Brand Strategy

Architecting a successful brand strategy makes everything that follows — the marketing programs, website, product launches, etc., easier to execute and likelier to succeed.

How do we create a brand strategy?

The process includes:

Defining the strategic opportunity

Every brand strategy engagement begins with a definition of the business problem and the identification of the core challenges that may be mitigated by a change or update of the brand strategy. A few common scenarios we commonly address:

• Client is frustrated by slower than expected growth
• Client is concerned that market does not perceive the value of their new products, services or solutions
• Client is worried about competitors grabbing market share
• Client is anxious to present new capabilities to a market that perceives them in an old way
• Client leadership has changed and they wish to signal that change to the market with new messaging and a new visual brand identity
• Client has new product or service they'd like to promote

Competitive Analysis and Audit

Before engaging in brand strategy analysis, we conduct a thorough audit of the competitive space by auditing the competition's websites and reviewing pertinent articles, white papers and blogs. This gives us the contextual perspective we need to ultimately identify and visualize a brand strategy that will differentiate our client from all others in the marketplace.

Internal Analysis

To get to the heart of a brand strategy, we conduct thorough interviews with internal stakeholders. Interviews take the form of both group meetings and individual conversations. Observing and noting the differences in the group view of brand strategy versus insights gained from individual conversations, we gain an understanding of attitudes, beliefs and facts that can later be measured against what customers and other external parties reveal.

External Analysis

Subsequent to internal analysis, we engage in customer conversations by taking a cross-section of customers at different levels and from different industries, as relevant to a particular engagement. We create a custom questionnaire to guide the conversations and test internal assumptions. This testing is a necessary counterpoint to the internal perspective and is often informative as to whether a company is on the same track with customer perceptions. Sometimes unanticipated issues are revealed that have meaningful impact on the customer relationship. As the objective interviewer, we gain insight that our client would not otherwise learn.

Gap Analysis

Based upon our Gap Analysis — the delta between internal and external findings, we posit possible brand strategy positioning statements and create "positioning maps" to demonstrate how these different brand strategy approaches compare to the competition. From these options, our client agrees on a particular direction, approves it and we move to the next phase: we visualize the strategy using combinations of words and images in a format we refer to as a Mood Board, which is the bridge between the intellectual content of a brand strategy and the visualization of that as it will later appear on the website, in collateral and any other visual media.

To gain perspective on the relationship between Branding and Search, read our white paper, The Power of Branding through Search Engine Marketing.