The Key Questions of Brand Strategy
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The Key Questions of Brand Strategy
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We use these tools to help us and our clients reach a powerful, simple, actionable brand strategy.
A great brand strategy has the magical ability to humanize the brand enough that it becomes as familiar and lovable to you as a good friend. Their values resonate with your values and you become a loyal member of the tribe.
Reaching this magical place is not accidental. We use these questions and tools to help us and our clients reach a powerful, simple, actionable brand strategy.
Brand Audit
A brand audit is a health checkup, a simple analysis of your current service offering, positioning, values and whether these are communicated effectively through your visual identity.
Key questions we ask
When and where did your story begin?
What were your first products/ services?
What did you promise your first customers?
Service Map
Brainstorm your services/ products. Understand the categories. Use the service map to help reach
Key questions we ask
What physical services/ products do you provide your customers?
What are the problems that you solve for your customers?
Competitor Landscape
Where are we in relation to our competitors.
There are a couple of tools we can use to visualize where we are against our competitors. Plot your competitors and your brand on two charts. Price/ quality and market share/ customer satisfaction.
Competitor Landscape from our Brand Strategy Templates
Competitor Analysis from our Brand Strategy Templates
Key questions we ask
What are the personalities of your key competitors?
Where are there opportunities for you to differentiate against your competitors?
Road Map
Key questions we ask
What are the three key things from your past that got you to where you are today?
What do you want to achieve in the near future?
What do you want to achieve in the distant future?
What do you want people to remember about your company?
What are the three key things you want from the next 50 years?
What are the three key things that make us who we are today?
Value Map, Journey, Pyramid
A value brainstorm is a great place to begin when finding core values. Brainstorm your brand's values.
Example values: Passion, Diversity, Leadership, Collaboration, Integrity, Accountability, Respect, Quality, Brave, Building relationships, Championing differences, Humble, Curious, Open-minded, Customer-driven, Effective, Good value service, Efficient, Beauty, Function, and Reliability.
Use a value map to distill the values into 6. Three key values, and three-second level, overlapping values.
Value Map from our Brand Strategy Templates
Consider your three core values within a larger story. Expand on these key values to find which is the foundation, differentiator and driving value.
Value Journey from our Brand Strategy Templates
We can then simplify these values visually, using a value pyramid:
Value Pyramid from our Brand Strategy Templates
Key questions we ask
What are your three most important brand values?
What are your foundation, differentiator and driving values?
Brand Archetypes Cards
Brand archetypes are an incredibly powerful tool in aligning the team with your competitor’s brand personalities and finding opportunities.
Archetype wheel from our Brand Strategy Templates
Brand Archetype Cards from our Brand Strategy Workshop Toolkit
Consider your competitor’s brand archetypes. Place your competitors on the brand archetype wheel. Considering the remaining spaces, is there an opportunity for your brand to explore?
Mission Mapping
Start your brand's mission by considering first what you provide. The physical and tangible products and services. Then reduce that into your how, and finally, your why.
‘What’, ‘how’ & ‘why’ map from our Brand Strategy Templates
‘What’, ‘how’ & ‘why’ from our Brand Strategy Templates
Key questions we ask
What does our business offer?
How are we unique?
If not for profit, why should we exist?
Visual Metaphors
The visual reference is drawn from visual expressions. This mood board sets the context for the brand and might consider visuals, graphics, colour palettes and the general aesthetic mood. This mood board is the first step in creating visuals from strategy and should start to gently paint a visual flavour for the new brand.
Key questions we ask
What personality traits can be revealed from the core values?
What visual expressions can be pulled from the personality traits?
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About the author, Adam —
Adam is the founder of BrandCraft, a branding and design agency.
On top of our client-facing projects, our small team developed BrandWerks where we create brand strategy tools and templates to help you master brand strategy and the business of design.
Our actionable tools are fully editable and founded in a commercial approach that guides your clients through the brand strategy process.
Learn more —
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