BRAND
STRATEGY

Differentiate, Align
and Elevate Your Brand

Your brand strategy serves as the marketing roadmap for everything you do; from the way you engage with customers and prospects, to the culture and messaging you share within your ecosystem. It is intended to shape the experience that your audience has with your company, product, or service and create a preference for your brand over your competition.

Brand Strategy Development Process

Developing a brand strategy involves multiple steps that are developed in sequence.

We segment brand strategy development into 14 key stages:

1 – Identifying your brand’s core identity and purpose

2 – Synthesizing the brand’s mission, vision, and values

3 – Target audience identification, segmentation

4 – Audience persona creation

5 – Competitive research

6 – Identification of brand differentiators

7 – Creating the brand’s value proposition

8 – Positioning framework development

9 – Messaging framework development

10 – Brand personality, voice, and tone creation

11 – Developing the brand story and brand promise

12 – Creating the brand identity and brand guidelines

13 – Building a content marketing strategy

14 – Establishing Brand KPIs

Rebrand or Refresh

When determining whether a rebrand or a brand refresh is required, our first question is always ‘Why’. Why does the brand want or need to change? The answer requires a deep dive analysis of the current brand strategy: what has worked (or is working) and what has (or is) not; what changes have occurred in the market or with key target audiences since the brand’s inception; what changes have occurred in the competitive landscape; and what can improve the overall growth of the company. The chosen strategy will depend on the answers to these questions.

Rebrand

Rebranding takes the company in a new direction. It involves an overhaul of the brand strategy and brand identity. Though some elements of the brand strategy may remain intact (or change only slightly), they will only remain if they reflect the new strategy and are deemed beneficial to the success of the brand.

A rebranding initiative may be appropriate for a number of reasons including an underperforming brand strategy, a change in the business model, a need to address reputation issues, external market changes, business mergers or acquisitions.

Brand Refresh

A brand refresh involves updating a brand’s image while maintaining the core strategy and identity. It involves keeping elements that are working well, and changing or updating elements that may be impeding the brand’s growth.

A brand refresh may be an option in situations where the existing brand story is no longer resonating with target audiences; when brand diversification is underway; to modernize a dated corporate identity; to introduce a new corporate vision or to inject new energy into the existing brand.