What Brand Strategy Is And Is Not

I often see designers do something else and position it as brand strategy.

At the same time, there are other designers who are actually doing brand strategy but aren’t calling it such

Is there anything wrong with these? Not necessarily.

Brand strategy is a fairly new discipline in the marketing world. As more and more brands are competing in the same space through the years, businesses have found the need to plan ahead to differentiate themselves from the market to effectively reach their ideal audience.

But without a clear definition of what brand strategy is and isn’t – the value of our work as brand strategists get diluted because our clients won’t know what to expect from investing in brand strategy or even understand what all of that entails.

So here’s a brief glimpse of what this infamously-elusive-yet-highly transformational-approach called brand strategy is and isn’t:

Brand strategy is not the meaning behind the logo

Logos that hold stories or have a hidden meaning behind them are always interesting. For designers, it can even be an exciting creative challenge to infuse something deeper into these logos. When you delve into the brand strategy process, you get to have a better understanding of the brand and can then be able to propose more meaningful logos.

But that’s not the only thing brand strategy is for. The meaning behind the logo is just a tiny piece of the entire brand, and is often not even a requirement when you deliver the brand strategy. 

Instead, it allows you to propose creative innovations that present the brand in a fresh way

What are creative innovations or creative solutions? They’re unique executions that make the brand exciting, sought-after, and well-loved by its audience that go beyond visual design. If you want to up level your process, provide transformative value to the brand and truly delight your clients, you have full permission to present creative solutions that would allow the brand to stand out and be distinct from everyone else.

Maybe it can be a unique digital execution? Or the brand can approach their communications from a different angle? Or maybe the brand has an innovative way to improve customer loyalty. This is what makes brand strategy such a fun, rejuvenating, and energizing process. 

Brand strategy is not the same as creative and artistic direction

Adapting a strategic approach is something that a lot of designers are starting to infuse into their own processes. But, having a strategy around design doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s considered a brand strategy.

Creative direction focuses on the artistic expression of the brand. It centers around how the brand colors, typography system, photography style, and other visual elements work together as an ecosystem. And typically, the creative direction stems from what the brand strategy directs.

Brand strategy is an in-depth plan on how to verbally & visually articulate the value of the brand

On the other hand, brand strategy focuses on building the internal foundation of the brand, which is sustained for the long term. It involves crafting the brand’s mission, values, positioning, and overall message.

With brand strategy initiating the brand building process, you identify what the brand is all about so you can plan out how to verbally, visually, and emotionally articulate the value of the brand. In short, brand strategy looks at the overall brand picture not just the design piece of it. 

Brand strategy is not a data dump of information

Brand strategy is not a list of your client’s mission, values, personality, differentiator, and message. It’s not just a compilation of data organized into a 35-page PDF guide. Being able to identify these pillars of the brand is one thing, but it’s another thing to interpret how these brand elements work together to help your clients achieve specific results. Without the actual implementation of the strategy that was crafted, your roadmap or document will just end up collecting dust in your client’s digital drawers (and we don’t want that!).

Brand strategy is a roadmap of how the brand can reach its goals

The essence of doing brand strategy is to equip clients with an actionable plan they can follow through with. As a brand strategist, you have to remember that people come to you because they don’t know as much as you. For example, even if you know very well the purpose of having brand values, some clients don’t. So it’s important to indicate the intention behind the information you’ll be passing on to your clients. How do they use that part of the strategy? Where and when do they use it? They have to know how to carry out their brand strategy.

Gaining clarity on what brand strategy actually entails, will make it much easier for you to discuss with your clients about the difference it can bring to their businesses. At the same time, when you truly understand the value of what you do as a brand strategist, alongside the incredible results you can contribute, you’ll discover a newfound confidence is positioning yourself as a true creative partner to your clients and consequently charge profitable rates that reflect that.

Want to learn more about brand strategy? Sign up for the waitlist for my upcoming Brand Strategy course launching January 2023 to gain access to an exclusive early bird discount and be the first to know when doors open! 🙂