Three different types of brand strategy

Reading Time: 4 minutes Brand strategy is often thought of one thing. At Audacity, we describe it as the ability to imagine a future for a brand to look forward to. An anticipated history. The implication is that one set of strategic skills is needed. Except that, confusingly, brand operates in a range of settings– and the strategic skills […]

How to decide if you need a brand strategy

Reading Time: 3 minutes You have a brand, whether you realise it or not. It may not be the brand you want, or even the one you thought you were – but it is a brand, nevertheless. It represents how you are understood by the market, buyers and your own people. To consciously change or build that understanding, you’ll […]

Choose an emergent strategy

Reading Time: 4 minutes Do you remember when you were a child the first time someone made you a paper plane? If your recollection is anything like ours, you couldn’t believe how it left your hand and made its way across the room. Before long though, it lost height and velocity, and fell to the floor. Your strategy may […]

Look for seven R’s in your brand strategy

Reading Time: 2 minutes What should you be looking for in a strong brand strategy? A great brand strategy combines ‘the logic and the magic’ – that mix of rational and emotive elements that, together, combine to give a brand engagement, connectedness and distinction. There are 7 factors to look for: the seven R’s in your brand strategy … […]

The portfolio approach to strategy

Reading Time: 4 minutes How do you drive home a strategy to fulfil your future, when everything around you is changing?  The secret, according to McKinsey & Co senior advisor, Eric D. Beinhocker, is to radically review what we mean by strategy. In his 2006 book, The Origin of Wealth, Beinhocker argues that rather than thinking of strategy as […]

Why are you rebranding?

Reading Time: 2 minutes Brad VanAuken made this excellent observation about rebrands. “Identity systems are designed to encode and decode brand information to and from people’s brains,” he said. “If you change the system, the associations may be lost and will take a long time to rebuild.”

Building compassionate brands

Reading Time: 4 minutes In a recent address at Cannes, Monica Lewinsky made a plea for brands to play a more direct role in building a compassionate society: one where the power of social media to generate shame and humiliation (and gain money by doing so) was eschewed in favour of an environment that collectively supported and inspired individuals […]