Clear, owned outputs.
- Research summary
- Positioning statement and brand platform
- Personality and tone of voice guide
- Brand architecture recommendation
- Message hierarchy by audience
Brand strategy defines how you want to be known and why anyone should care. It sets out who you serve, what makes you different, what you believe and how you speak — in a form that guides design, content, campaigns and even hiring. We build it from research, not from adjectives.
The problems Brand Strategy solves.
Research, positioning, personality, architecture and messaging as one clear foundation.
Leaders describe the company differently from each other.
Positioning is generic: quality, service, innovation.
Several products or sub-brands confuse customers.
Creative work starts without a clear strategic brief.
What Brand Strategy covers.
Brand research
Customer, stakeholder and competitor research to ground decisions.
Positioning
A clear statement of who you serve, how you're different and why it matters.
Purpose and values
What drives the business, written so it guides real decisions.
Personality and voice
How the brand behaves and sounds, with examples.
Brand architecture
How master brand, sub-brands and products relate.
Message hierarchy
Core messages and proof points for each audience.
The building blocks of a brand strategy.
Brand strategy answers a few hard questions in writing, so design and marketing decisions have something to be judged against.
- Positioning
- For whom, against whom, and the one reason to choose you, stated in a sentence.
- Value proposition
- What customers get, why it matters to them and the proof behind it.
- Personality
- How the brand behaves and sounds, described with examples rather than adjectives alone.
- Architecture
- How master brand, sub-brands and products relate, so the portfolio stays clear.
- Messaging hierarchy
- The primary message and the supporting points for each audience.
Why it's worth it.
Alignment
Leadership, marketing and sales describe the business the same way.
Better creative
Designers and writers start from a clear, shared brief.
Lasting difference
A position competitors can't easily copy.
When Brand Strategy is the right move.
- A merger, acquisition or change of business focus.
- A start-up preparing for launch or fundraising.
- A company with several products under unclear brands.
Technologies & platforms
- Miro
- Typeform
- Google Workspace
- Figma
How Brand Strategy work runs.
- 01
Immerse
Workshops, interviews and a review of your market, audience and current brand.
- 02
Define
The strategic foundation or creative brief, agreed before design starts.
- 03
Explore
Initial routes or concepts presented with their rationale.
- 04
Refine
The chosen direction developed and tested in real applications.
- 05
Roll out
Guidelines, templates and files handed over, with support for launch.
Brand Strategy questions.
How involved does our leadership team need to be?
Quite involved at key moments: interviews at the start and decision workshops along the way. Brand strategy decided without leadership rarely sticks.
Will you interview our customers?
Where possible, yes. A handful of customer conversations usually reveals more about what makes you valuable than internal workshops alone.
How is brand strategy used afterwards?
As the brief for identity, website, content and campaigns, and as a reference for decisions about messaging, partnerships and hiring.
Talk to us about brand strategy.
Send us your current brand strategy plan, or the problem you want it to fix. We'll reply with what we would do first and why.