This blog is an overview of the YouTube version of the crash course, uploaded by Notepad’s founder Naeem Alvi, which we highly recommend watching as it’s jam-packed with helpful examples and visuals – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIeA1wKfsAY&t=17s
If you’re looking to unlock your brand’s potential both strategically and visually, Notepad’s tried and tested Evolve brand sprints, you will get a world-class brand identity system in less than a month. Delivering tangible results that push your brand to new heights. Find out more about Evolve by following the link here https://notepadstudio.com/evolve-brand-sprint/
To kick us off, so we’re all clear, just what is brand? The way we define brand at Notepad is all about perceptions. Ultimately, your brand is the unique way you want your business to be perceived in the market, and that can be for strategic, commercial or creative gain.
So that leads us nicely onto what exactly a brand strategy is. “A brand strategy can be defined as a long-term plan that outlines the specific actions and decisions a business takes to build, position, and differentiate its brand in the market.”
Ultimately, your brand strategy ensures that your product or service is front of mind for your target customers and that you’re the best choice in the category for what they need.
And in our role as brand strategists, we carry out extensive research, then use that research to create a winning brand strategy. Developing the messaging and defining a positioning that brings it all to life within a business and for its target audiences, and informing all future brand communications.
To create a brand strategy we follow a 9-step framework, starting with research in three specific areas, known as the 3 Cs;
- Research
Company – Where the company is currently standing, what makes them different / great, and where they want to go, i.e their vision. We typically uncover a lot of these insights in a brand workshop
Competition – This involves drawing up a list of 4 or 5 key competitors and doing a SWOT analysis of each, and using this to help determine where opportunities for your brand are to differentiate. If you are planning to reposition the brand, then it would be useful to look at future competitors
Customers – This can involve interviewing a business’s existing customers and finding out what their needs and priorities are, and why they chose that business over the competition to address those needs
- Defining Positioning
Brand positioning, in its simplest form, is what you want people to think about your brand when they think about you. So let’s think of an example, take Amazon, when you think of the Amazon brand in your head, you think about speed, convenience and a wide range of choices. This is no accident and is thanks to a carefully developed and implemented brand positioning.
At this stage will determine what these positive associations should be, and then you will look to weave throughout the brand strategy to achieve this positioning.
Might sound simple, but this is an in-depth process, and to find out more we have another youtube breakdown on brand positioning here – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPT7hkQPC6g&t=3s
- Defining your brand proposition
Your proposition articulates the key reasons why somebody should want your brand and why it’s better than the competition in a clear and memorable fashion. Brand propositions are far more direct and compelling than positioning statements, speaking to intended audiences and are public-facing, rather than helping your teams to understand the key benefits.
Once your proposition has been developed, it may be helpful to develop an even more concise brand tagline and then write a set of key brand messages which explain other, less important but still key attributes.
- Mission, vision and values
This stage is vital for aligning your team’s behaviours and actions with external expectations. Giving internal and external audiences direction and something to emotionally invest in, here’s what we mean by each.
Mission – What you are fighting for every day
Vision – What you want the future to look like and your big-picture ambitions. If you deliver your mission every day then here is what you will achieve.
Values – These are your core beliefs and what you stand for, defining your culture and helping people to live it
- Brand Voice
Here you are aiming to find 4 or 5 pillars that will help you to convey a unique and consistent tone of voice across your comms, defining the way you speak to your audiences.
This is an extremely important stage, often overlooked by brands which go straight into their visual identity work, but as you can see with brands like Oatly or BrewDog, Tone of Voice has been a pivotal factor in their brand’s success. Ramping up creativity and feeling highly engaging.
- Brand Identity
This step should be heavily informed by the brand strategy, where a great designer will bring the elements of a strategy to life visually. They should work in perfect harmony and help to further the brand’s positioning.
Without putting a dampener on a designer’s creativity, a strategist should be able to translate all the key markers from the strategy and help to see if the visual identity aligns.
- Brand Guidelines
Building a brand takes time and it also requires large amounts of consistency. To cement your brand in the minds of audiences it needs to look, sound and feel the same across its touchpoints, helping to boost familiarity and recall.
Brand guidelines are a great way of keeping people on the right track, showing them all the dos and don’ts of applying the brand. We also find it extremely useful to provide a bank of assets and templates which help people right across an organisation to use the brand effectively, and without needing any design experience.
- Rollout
Rolling out a new or updated brand is a fantastic opportunity to generate momentum and increase market share.
You should think of ways in which you can bring your positioning to life in both the physical and digital realms, helping to build awareness and cement the associations you want your brand to have. Laying the foundations for all future marketing efforts and brand campaigns.
- Brand Building
Building a successful brand doesn’t just happen overnight, after the positioning, strategy and identity have been developed, and the brand has been rolled out, it is vital that everyone remains committed to implementing the brand effectively.
With management and creative teams helping to reinforce that positioning internally and to external audiences, helping it to become more embedded over time. Brand building is a marathon, not a sprint.
And that concludes our brand strategy crash course, we hope you’ve gained some good insights, and thanks for reading! If you’d like to supercharge your organisation’s brand or just explore your options then you can get in touch with our Client Services Director, Juliette Neault, using [email protected]
