What is a brand strategy?

I once worked for many years at a leading global market research agency with a previous background in brand management and advertising. On my first day, our regional CEO asked me to define the word “strategy” for him. I must confess I was rather nervous and struggled to deliver a crisp and intelligent answer. Instead, I blurted out a laundry list of the most popular and weighty tactics employed by big brands at the time.

He waited patiently for me to finish sweating out every tactic and channel I could think of without interruption. He then told me that he asks this same question of every new employee on his or her first day and each time, he gets a very different answer, each defaulting to his or her comfort zone. He also told me that my life was about to change. He was right. It did. 

Soon thrown head first into the deep end, the definition of a brand strategy he gave me on that day became clear and exhilarating … albeit over several gruelling months. It is “an aggregate of investigation, imagination and intelligence whose value is measured by one thing – the bottom line.”

My new job was to audit and evaluate the in-market performance of some of the world’s leading brands. A marketer’s dream shot. A behind the scenes look at how household brands ascend and stay number one. Turns out, that laundry list of tactics I rattled off is just one small part of the thinking that goes into the development of an effective brand strategy. I learned to back way up and start at the beginning. 

You have developed a product or service that you believe the market either wants or needs. It brings a specific value proposition to the marketplace thus will no doubt sell with marketing effort. Right? Maybe. Marketers are often brought into the mix once the service concept or manufacturing is completed. Thus, asked to take the product as given and entrusted to create demand for what you’re selling.

Hold on! It’s easy to default to short-term tactics on a limited budget. Logos, websites, signage, and sales support pieces make you feel like you’re officially in business and on the road to success. If this is your focus, you may find that management, manufacturing and marketing will eventually converge on the bottom line but not always successfully.

Global leading brands are built on the foundation of a successful brand strategy. They ask the right questions and define their long-term business goals.

They start with:

·       Why are we creating a new brand?

·       What is so unique about it that no other brand can claim the same consumer benefits?

·       What credibility do we bring to this category?

·       What gap in the market are we filling or are we looking to steal market share?

·       Who are we competing with directly and indirectly?

·       What will it take to pull consumer attention away from them?

It’s time to get out there, which as it turns out is a really big place.