Understanding Brand Strategy – A Blueprint for Success
Brand strategy is a term that often gets tossed around in business circles, but its meaning can vary significantly depending on who you ask. To put it simply, your brand is the sum of everything you do and say — it's the perception that lives in people's minds about your business. Brand strategy, then, is the deliberate effort to shape these perceptions in a way that benefits your company.
The Essence of Brand Strategy
At its core, brand strategy is about more than just the "softer" sides of a business, like vision, mission, and values. While these elements are crucial, they must be aligned with your overall business strategy to be effective. Together, these strategies address two critical aspects: commercial opportunity (how you generate revenue) and category distinction (how you stand out and stay relevant in the market).
A successful brand strategy digs deep into what gives your business a competitive edge. It uncovers hidden truths within your category that you can leverage and identifies the shared beliefs between your brand and your customers that need to be highlighted. These elements come together to form the brand idea — the guiding star that influences everything from internal culture to product development.
What Brand Strategy Is (And What It Isn’t)
Many businesses make the mistake of oversimplifying or overcomplicating their brand strategy. A good brand strategy is neither a basic tagline nor a convoluted framework filled with jargon. Instead, it should be:
Focused: Everyone in your organisation should understand what success looks like for both the business and the brand.
Accessible and Actionable: Your brand strategy should be easy to grasp and apply across the entire organisation.
Inspirational: It should motivate people to believe in and commit to the brand.
In contrast, a poor brand strategy is vague, generic, or overly idealistic without any practical application. A proper brand strategy requires discipline and often involves making tough choices about what your brand will focus on.
The Importance of Brand Strategy
A well-defined brand strategy provides clarity. It helps your business stay focused on what it does best, makes decision-making easier, and ultimately drives commercial success. Think of it as the foundation of a house — no matter how beautiful the design, weak foundations will eventually cause the structure to collapse.
In today's world, where intangible assets like brand perception are increasingly valuable, a strong brand strategy can significantly impact your bottom line. For instance, Airbnb's brand strategy, built around the idea of "Belong Anywhere," transformed the hospitality industry by shifting the focus from the generic hotel experience to the unique experience of staying in someone's home. This strategy not only resonated with customers but also played a pivotal role in Airbnb's massive growth.
Building a Brand Strategy
Creating a brand strategy involves getting into the nitty-gritty of your business. It's about being honest about what needs to change to move your brand forward. A good brand strategist can take complex information and distill it into something simple yet powerful.
Key principles to keep in mind include:
Assess the Current State: Understand how your brand is currently perceived and how that compares to where you want to go.
Align with Business Strategy: Your brand strategy should support your business goals and resonate across all departments, not just marketing.
Think Big, Act Small: Consider both short-term actions and long-term goals to keep your strategy relevant and effective.
Balance Data and Storytelling: Use data to provide evidence and narratives to inspire action.
Revisit Regularly: A brand strategy should evolve as your business grows and adapts to market changes.
Implementing Your Brand Strategy
Creating a brand strategy is one thing; implementing it is another. The real challenge lies in applying it consistently across your organisation. This means using the brand strategy to guide decisions in marketing, product development, sales, and even HR.
Here are some questions to help put your brand strategy into action:
Marketing: How can we use our brand's tone and voice to stand out in our campaigns?
Product Development: How do our product features reinforce our brand's promise?
Sales: Does the sales experience align with the expectations set by our brand?
Culture: How does our brand influence the kind of employees we attract?
Leadership: Are our leaders' public messages consistent with our brand's positioning?
Tools and Frameworks to Get Started
There are numerous frameworks to help you build a brand strategy, but the key is to choose one that fits your business. Here are a few to consider:
The 4C’s: This framework helps you look at the broader cultural context, customer needs, category insights, and company strengths.
Mission, Vision, Values: A classic framework that covers what your business does, how it does it, and why.
The 5P’s: A more detailed framework that includes Purpose, Positioning, Proposition, Personality, and Principles.
Brand Idea: The central concept that drives your brand's creative direction.
The Golden Circle: Made famous by Simon Sinek, this model focuses on the What, How, and Why of your company.
Conclusion
A brand strategy is more than just a marketing tool — it's a fundamental part of your business that influences everything from product development to company culture. A strong brand strategy helps your business stand out, aligns your team, and drives commercial success. By building and implementing a thoughtful brand strategy, your business can confidently navigate the market, attract loyal customers, and achieve long-term growth.
by
Owen Phillips-Walmsley
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