What we do

What is brand strategy?

Well, first of all, your brand isn’t your logo or your founder’s story. Those are brand elements. Your brand is what people say about you when you aren’t around. Your brand strategy is how you’re positioned in the minds of others versus your competition. Why is this important?

Without a clear brand strategy, you won’t be able to be consistent - a key characteristic of strong brands. Why do you want a strong brand? Because having a strong brand is necessary for generating unusual returns over time. Consistency means ensuring that all of your brand elements and marketing are echoing the same messaging. Your brand story, aesthetic, tone and your product or service — all of it needs to be synched up. Otherwise, you are losing revenue. How?

When your brand is inconsistent, you say you are one thing and then do another. For instance, when you say you’re a well-established heritage brand and then your advertising is gimmicky or bargain-based, you are confusing your customer. Confusion is a symptom of a failed or non-existent brand strategy. So, what does a solid brand strategy look like?

A sound brand strategy is a comprehensive blueprint for all of your brand and marketing activities. The execution of your brand strategy occurs in the form of your marketing. This encompasses all of your business decisions related to but not limited to: what you sell, how you sell it, where you sell it and to whom. Your marketing efforts must be aligned with your brand strategy or else your marketing dollars are being spent errantly and almost assuredly wastefully.

So, what does non-strategic marketing look like?

Non-strategic marketing is common though not among highly successful enterprises. Since we tend to see businesses “in the tails,” the extreme winners and losers, we don’t often hear about the great bellcurve of mediocre marketing. Few have the discipline or foresight necessary to invest in a solid brand strategy and then to stay the course through the inevitable short-terms ups and downs of day-to-day business dealings. It’s just too hard.

But if you do look closely at any highly successful business, you’ll see all of the hallmarks of a well-executed brand strategy. You’ll see consistency, simplicity, relevance and honesty expressed over and over again.

Back to what non-strategic marketing looks like. Well, let’s start with what it feels like. It feels desperate. It feels reactionary. It feels inauthentic. It’s a bid to make a bit more money in the next few months because water is filling in your boat. It’s placing ads at the last moment, increasing trying a tactic that is working for somebody else, it’s a Hail Mary pass that works just enough to be addictive. It’s trying to appeal to everyone which inevitably attracts no one. It’s vanilla coke. And no matter how little you know about marketing theory, you know it when you see it.

People don’t respond well to hap hazard marketing. They sense that something is wrong and often move along. Now, maybe some aspect of your business saves you. Maybe your product or sales team is truly high performing, that will keep you going like a motor on a sailboat. The problem is, you might be ignoring the absence of wind in your sales…Denial is a favored coping mechanism for marketing problems.

But there is hope. There is a hope when you have a trusted marketing partner who will create a sound brand strategy for you and efficiently execute on this plan.