Reading Time: 3 minutesThe purpose of brand strategy is of course to envisage a future for your brand: to project beyond current circumstances to where your brand might be. But, in terms of actually setting timeframes for your strategy, how far ahead should you be thinking? An important decision Every brand strategy is a speculation – an attempt […]
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Perspectives
Take the time to make the most of your brand story
Reading Time: 3 minutesA brand story is pretty much useless if you don’t apply it. The reason many brands don’t do justice to their story is that they treat it as a background exercise. Something the brand keeps to itself. But the true and valuable purpose of your story is to guide and shape your market narrative, particularly […]
How to develop, lock in and apply powerful brand values
Reading Time: 3 minutesValues are one of the great ironies of brand. Everyone professes their importance, and some brands invest considerable time finalising them. Then they systematically ignore them, often because they don’t know how to practically apply them. In doing so, they underplay the importance and guidance that powerful brand values can provide. Not all brand values […]
Participation versus disparity for brands
Reading Time: 2 minutesIt’s tempting to think that talent and tenacity are all your brand needs to succeed. But the biggest challenge every brand faces is disparity: the ability to forge a profile in their sector that stands them apart from everyone participating around them. Right now, across the world, hundreds of different people are opening a coffee […]
Different ways to think about differentiation
Reading Time: 4 minutesIf you can truly find a difference for your brand, you should pursue it. But the difference needs to be meaningful to your audience. And you need to recognise it won’t last. Differentiation is an idea that has become controversial in recent years. Acknowledging that, here are some different ways to think about differentiation. The […]
Choosing your brand’s talking points
Reading Time: 5 minutesThere’s a discretion to being articulate that often gets missed. At a time when AI in particular means you could talk about anything, what will your brand’s talking points be? So many brands seem to get the balance between under-share and over-share wrong. They either make no effort to engage sincerely and effectively (preferring to […]
8 questions to test your brand culture principles
Reading Time: 3 minutesUltimately, the evolution of brand culture revolves around consequences – good and bad. Every reaction to every behaviour is a signal to those involved and others that an action or attitude is unacceptable, tolerated or desirable. It’s also a powerful and simple way to test your brand culture principles. In an article in HBR some […]
Set your brand’s strategic direction with these three decisions
Reading Time: 5 minutesRobust brand strategy is responsive, taking its cues from a range of places that together provide a clear and simple map for what a brand needs to do to move forward. With so many ways you could go, here’s where we recommend you look to pinpoint what’s really needed to set your brand’s strategic direction. […]
Become an Articulate Company
Reading Time: 4 minutesIn a world bursting with content, the temptation for any brand storyteller is to give in to the machines. To leave it all to AI and the algorithms and succumb to the temptations of volume. Say lots. Say anything. Just keep talking. But that’s not how you become an articulate company. Content is important of […]
Aligning your strategy and your principled culture
Reading Time: 4 minutesEvery strategy needs the right culture to deliver it. Through our Principled Culture approach, we look to close the gap between what the culture needs to be in order to succeed and what people need in order to thrive. We do that by aligning your strategy and your Principled Culture. A key driver for us […]
A Brand Change Response Framework for leaders facing change
Reading Time: 5 minutesWithout exception, a brand strategy is a response to a change somewhere in the business. But choosing which aspects of change to act on, and those to ignore or deprioritise, is critical to successful strategy, given that everyone is operating on limited resources. To resolve this, we’ve developed a Brand Change Response Framework where we […]
How to turn your brand into a storyworld
Reading Time: 4 minutesAssociative memory studies show that brands that are closely connected with a product struggle to get beyond line extensions, but brands that are connected with an idea can go wherever that idea allows them to go. A storyworld is a powerful way for a brand to build and expand an intriguing mythology that goes beyond […]