Our structured brand strategy process is all about helping leaders to diagnose challenges, redefine market position and align their people behind a shared direction. To do that, we translate market pressures and your ambitions as a leadership team into a business-aligned framework to drive performance, strengthen differentiation and ensure cultural focus.
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Executive brief
Q: When should leaders consider a brand strategy process?
Our brand strategy process helps organisations clarify challenges, transform how their brand creates value, and validate the new direction. It’s designed for companies looking to increase their brand performance metrics, pivoting, under pressure, or seeking a reset in how they compete and are perceived.
Q: What are the three phases of a brand strategy process?
The process includes:
- Clarification – uncovering real issues and opportunities using insights from customers, stakeholders, competitors, and data.
- Transformation – redefining what the brand stands for, including its positioning, name, identity, and story.
- Validation – testing and refining the strategy internally to ensure alignment, credibility, and buy-in before rollout.
Q: How does a robust brand strategy process connect to business performance?
It links brand strategy directly to business outcomes by aligning brand meaning with strategic intent. The brand becomes a lever for margin growth, differentiation, employee engagement and resolute reputation management.
Q: How do we use AI in the brand strategy process?
AI supports analysis by finding patterns across stakeholder interviews, industry data and customer insights. It helps identify themes, validate hypotheses and create informed personas, adding rigour to our human interpretation.
Q: What tools and frameworks are included?
Key tools include the Brand Report Card, a Brand DNA model (based on Kapferer’s Brand Prism or a custom framework), Opportunity Statement and the 6 Shares model for evaluating success.
Q: What outcomes should leaders expect from a brand strategy process?
A unified, confident brand that clarifies market position, strengthens competitive differentiation, and provides decision-makers with clear guiderails for how to best use their brand to align meaning and margin.
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Best Future is our brand strategy process for organisations looking to build a Confident Brand. It focuses on gaining a strong understanding of your organisation’s business issues and how to best resolve them through the lens of the brand. It’s a brand transformation strategy program for companies that are looking to achieve brand-driven growth, pivoting, under-performing, under competitive pressure or looking to re-set their place in a market and how they are perceived and understood through their brands.
Key business outcomes
Of course, a brand transformation strategy process must focus on defining the brand and what it can mean. But beyond that, a brand definition framework should also clarify a number of other business impacts:
- How each brand within the company’s portfolio aligns with the overall strategy, and the role it plays in fulfilling revenue and reputational aims
- How senior decision makers can leverage the redefined brand to reinforce market positioning and increase overall competitiveness
- How the brand can support (and justify) planned upticks in margin and/or volume
- How the brand can align with the overall culture (through the creation of a brand culture) to focus operational performance
Further reading: Why linking strategy, culture and stories matters
Too often, leaders respond to the brand strategy process at surface levels. The temptation is to pigeon-hole “brand” as a communication or marketing tool rather than assessing where and how the brand(s) are, or should be, contributing value to the business. So people concentrate on the outputs rather than the implications and application of those outputs to the achievement of the business’s broader objectives.
The secret to brand-led business strategy is for senior leaders contemplating a brand strategy process to ask these two questions:
- What do we want our brand(s) to achieve that it is not delivering?
- Why will doing this now work to our competitive advantage?
Asking these two questions helps generate what is too often missing: leadership agenda -brand alignment.
Case in point
Several years ago, we did work for an educational institution that was facing falling volumes. Initial discussions with the senior team focused on refreshing the look and feel to help the brand feel more relevant. We saw immediately that was not going to be enough.
Subsequently, we were able to work with that team to probe deeper. We challenged them to ‘justify’ their role in the market by defining their specific place and contribution to the sector. Repositioning them to that place separated them from other players. It also gave them a specific audience to pursue, a clear presence, and a basis for building a distinctive DNA.
But we didn’t stop there. We asked the senior team to probe the business strategy and, in doing so, to define what success looked like. We were then able to systematically link their new brand with key objectives.
For example, perceived lack of relevance about the institution itself was affecting course interest and therefore revenues. A key opportunity for the brand was to elevate the institution into the “active consideration” set. This in turn lifted enquiries and supported the sales team to increase conversions. Face-lifting the brand was part of making this – but much more important was connecting all the dots from what needed to happen for the business to succeed to how the new brand could be applied to directly assist course recruiters.
Here are three further questions you can ask as you start to set your brand’s strategic direction.
“Invest in this level of brand strategy process if you’re depending on your brand as your primary signal in the marketplace, and you need to systematically upgrade its effectiveness.”
Not an immediate solution
Timing can be a key tension for organisations looking at this level of change. Sometimes, the organisation is already being impacted by what’s happening and there is pressure to act quickly to resolve the pain. (As the truism goes: it’s always the wrong time for a crisis.) If that’s the case, while a transformation program may offer the fullest solution in such circumstances, perhaps you’re better off starting with something quicker, like a strategy session, to get things underway. That way, people can why a brand strategy process aligns with the circumstances you are facing. There’s more on that at the end of this piece.
Full disclosure: building a brand strategy through this level of transformational process is not a fast-track exercise, and, inevitably, it raises questions and crosses boundaries beyond marketing. But if you’re depending on your brand(s) as your primary signal in the marketplace, it’s an investment well worth considering. And it’s something we’d recommend if your brand is under-powered for your ambitions and you need to systematically upgrade its effectiveness.
Our brand strategy process won’t immediately fix your sales performance. It won’t directly change your operational capacity – although it will, and should, deeply influence the tenor of your culture. What it will do is provide the definition and identifying guide rails for how you need to be understood internally and externally if you are to succeed.
Want to see a business case for doing this? Read: How to decide if you need a brand strategy
Positioning and strategy
By the way, there are a full range of terms that marketers use around brand. Definitions vary, and as a result, this can lead to considerable confusion around what is meant. We try and keep the range of terms we use reasonable, but the distinctions between concepts are important:
- Brand strategy – what the brand itself embodies and why that matters for all concerned. This is how you create, develop and define “the most powerful understanding you have of yourselves and others have of you” (our definition)
- Vs Brand positioning – when we use this term, we are referring to where you position your brand in an evolving market to achieve greatest competitive advantage. (Others use it to denote what a brand means to customers.)
- Vs Marketing strategy – by this, we mean how the brand builds momentum in the market through the 4Ps.
- Vs Brand identity – when we use this term, we are specifically referred to the designed expression of the brand.
More on this: How to develop a brand positioning strategy; and Brand strategy vs creative strategy
While brand positioning defines the exact part of a market you must be in to be competitive, your brand strategy defines what you will stand for and what you will mean. Through our brand strategy process, we address both these aspects because we consider them inseparable.
How we structure our brand strategy process
In our model, there are three phases to every brand strategy process:
- Clarification – where the issues facing the brand come to light and stakeholders gain a better understanding of the opportunities and what they are up against.
- Transformation – where the meaning and understanding of the brand is redefined to better align with and support the business strategy.
- Validation – where the new brand is socialised and discussed as part of adopting it as business as usual.
Getting clear on what’s required
Perhaps the hardest part of finding any answer is resolving what the actual problem is. It’s tempting to react to numbers, media coverage or customer feedback and respond accordingly. Symptoms like these often kick off what we work on, but they are seldom the real problem. In our work on culture, we look for an underlying agitation for why people feel and work the way they do. This is similar: the goal is to recognise not just what is happening, but where and why.
Forage for insights
Larger organisations will have brand tracking like Tracksuit that shows what is happening from a metrics point of view. Combined with the original motive for the project, this often points to areas that warrant further investigation. Conversations and workshops are opportunities to dig deeper into these aspects and explore other motives. Meetings with stakeholders point to what those outside the brand are experiencing and expecting. Industry sweeps and competitors’ annual reports and investor documents provide background on pressures, trends and opportunities.
Indeed, the key to a comprehensive brand discovery process is sourcing a full range of insights that pertain to the brand. The goal is to explore a broad range of pressures and expectations being brought to bear – from regulators to investment funds to lobbyists. In the course of those discussions, we encounter insights, history, perspectives, actions and more that, cumulatively, influence how the brand is, and could be, understood in the public domain. Combined with internal perspectives, these should render a clearer view of where the brand excels, where it fails and where it needs to step up its presence.
The broader you can make these points of reference, the better.
Defining the actual role of the brand
One of the things we look to get clear on very early is what are the expectations of decision makers around the brand. How do they perceive its role? And what are their expectations around how it adds value? That might seem like an obvious question for marketers but our experience is that many leaders don’t even think of brand as having a role or indeed adding value. They see it as a media cost, not a business contributor. For example, leaders often look genuinely surprised when we point out that there is no more effective way to add margin than through changing what people perceive they are buying.
Hardwiring the role of the brand to the bottom-line performance of the business and the implementation of the strategy shifts conversations beyond the communications arena. Your brand strategy personifies what your business strategy is building. Your communications and creative strategies will then express that and bring it to life.
Did you know? There are three different types of brand strategy
What makes our brand strategy process different?
We think of transformational brand strategy as a big-change program for the business. It starts with the business drivers and looks to resolve how the brand needs to actively contribute to what the business is looking for. Only then do we turn our attention to what the brand could personify in order for the business to succeed and what that might mean for marketing strategy, brand identity, content development and more.
How we apply AI
Not so long ago, our analysis of this part of the brand strategy process would have focused on the human out-takes. Increasingly though, we’re finding there’s a role for AI in brand strategy to add further perspectives to what we have learned. AI-assisted brand insight development can bring together data-driven, customer-driven, market-driven and stakeholder-driven brand perspectives. For example, AI is great for finding common patterns of thinking across transcribed meetings. It’s also good for deep-diving into what is already known about sectors and using that detail to fill out key learnings at a market and industry level. And of course, we can use it to develop personas and test hypotheses and conclusions based on what is already known.
Initial deliverables
Through interrogating the actual and emerging situation against current market positioning, perceptions and reputation, we look to gain a clear understanding of where the brand stands now, what agitants are in play, where gaps or shortfalls are emerging and what the material impacts are. We present these findings back in two forms: a Summary of Conversations, that captures what we have heard; and a Brand Report Card that sets out what we are seeing.
Verifying what you have heard
In large organisations, where you have engaged with a large number of stakeholders over an extended timeframe, it can be useful to double back and check key findings with a representative group. We did this with a large public entity several years ago, and it proved invaluable. Using a framework of 12 statements, we asked the group to rate our assessments.
Two things emerged. The first was that the group felt more progress had been made in one area than we had given credit for. We re-investigated on that basis. The second was some specific wording feedback that the group said leaders would struggle with. The changes may have been subtle, but as every presenter knows, using a triggering word when feeding back to executives can quickly derail your intentions.
In presenting back what we have found, the goal is use insights to confirm key impressions and reach agreement on what the brand strategy needs to resolve for the business. On that basis, we can align and prioritise business and brand objectives, identify key audiences and set a time horizon for the brand strategy itself.
Distillation establishes the opportunity
The second half of the Clarification phase involves distilling everything gleaned so far down to a small set of priorities. This is also when we look to envisage what success looks like. This intense period of review and analysis sets up a critical Brand Situation presentation where we lay out the strongest business challenge as we see it, an intended response and an indication of the shifts in the business and the culture required for the reworked brand to do its work effectively.
This analysis and presentation can go through several iterations as people challenge presumptions or introduce aspects or opportunities. It’s not unusual too for this presentation to have different formats: detailed, for the project team; tighter; for the senior leadership team; and briefest to fit within the crowded Board schedule.
It can be useful at this point to agree on an Opportunity Statement. Here’s one way to frame that:
It’s time to define the intended brand
This Statement forms the brief for the next phase of the strategy: Transformation. Again, there are a number of things to resolve in this part of the brand strategy process:
There’s always more than one solution to any brand situation. Decision-makers will naturally want to know what we have considered and why we’ve made the choices you have. We deal with that overtly by openly considering the various directions open to the brand strategy. We consider the strengths and weaknesses of each option before making a final recommendation on how to proceed.
Knowing what the brand must achieve then directly drives how the brand is defined. We refer to this as developing the brand DNA. Strategists do this to differing levels of detail and using various mechanisms. We look to define the brand in as much detail as needed to grasp what it means without looking to over-complicate that definition with too many artifacts. Behind the scenes, that often involves “testing” how strong the brand will be by trying various types of definition, and then refining that back to a palatable list of characteristics that provide real guidance.
Different forms of brand DNA
We use two versions, depending on how much detail is required: a model based on Kapferer’s Brand Prism, which essentially puts the brand definition on a page; and a more nuanced Brand Definition Framework which sets out what you will promise and what you will deliver as a brand going forward. This Brand Definition Framework guides not just expression but also brand culture and of course marketing communications, ensuring consistent interpretation and adoption of the brand and its spirit across teams and throughout the business.
If a new name is needed, this is the time to consider that. Knowing what the brand must achieve and how it intends to change current perceptions (if any) is a strong basis for a naming brief. The process itself is involved – not least of all because names are so subjective. But we find that establishing territories on the basis of the brand definition gives decision makers a set of criteria for judging whether a name is right. (Even after you’ve found a name, there’s still a ways to go. Availability and protectability can strongly influence what makes the final cut.)
A powerful creative brief inspires visually
At this point, there is usually enough understanding to write a creative brief for the visual identity. This document marks the beginning of brand activation planning: how the brand itself will come to life visually and verbally. It’s easily overlooked or undercooked, but this part of the brand strategy process is very important. The key to getting this right is providing the design team with the right level of detail to do their work. Bynder’s 12 elements provide a useful structure:
(Proposed) brand name
Background
Strategy summary
Key audiences
Drivers and objectives for the visual brand
High-level competitor overview
Key messages and shifts
Personality guidelines
Relevant assets and deliverables
Key channels where the brand will be seen
Decision process (and key stakeholders)
Budget
Project timeline
Visual identity development is not part of what we do directly, but it’s a critical outcome of the brand strategy process. Design literally makes your new brand visible. It’s a comprehensive process in its own right and one that requires time, patience and attention to detail to get right. Pick your design partner very carefully, making sure they have the experience, resources and flair to do justice to all the hard work completed so far.
Adding story and structure
While the brand identity development is underway, the next phase of the Transformation phase for us involves sharing the newly defined brand in story form. This could be a piece of prose, a presentation or in the form of a video script. The goal is to give first expression to the brand in language that people can easily and quickly absorb. In particular, this form of the brand story looks to share what the brand is looking to achieve and the future it envisages. This should become the long story form of your story – the over-arching narrative that lays out your strategic intentions.
The final element of the Transformation phase is to agree on the brand architecture – in other words, how the brand is structured (and therefore seen). This is particularly important if the brand is one of a number of brands marketed by a company.
In broad terms, there are four options: masterbrand (where everything is under one brand name); house of brands (where the brands all appear independent of each other); branded house (where the brands all have a clear relationship with each other under a common brand name); and endorsed (where the brand has its own identity but is supported by a master brand).
Some brand portfolios use a combination of these structures. Terms vary slightly, but here’s a useful guide on how to choose the best model for your business (courtesy of Pariveda).
A series of grouped presentations
We present this work to stakeholders for approval and sign-off in a range of ways. Our recommendation would always be more, short presentations rather than a magnum opus. Naming should probably be a set of presentations in its own right. So should the development of the visual identity and wider visual language. Brand DNA, story and architecture recommendations come together well as a presentation and help people see how the new brand will work.
Validating what’s been decided
Many strategists might consider that the end of the brand strategy process. For us though, there is still one more important phase to go: the brand validation phase. This mirrors the validation that took place at the end of the brand discovery phase. Except now, the new proposed brand is under review.
This phase is not about watering down decisions or relitigating what has been decided. It is an opportunity to present the brand to those within the business and beyond to test reaction, gather feedback, absorb reservations and correct any oversights. Assembling a sample group and then engaging with them in detailed discussions about what has been decided not only gathers allies, it also ensures that key influencers in the business feel involved and included.
Setting clear boundaries for this review process, and limiting the timeframe for feedback, will help keep things on track. We invite people to be candid and constructive, not to wordsmith yet (unless there is a specific reason to do so) and to consider what they are being shown in the light of the challenges facing the business rather than what they themselves would or would not buy.
Guiding assessment through the 6 shares
Different organisations will discuss what constitutes success, and the role of the brand in getting there, but one straight-forward way to assess expectations is through our ‘6 shares’ model. Here, we set out in clear terms what the brand must deliver and the contribution it will make to overall success:
- Market share – the presence you intend to have in your market through your brand
- Heart share – how you want people to feel about you, and connect with you, through your brand
- Head share – what you want your brand to mean to your people, your customers and even your competitors
- Eye share – how you intend to show up in market with this brand (and the commitment you’re prepared to make to gain that attention)
- Profit share – the shift you want to see in margins for the brand
- Earth share – what you are doing to deliver a brand that is sustainable, responsible and circular in its design (i.e. non-waste producing)
Structured conversations like this provide powerful criteria for decision makers to assess what has been developed, and to evaluate the capability of the proposed brand to express and accelerate these ideas. Most importantly, thinking about the brand this way ensures the strategy is judged in terms of its ability to ‘move the dial’ on a range of fronts.
(For those who like symmetry, there’s no reason why the 6 shares could not be used also at the outset to set expectations for what the brand strategy must deliver.)
Checklist: 11 elements to include in your brand strategy framework
Always bring momentum to the final presentation
There’s another important reason to undertake this validation. At the final presentation to the Board and/or senior leadership group, someone will inevitably ask if you have tested this approach, at least internally, and whether you are confident that it will work.
Validation is a chance to show that you have important internal buy-in, that you have made adjustments based on this final check, that you have expectations for what the brand strategy can achieve and that you have a launch network in place to champion the brand internally and in the market when it is launched.
The brand strategy process is an investment in your competitiveness. It should define and enhance what you offer, how you can outsmart others in your field and how you can achieve the margins you’re looking for.
Outcomes of the brand strategy process
As we have said elsewhere, a successful brand strategy should light a path from where things are now for a brand within your business to where opportunity seems strongest. A brand strategy helps you identify the specific choices to win in your marketplace. It should define and enhance what you offer, but your brand strategy should also set out how you can outsmart others in your field and how you can achieve the margins you’re looking for.
Knowing this, you are ready to start working through your brand rollout strategy with confidence.
The brand strategy process is an investment in your competitiveness. The hard questions that it provokes can make some uncomfortable – but taking the time to really probe what makes you a distinctive presence in your market will pay off well for those prepared to bring open minds to the process.
Ready to explore your Best Future?
We call our brand strategy process Best Future because it is about not settling for just a better future. The goal has to be to identify and express not just what success looks like, but why. It should also look at how your brand or brands can best work to achieve that.
A Confident Brand is more than one that the marketing team believes in. It’s a non-fungible asset that has the ongoing confidence of decision makers. It makes sense, it aligns with their priorities and it achieves a visible difference to business performance. If you are not consciously strategising for your brand to contribute in that way, then it is probably being under-utilised.
Further reading: What makes for a successful brand strategy?
At some stage, those who engage in a brand strategy process reach the point where they recognise that their brand is either not paying its way. Or it should be doing more for the brand budgeted for it. Perhaps a new brand is needed if the business is to progress. If you’ve got to that point either independently or in discussion with your colleagues, we’d love to talk through how we can help.
Further reading: If you’re not sure whether you need to change or update your brand strategy, here’s our guide on how to audit and improve brand strategy.
Or start smaller
As we mentioned earlier, if you truly don’t have the time to embark on a detailed brand strategy process, there are alternatives. We can talk about running a Brand Blueprint workshop with your team to boost what your brand means for the business. That will deliver you a working definition in weeks. Or we can run a strategic session like Know your Place. Use this to identify the options for you to own your own category within your market. That will give you options to discuss further in the room, on the day. Please contact us to find out more.
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Photo by Isaac Davis on Unsplash