This term – ‘Brand Strategy’ can sometime confuse people. ‘Isn’t my brand my logo? What’s so strategic about that?’. Well I thought you’d never ask… Here’s my thoughts on both the idea of branding and of strategy.

A Brand is….

A brand is essentially your reputation. A combination of your purpose, your personality and values and your people. It’s represented in all kinds of ways from the feeling you give people when they speak to your team, the visuals, the way you speak, act and follow through.

A strong brand will attract the right customers, bring higher profit margins, build loyalty, advocacy and attract the best talent and partnerships.

Why is branding so important?

Because it makes an emotional connection with your audience. A good brand is an authentic representation of your business, AND connects with your ideal audience, or your ‘people’.

When people are confronted with the conflict between thinking and feeling, the brain operates to make feeling triumph over thinking. Think about those significant times in your life when a decision had to be made, like buying a house or car.

Once you have fallen in love with it, you will find a rational reason to defend any negatives, you will try and change the order of importance to prove to yourself that you’re making a good decision. Therefore, you want your audience to feel positively towards your product, and to stop there. Once they start to overthink, they will come up with reasons to compare, delay or reconsider their purchase decision.

“we are much more driven by intangible, emotional forces; the need to be recognised and to feel ownership, to feel a sense of accomplishment, to find security in a long-term commitment and a sense of shared purpose, to feel as if our labours and lives matter in some way.”

– Dan Ariely

A strategy is….

The word strategy gets used a lot, and sometimes the actual meaning of the word gets a little lost.

The definition of the word ‘strategy’ is: “a high level plan to achieve one or more goals under conditions of uncertainty.” Its origins come from the military and represented the high level decision making for how to win the war.  It was about how you were going to approach and win each battle – the bigger picture objectives, the battlefield, the enemy, the conditions, your troops and ammunition.

I prefer to think of it in a less deadly way. I use the sporting analogy:

An understanding of the playing field, the players, your team, your goals, your game plan.

Chances are, you have some sort of a strategy in your head, if you don’t have one on paper. It’s based on who you are, what you care about, why you’re in business, and what you know about your customers. You intuitively know a lot of things we address in a brand strategy but there will be others you may not have even considered or have some risky assumptions about.

This is a chance to lift your eyes up and see the big picture.

A brand strategy…

A Brand Strategy provides you with clarity and a way forward to create a brand that truly reflects you and your business, while positioning for growth. It matches your business with a deep understanding the various audiences and how to best reach them.

This is where we explore the world in which your brand lives. It’s about capturing insights, clarifying and defining your brand proposition and story. Using empathy to view the world as your customers do and using design thinking to capture the magic. Staking your position in the changing marketplace.

All sales and marketing activities become easy when you know where you are headed, who you want to work with and how you plan to get there.

Hearts and minds

A brand strategy requires both heart; intuition, emotions and imagination as well as mind; analytical, decisive, logical thinking. This is a living, breathing document, something that will evolve and take shape as you go.