Brand Strategy
Brand strategy is the foundational thinking that decides what a brand stands for, who it's for, and how it wins, long before any identity or campaign gets made.
What is brand strategy?
Brand strategy covers the tactical thinking that shapes exactly how a brand shows up, including its reason for existence, point of difference, target audience and core behaviours.
Typically the first phase of any branding or rebranding project, brand strategy sets the framework for all creative work to follow. This allows brands to consistently build trust and recognition across all relevant channels.
A name, a logo and a system are all crucial parts of a brand, but the creative strategy behind them matters just as much. Without it, a brand lacks any meaningful foundation to hold itself to or scale from.
What's included in a brand strategy engagement?
Positioning, purpose, values, and a platform to hold them are the core outputs. The exact mix depends on what the brand already has and what it's missing.
Brand Differentiation
The clear water that helps a brand separate itself in a crowded market.
Brand Platform
The principles that guide teams to activate and reinforce a brand's identity.
Competitive Audit
Mapping the territories owned by the competition, before claiming new ground.
Brand Purpose
The reason why a brand exists, and why the world would be worse without it.
How brand strategy works in practice: METEORIC
METEORIC shows what effective brand strategy looks like from scratch. Faced with a crisis-hit, opaque energy market with little trust left in it, the brand needed a compelling strategic foundation if it was going to restore hope to CFOs.
Meteoric
For most organisations, the concept of optimally run, hyper-efficient energy is the stuff of science fiction. So we positioned METEORIC as the stuff of science fact, with one clear, ownable position: "out-of-this-world power, finally available on Earth".
Every other element of the brand charted the same course, starting with the name all the way through to the visual and verbal identity and website.
Outcome: A highly differentiated brand designed to shift entire category perception, traced back to a single-minded strategic idea. Proof that strategy is essential to a brand, rather than a nice-to-have.
FAQs
Related terms
We zero in on the one thing only your brand can claim, then dial it up until it’s impossible to ignore.
