whole business, not just its marketing output, holding every decision accountable to it.

When does a business need brand strategy?

Every business already has a brand strategy, chosen deliberately or not. The real question is whether the one you've got by default is working for you. A handful of moments tend to bring the question to the front either way:

  • Founding, before the first pound is spent on a logo or a website
  • A merger or acquisition, when two default brand strategies collide
  • Entering a new market or launching an entirely new product line
  • A growth plateau despite consistent marketing spend
  • An accidental brand strategy working against the business, sold on price when it wants to compete on trust, for example
  • A leadership change that inherits assumptions nobody's tested in years

It's rarely, on its own, a reason to change how the business looks. Needing brand strategy isn't the same as needing a rebrand, even though one often leads to the other.

If any of that sounds like where your business is right now, let's talk.

What's the difference between brand strategy and creative direction?

Brand strategy decides why a business should matter and where it should sit relative to its competitors. Creative direction decides how that decision looks, sounds and feels in the work itself, a campaign, an identity system, a piece of packaging. Strategy comes first because there's nothing for creative direction to direct until a position exists to express.

You can have creative direction without brand strategy. Plenty of agencies sell exactly that, well, as a rebrand. You cannot have brand strategy without eventually needing creative direction to express it. For the pitfalls of getting that order wrong, and what the agencies who work with the world's biggest brands do differently, read the companion journal piece.

If your last rebrand solved the wrong problem, let's talk before you commission another one.

FAQ

  • What is brand strategy, in one sentence?

    The deliberate decision about what a business wants to be known for, to whom and why that should matter commercially, made before any design or marketing work begins.

  • What's the difference between brand strategy and brand identity?

    Brand identity, logo, colour palette, typography, imagery, is the visual expression of a brand strategy. A business can change its identity without changing its strategy, and vice versa, though the two should stay aligned.

  • What's the difference between brand strategy and marketing?

    Marketing is the ongoing activity of reaching an audience: campaigns, content, media spend, channel selection. Brand strategy sits above marketing and gives it direction, deciding what the business should be saying and to whom, before marketing decides how best to say it and where.

  • What's the difference between brand strategy and creative direction?

    Brand strategy decides why a business should matter and where it should sit. Creative direction decides how that decision looks, sounds and feels. Strategy comes first, always.

  • Who should own brand strategy inside a company?

    Someone with authority over the whole business, not just its marketing output, because it constrains decisions in product, pricing, recruitment and partnerships as well as communications. In larger organisations that's increasingly a Chief Brand Officer. In smaller ones, it can sit with a founder, provided the thinking and positioning work has been done.

  • Does a small or early-stage business actually need brand strategy?

    Every business already has one, chosen deliberately or not. A small business doesn't need a lengthy process, but it does need to have decided its position rather than let design and marketing choices accumulate into one by accident.

  • When is the right time to bring in brand strategy?

    Before any significant identity or marketing spend, ideally. In practice it's most often triggered by founding, a merger or acquisition, entry into a new market, a growth plateau or a leadership change.

  • Can a business skip brand strategy and go straight to a rebrand?

    It can, and it happens constantly. It's also the single most common cause of rebrands that look impressive but don't affect the commercial growth expected. A new identity built on an unexamined position is still a guess, sometimes a good one, but you won't know which until the money's already spent.

  • How long does brand strategy work typically take?

    Considerably less time than most businesses assume it should, and considerably more than a moodboard session. A properly run process is measured in weeks, not days, because it involves investigation and interrogation rather than a creative sprint.

  • Is brand strategy only relevant to large companies with big budgets?

    No. The scale of the process changes with the size and ambition of the business, but the underlying discipline, deciding what you're for and holding decisions accountable to it, applies equally to a two-person studio and a multinational.

Built on evidence, sharpened by experience, delivered as a clear path forward. If brand strategy is the gap between where your business is and where it needs to be, that's exactly the work we do.

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For the fuller argument, examples of brand strategy working and failing and a look at how Siegel+Gale, Edenspiekermann, Interbrand, Wolff Olins and Landor separate strategy from creative execution, read "Brand" Is Doing Too Much Work.