F**** the strategy — Why brands need FOCUS more than ever.
For any brand to be successful, there needs to be a clear articulation of the business's plan, vision, and personality, also known as a brand strategy. Design Rush has a great article on brand strategy for a great refresher on what that includes.
Lots of brands, global to local, put together brand strategies. As it turns out, only a few fully utilize that strategy to improve their brand story. It occurs more than you would think with brands you'd recognize. Brands will pour tons of time and money into a brand strategy, investing in the desired future they want this brand to bring to life.
Suddenly, months and millions go by, and the output is a 125-page PDF.
The ideas are all there, the target audience is correct, and it's saying the right things, yet there's no impact. For brand strategies to be effective, they need to impact people with a vision. That vision needs to be focused and defined. Especially as marketing budgets contract, a brand that efficiently connects to people is more important than ever.
If you think of this process like building a house, your brand strategy is the blueprint. It provides detail and structure, dialed in with metrics and measurement, but there's no emotion. That's where focus comes in to complement the blueprint with a specific color, texture, and design choices to create a personality. Providing people with a fuller experience of what the home is. It's why our studio has created an entire program to conduct these focus sessions with brand strategies that are starting from scratch or solidly defined.
Here are three ways you can add focus to a brand strategy:
1. Take two more steps.
One way to add focus to any brand strategy is what we'd call taking two more steps. Most brand language is pretty universal and frankly demands pushing to be more specific. Taking two steps means asking "Why" or "How" to make the language more precise.
“We provide an amazing experience.”
“Why?”
“People deserve to feel comfortable in our hotel.”
“How?”
“Our guests feel the calm of coming home.”
In two simple questions, we went from the uninspiring "We provide an amazing experience." to a much richer and focused idea around the comforts of a calm and relaxing home. By asking two simple questions, it allows people to go past the common thinking and literally go deeper.
It becomes much easier to bring that concept to life rather than trying to define something "amazing." This level of specificity provides a clearer vision of what the brand can do to be interesting and connect with guests. A focused brand strategy informs decision-making by defining an unmistakable personality.
2. Keep one foot on the ground.
While this may seem counter-intuitive, the boldest aspiration to the moon and beyond have to start here on the ground. Or, in this case, not forgetting what the company is. There are times when founders and leaders will have the grand vision of a brand changing the world and toppling the multi-billion dollar industry leader. This audacity should be applauded and shared with everyone. Getting there, however, is the real challenge.
People need a push in the right direction. An exercise we use is to work backwards, once the brand vision is defined. The key is identifying and planning how the brand will evolve and mature into that ideal vision.
Then it becomes clear to businesses that the most impactful steps are refinements to what is already communicating the brand story. There doesn't need to be some grand overhaul of everything. Very quickly, leaders find plenty of impactful, value-driving refinements to be implemented immediately, leading to tip #3.
3. Develop a Brand Action Plan
Part of bringing a brand vision to life is bringing it to life, and that requires a plan. There are three key areas we focus on improving through specific next steps: Strategy, Visuals, and Voice.
In each of these areas, there are plenty of things every brand can improve on. The idea here is to prioritize and choose a direct action to improve to refine your strategy, visuals, and voice. We've even made a guide to assist you, free 87BrandCheck.
Implementing any change takes time and effort to pay off, so we suggest brands focus on one high-value area of change per category. This way, businesses can incrementally revise and renovate their brands.
