The 5-Step Brand Strategy Sprint
A quick, sure-fire approach to tame the brand strategy beast!
The goal of the brand strategy sprint is to quickly dive into your brand and align the team on the direction you want to take.
In order to do this we need to understand where your brand is right now, by understanding what makes your brand, in order to reveal your core values. From here we can then build your personality, purpose and mission.
86% of Consumers State That Authenticity Is Important
— Stackla
In order to communicate your brands authenticity, we need to uncover your true core values. The brand strategy sprint process is designed to uncover your core values, and to create and communicate your brand’s mission.
There are five steps to the brand strategy sprint
DNA
Who are you, right here and now?Vision
Whats in your past and future?Core values
What do you stand for?Personality
Who are you?Your brand mission
Why should people care about your brand?
1. DNA
First off, to get to know your brand with some fresh thinking, lets get a fresh perspective. Ask yourself:
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 brand promise, but let’s get into that in more detail later!
Be fast, be critical, be ruthless. We can use a service/ product map to help you understand your core offering.
2. 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 organisation’s past and future.
What are the three key things from your past that got you to where we 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, what do you want people to say about your brand?
A brand road map is a useful tool.
3. Core values
89% of consumers stay loyal to brands that share their values.
— Fundera
Finding your core values is a very tough process, and critiquing these into just three core values, can be extremely difficult.
Begin by brainstorming your brand values.
What are your three most important 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’.
4. Personality
94% of people said they’d be highly likely to recommend a brand they were emotionally engaged with.
— Gensler
The perfect personality archetype is where opportunity overlaps with an archetype that feels honest and true to your brand.
What are the personalities of your key competitors?
Use a brand archetype wheel, and plot where your competitors are, and which character they express.
Where are the opportunities for your brand to differentiate from its competitors?
Consider the wheel, where are the spaces, where are the opportunities?
What is your brands personality?
5. Your brand 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 you 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 to why you are in business, why customers should take notice of you.
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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.