Your brand, getting to know itself
Brand strategy is the inward half. Before you decide what to say to anybody, you settle what you stand for, how you sound, who you are actually for, and what makes you the obvious choice over the other three companies on the list. Three workshops, and you leave with it written down.
Brand strategy is the inward half. Before you decide what to say to any audience, you settle what the center stands for, how it sounds, whose work it is really for, and what makes it the one worth citing. Three workshops, and you leave with it written down.
- Purpose. Vision, mission, the actions behind it, your brand promise and the values you will not trade away.
- Personality. Three adjectives, a voice built from them, your brand as a person, and the archetype it answers to.
- Position. The client you are really for, an honest SWOT, and where you sit against the people you are compared to.
You leave with all of it written down, and it is yours whether or not I design anything afterwards.
The plan
How we get you there
Same three stages every time, and each one is its own phase.
Who this is forOwners whose team describes the company three different ways. Usually because nobody ever wrote down which one was right.Centers that have grown into several programs and one blurred identity. Usually with a name everybody knows and a purpose nobody can state.
Clarifyyou're here
What you're actually saying, and who you're saying it to.
Beautify
Every place you say it: the site, the mark, the print, the email.
Amplify
Systems that carry it to the people who need to hear it: search, email and outreach.
The two halves
Brand strategy is inward. Messaging is outward.
They are the two halves of the same stage, and you can buy either one on its own. If you are doing both, brand strategy goes first, because it is hard to decide what to say before you have decided who is saying it.
- Brand strategyyou're hereWho you areWhat you stand for, how you sound, who you are for. Settled looking inward, with your own people in the room.
- Strategic messagingWhat you sayThe same thing turned outward: what you lead with, in what order, and what you leave out.See strategic messaging
- Who hears itYour website, your emails, your print and the room you are standing in, all written from the two before it.
Scope
What ends up in it
Written out, because “brand strategy” is a phrase that can mean almost anything.
Vision and mission
What you ultimately want to help happen, and what you are doing today to bring it about. Separated on purpose, because most organizations have blurred the two into one sentence that does neither job.
A brand promise
The one thing people can count on every time they deal with you. Short enough to repeat, and specific enough that you could fail at it.
Core values you would defend
Brainstormed wide, then cut to four to six. Not the generic ones: the beliefs that actually decide what you say yes and no to.
A voice, built from three adjectives
Pick the three words your brand is, then turn each into how it behaves on a page: what it does, and the thing next to it that it never does.
Your brand as a person
If it walked into the room, who is it. This is the exercise that settles arguments about tone faster than any adjective list, because everybody can picture a person.
An archetype
Which of the twelve you are drawing on, and what that buys you. A shortcut audiences already understand, so you are not explaining your personality from scratch.
The client you are actually for
One person, described properly: what they want, what they are afraid of, and what they are comparing you against. Vague audiences are why copy ends up addressed to nobody.
An honest SWOT
Strengths and weaknesses looking in, opportunities and threats looking out. Done out loud with the people who know, which is the only way the weaknesses are real.
Where you stand, and what to do about it
A positioning map against the people you are compared to, and a short list of strategic actions that comes out of it. The part that turns the workshop into next week.
Why it goes first
Sharpen the axe, then chop the tree
A woodsman asked what he would do with four hours to fell a tree said he would spend the first two sharpening his axe. Design is the chopping. This is the sharpening, and it is the cheapest part of the whole job to change your mind during.
Decided here, once
- What you stand for
- How you sound
- Who you are for
- Why you and not them
Expensive to decide later
- A logo drawn before any of it
- A site written for everybody
- Three people describing you three ways
- Copy rewritten every time somebody new reads it
Process
How the workshops run
Out loud, together, with whoever actually has a say. I bring the questions and the examples; you bring the answers, because you know the business and I do not.
We talk first
Twenty-five minutes to hear what you do, who keeps choosing you, and where the explanation currently falls over. Free, and it tells us both whether this is the right thing to buy.
Workshop one: purpose
Vision, mission, the actions behind them, your promise and your values. Wide and messy first, then cut down, because the good answer is rarely the first one.
Workshop two: personality
Adjectives into a voice, your brand as a person, the archetype, and the work you want to be mentioned alongside.
Workshop three: position
The client persona, the SWOT, the positioning map, and the strategic actions that fall out of all three.
I write it up
The raw material boiled down into one document you can hand to a designer, a writer, a new hire or a board.
You use it
On its own, or as the thing the messaging framework is built from, or as the brief for a site or a mark. Yours either way.
Investment
How pricing works
A fixed price, agreed before it starts, and what we write down is yours whether or not I design anything afterwards.
Just brand strategy
The three workshops and the written strategy. Plenty of this work ends here, and that is a perfectly good outcome.
With strategic messaging
Brand strategy first, then the messaging framework built on top of it. Quoted as two things, so you can stop after either.
As the brief
The same work, used as the brief a site, a mark or a campaign is built from. Quoted apart from the build so it stands on its own.
Grant-funded work. This usually sits under communications planning or dissemination. I quote against your budget lines and invoice per deliverable.
Questions
What people ask before they hire me
Do we need this if we already know who we are?
How is this different from strategic messaging?
How long does it take?
Who needs to be in the room?
What if our team disagrees about the answers?
Do I have to buy design afterwards?
The rest of the system
This is the half that looks inward
Here is the other half, and what gets built once both are settled.
Adrial is my go-to designer for anything my business needs … which is why I have used him for three different companies over the last 20+ years.
Craig WoodCEO, Definian
I'd rather hear it out loud
Twenty-five minutes, and nothing to prepare. Tell me what you do the way you'd tell somebody standing next to you at a conference. It costs nothing, and by the end of it we will both know whether this is the thing you need.