Brand Strategy 101
A quick-start guide to mastering brand strategy. This post is originally outlined in our three-part Brand Strategy 101 series:
What is Brand Strategy?
A brand strategy is a long-term plan that details how the brand should communicate to its audience in order to build brand equity and market share.
The brand strategy process is the process of uncovering the brand’s positioning, personality, core values, vision, and mission and turning it into a plan that builds a brand with purpose, and fosters a loyal following.
A great brand strategy is goal-oriented, actionable, and acts as a foundation and design brief for the branding process.
Key benefits of using brand strategy
A brand strategy helps an organization’s brand in a variety of ways. A brand strategy helps create a sustainable, future-proof brand, that has clear core values, messaging, tone of voice, brand promise, and mission.
The process of brand strategy helps to analyze market opportunities and helps to facilitate positioning pivots
A strong, clear strategy helps the organizations align on a shared vision and goals
Clarifies the organization's core values and differentiates the company as purpose-driven, fostering consumer loyalty
Defines a distinct visual identity and tone of voice that resonates with their target audience
A brand strategy helps define and communicate the brand’s promise and mission statement to its customers
A brand strategy helps the internal team align with agencies and designers with a shared vision for the visual and verbal direction of the brand
Brand Strategy Framework
We work with either our 6 or 8-phase brand strategy framework. The core framework covers:
Brand audit — Past, present, and future
DNA — Understanding the company behind the brand
Vision — Looking back to look forward
Values — Defining our core values
Personality — Communicating our character
Mission — Moving forward with a clear purpose
1. Brand Audit
A brand is a story told consistently over time
— Michael Beirut
Looking internally is naturally a difficult challenge for any size of the organization. To do this effectively and together, we need to build from the ground up.
Our first activity is to audit our current brand. To do this, we first ask some fundamental questions:
When and where did our story begin?
What were our first products/ services?
What did we promise our first customers?
2. DNA
People don’t buy what you do. They buy why you do it.
— Simon Sinek
To understand the brand’s purpose we need to get to the ‘why’ behind it. We ask questions to start digging a little deeper.
What physical services/ products do you provide your customers?
This is a simple, direct statement about what you are offering the world. Example: “We are nanofibre product specialists”
What are the problems that you solve for your customers?
— Are you saving your customers their time like Amazon, offering low-cost products like Ikea, or promising fitness and the ability to level, or fast door-to-door, overnight delivery like FedEx. This question starts us thinking about the brand promise, but let’s get into that in more detail later!
We can use a service/ product map to help you understand your core offering.
3. Vision
69% of Consumers Need to Trust Brands Because of Its Impact on Society
— Edelman
More than ever, consumers are looking for ‘human’ brands. Brands that truly stand for similar values, that they can resonate with and buy into. Consider your organization’s past and future.
What are the three key things from your past that got you to where you are today?
We should first discuss the past, what are the key milestones in our history that have bought us to the position that we are in today?
What are the three key things you want from the next 50 years?
Consider your ideal, blue-sky future. How big is your company, how do you help your customers, and what do you want people to say about your brand?
To help visualize, we use a brand road map.
4. Values
89% of consumers stay loyal to brands that share their values.
— Fundera
Finding your core values is a tough process, and critiquing these into just three core values, can be extremely difficult. Begin by brainstorming your brand values.
Using a ‘value map’ tool, plot out values, that interconnect. To feel authentic, your three core values should overlap, and build on each other. To help find your three core values, we use overlapping values.
What are your foundation, differentiator and driving values?
Foundation value
Commonly a human and emotional attribute that we can build upwards from. It should give the brand somewhere to fight from. This value should illustrate the driving force behind us. Examples of foundation values might be ‘to be responsibile’, ‘to be trusted’ or ‘to empathise’.
Differentiator value
The differentiator value will be extruded from the foundation value, building onto it, into something more literal, less abstract and more real-life. This value should ideally be something that sets us apart. Examples might be ‘family-owned’ and ‘traditional’ and ‘innovative’.
Driving value
The final and top value will be the one most real, least abstract, and most actionable. Examples to consider, ‘to revolutionise’, ‘to inspire’ and ‘to educate’.
5. Personality
94% of people said they’d be highly likely to recommend a brand they were emotionally engaged with.
— Gensler
We look into the personality of your brand, using brand personality sliders.
6. Mission
The top 4 qualities people use to describe why they are loyal to a brand are cost, quality, experience, and consistency.
What does your business offer?
The physical, the literal, the right here, right now.
How are you unique?
What is it that you do differently, better, or faster? What can you do that your competitors cannot?
If not for profit, why should you exist?
This should directly align with your values. This is your reason for being. This is your mission to the world, your calling card. Your emotional hook! This should convey your personality.
Your brand promise/ mission statement
Pull these three answers together into a mission statement you would be proud to shout from the rooftops, to have on the front page of your website. What would you want people to say about your brand behind your back? It must be authentic, honest, real, and communicate deeply and directly why you are in business, why customers should take notice of you.
How do you run a brand strategy workshop?
Finally, we look at the tools we’ve developed to use when working with our clients through the brand strategy process.
Running a brand strategy workshop is not a mythical process. With any client-service provider process, the key is to be well prepared and take your time.
The brand strategy workshop is the perfect environment for asking the right questions to the right people
The goal is a long-term roadmap to achieve the brand's vision
Remote or in-person?
Remote workshops are now our go-to choice as we regularly facilitate workshops in the USA and Europe from our office in Hong Kong. To facilitate the workshop we use screen sharing video calls or a traditional in-person presentation. The convenience and focus that video calls now allow create the perfect environment for the workshop.
Traditional video call software that allows screen sharing such as Google Meet, and Zoom work very well.
Digital whiteboards such as Miro, and Figma take collaboration to the next level allowing better collaboration but are not totally necessary as the facilitator will be sharing their screen and approach.
Whether remote or in-person, we recommend including stakeholders of various levels, positions, and specialties within the organization. This sets a platform for a diverse, honest, and meaningful dialogue.
Method
The time required for the brand strategy workshop will depend on the size and stage of the organization. A new organization might benefit enough from our Two-Day Brand Strategy Template. A rebrand project of an existing organization will require more in-depth analysis and digestion, with the full 8-phase comprehensive brand strategy approach.
In order to ensure the process is not rushed, we allow two sessions of two to four hours per session over a two-day period. We split the workshop over two sessions to allow the first day for discovery, and the second day for review.
Session 1 — Discovery
We run through the entire framework during the first day with the stakeholders. Following the workshop, without the stakeholders, we then write up our findings into the deck, reviewing and iterating on the ideas.
The first part of the brand strategy process is to dive deeply into your organization to uncover your DNA, vision, and core values, and develop these into your compelling brand purpose, promise and mission.
During interviews with key stakeholders, we get to know the company and begin to build out our design brief.
The first session allows us as facilitators to ask questions, and create space for dialogue.
Session 2 — Review & iterate
The second session lets us run through the whole framework with the team, critiquing, editing, and adding to what we discovered on day one.
As facilitators it is at this point we step up our diagnosis of the current brand, and take the team through the core values, culminating with our proposals for the brand’s mission statement.
Rather than questions of the first session, the second session uses our observations, and critical analysis to initiate dialogue. The brand strategy workshop is still in flow and requires movement, so we might go back and forth through the framework with the team, editing, observing, and talking until we reach mutual agreements.
The goal for the second session is to reach the finalized core values, personality, and mission statement.
Brand Strategy Template
The brand strategy template is the core framework that we follow through the brand strategy workshop. The customizable PPT/ Keynote template allows real-time editing while taking center stage during the workshop.
The screen-shared brand strategy template is the focal point of the workshop that keeps everyone working together.
Brand Archetype Cards
Brand archetype cards are a great resource to send to the workshop participants ahead of schedule so they can start familiarising themselves and considering the personality of their brand.
Worksheets
Printable worksheets are another great tool that allows the participants to take notes along the process. These can be scanned and sent to the facilitator after the first strategy session.
Core Value Explorer
Helping your team or client reach their chosen brand values is often a difficult process, full of opinion, ego, and subjectivity. One of the tools we’ve developed that help to align the team in the process, is the core value explorer tool.
This is the latest tool we created to use with our clients to kickstart the core value exploration process. 180 core values consolidated into categories of Form, Success, Wisdom, Expertise, Connection, Virtue, Courage, Emotion, and Love.
Our Core Value Explorer from our Brand Strategy Workshop Toolkit
Our Core Value Explorer from our Brand Strategy Workshop Toolkit
More posts in Brand Strategy —
About BrandWerks —
BrandWerks is a design resource company focused on advancing the practice of brand strategy.
We know that brand strategy can be a difficult beast to master. We create brand strategy templates and resources that help designers, agencies, and brand strategists master brand strategy.
Our tools are actionable and fully customizable and founded in a commercial approach that helps guide you and your clients through the process.