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Brand Strategy & Consultancy

Brand Strategy & Consultancy

Branding starts with strategy

What do you stand for? And what makes you stand out in your market?

These may seem like simple questions, but the answers rarely are.

Strategy is good decisions based on knowledge – not just numbers – and it starts with clear market positioning.

The brand strategy needs to resonate both internally and externally. Because the culture, experiences, and actions of your employees are closely related to how your customers and business partners experience your brand’s relevance and value.

Strategy is a choice. Make it yours – before others choose for you.

Our processes vary, but our point of departure for every brand task is always ABC.

A for Awareness

- Assessing what you’re known for and who knows you.

B for Business

- Your fundamental business strategy according to your CEO, board and corporate culture.

C for Customers

- Your customers’ behaviours and motivation: How well do you know them?

At the end of the day, we believe branding is integral to good business, and must be embraced at every level within the organisation to ensure it sits right when experienced out in the world. And this starts with strategy.

Brand Audit

– Evaluation is value creation

Book a Brand Audit and gain insights you can act on immediately as a brand manager, director, advisory board or management team.

You get an external expert’s view of your brand. How is it experienced across your visual identity, tone of voice and messaging? How is it communicated across your website, social media, and products. Is there a match between who you want to be and the signals you’re sending?

At a presentation meeting, we then review the insights and discuss how you can use them.

Brand Audits are aimed at all industries, and companies and organisations of all sizes.

Research

When it comes to strategy, taking the time to do proper research is often what separates the good from the not-so-good.

Conducting a thorough analysis to identify opportunities helps us uncover future potential through market landscaping and the identification of pains and insights. It is the difference between “Ah!” and “Aha!”. We mix and match surveys, driver analyses, founder interviews, desk and secondary research, segmentation, personas, tracking, focus groups and 1:1 interviews to your company’s needs. If the strategy is the fun part, then researching and diagnosis is the step just before. This process is guided by the good old seven Ps: Proper planning and preparation prevents piss-poor performance.

Brand Architecture

Brand architecture is not about building houses, but about making customers feel at home. Brand architecture involves stakeholders, brands and commercial decision-making, but it doesn’t have to be complicated. The aim is to create business value by establishing a structure that follows strategy and ultimately builds relationships.

Great brand architecture creates value. Poor brand architecture exposes internal confusion. For this reason, it is always a good idea to tailor your portfolio to your business. A house of brands or a branded house? It doesn’t matter. The key is to ask questions about your current brand architecture. What is the optimal structure? How do we get from A to B? If you don’t deliver on the decision-making, then it’s all just an academic exercise. Get moving!

Positioning

Put simply, position is what you stand for, which mean it is business critical at every stage and point in time. It may seem single-minded and emotional –because it is.

Positioning is the image you want to display, manage or change in markets and stakeholders’ minds, hearts – and, ultimately, guts. Consequently, it’s important to remember that the soft things are often the hardest things! And that positioning plays an integral role in daily execution, sales and persuasive messaging, making it equally important in the short and long term.

How would you ideally like stakeholders to perceive your business?

Naming

What's in a name?

Romeo and Juliet got it right. A name is only a way to distinguish people or brands and nothing in itself. An empty vessel that is.

Nevertheless, finding that name that can distinguish your #brand from others is not always easy. Should it fit in your product category - or not. Should it describe your product - or be abstract for you and your users to fill it with meaning? Which market should it resonate in? Do you need a .com domain? What feelings should it evoke?

Let's help you identify the right criteria and idea generate to find your future #name.

Brand Values

Dynamic values can help define who you are, how you behave, and what you cultivate as an organisation. Culture eats strategy for breakfast – or so the saying goes. This is precisely why culture must be incorporated into your brand. A motivating organisational culture can literally drive a strategy and a brand.

Your brand values need to be translated into communication and experiences that correspond to how you are experienced by your customers, business partners and employees.

Core Narrative

When you hear it, it seems so simple and straightforward. The story of your brand. And that is as it should be.

We work closely with you to extract this simple narrative, even when the reality in which you operate is highly complex.

A core narrative summarises the essence of your business: who you are, the difference you make, and how you make that difference. The narrative must be anchored internally – and position you externally.

By speaking to both the brain and the heart, your core narrative can be activated internally and externally, while serving as a starting point for your communication in more concrete and targeted messages

Brand Strategy Cases