Article
Mastering the Art of Brand Strategy
Practical guide to building a strong brand strategy
Branding is more than a logo or tagline; it's the foundation of how a company is perceived, experienced, and remembered. This article delves into the anatomy of a brand, its foundation, and aligning it with strategic goals for maximum impact.
Introduction
A brand can be anything from a company to a product – think Apple and iPhone – or even a person, such as an athlete or musician like Tiger Woods or Eminem. In this article, I'll focus primarily on company-level branding. While I briefly introduced the concept of branding in my earlier article, Design meets Strategy, this time, we'll take a deeper dive to uncover what a brand truly is and how to craft a winning brand strategy.
What is Brand?
A brand encompasses everything a company does – its products, services, behavior towards employees and customers, and treatment of stakeholders like media, partners, investors, contractors, and competitors. Based on my experiences and observations, I see a brand as more than the traditional dichotomy of visible and hidden elements. Instead, a company's brand consists of three interconnected layers: the visible, foreground elements such as image and identity; the hidden, background factors like culture and reputation; and a bridging layer that encompasses offerings and experiences. Together, these layers shape how the brand is truly perceived by its audience, including customers, competitors, and the media. I refer to this as the brand anatomy, which I'll explain in more detail in the next chapter.
Ultimately, a brand is defined by how people perceive, experience, and talk about it – not merely by how the company wishes to be seen. Branding is the discipline through which a company sustains its presence, leveraging media appearances, PR statements, high-quality offerings with appealing design, and exceptional customer service. A strong brand is often a company's most valuable intangible asset. Consider Tesla: its market capitalization, or valuation in the eyes of investors, surpasses Hyundai's – even though Hyundai sells significantly more cars and generates higher revenue. This disparity is largely attributed to Tesla's successful branding, bolstered by Elon Musk's charismatic salesmanship.
In this article, I won't delve deeply into brand maturity, which directly relates to how established a company and its business are. Mature companies have presumably already clarified their mission, values, and vision. Since these topics have been extensively covered elsewhere, I'll focus on less common themes when designing company and brand strategies. With that, let's dive into the brand anatomy.
Brand Anatomy
If you want to develop a brand for your company, it's essential to understand the key components of brand anatomy. A brand's anatomy is built on three fundamental elements: its public image, the experiences it delivers, and the reputation it holds. Together, these elements shape how the brand is perceived and valued by its audience.
Brand Image
Brand image represents how a company wishes to be perceived by the public. It can be shaped through brand identity, which includes visual assets like logos, typefaces, icons, and imagery, as well as non-visual elements such as slogans, value propositions, tone of voice, company story, culture, positioning, values, and mission statements. Additionally, a company's digital presence – websites, apps, and social media – plays a key role in building this image. Among the three components of brand anatomy, brand image is the easiest to control, which is why so many marketing and digital agencies focus on it. However, it's also the least impactful when compared to brand experience and reputation.
Brand Experience
Brand experience encompasses how people engage and interact with the brand. This includes touchpoints such as the quality of customer service and the offerings themselves, whether physical products or digital services. While a brand is often a company's most valuable intangible asset, it's meaningless without strong offerings. To survive and thrive in highly competitive markets, companies must deliver high-quality products or services that resonate with their audience. Even beloved brands like Apple and Nike owe much of their success to the exceptional quality and appeal of their offerings. Compared to brand image, brand experience is harder to control but far more impactful. Achieving a consistent brand experience requires focus, discipline, and a commitment to excellence.
Brand Reputation
Brand reputation reflects how people perceive and talk about the brand. It is shaped by both the brand image and the brand experience, including factors such as product quality, price-value ratio, customer service, and employee and customer experiences. However, reputation is highly sensitive to negative influences, such as poor employee or customer interactions, scandals, unfavorable news coverage, critical blog posts, and social media discussions. Among the components of brand anatomy, reputation is the hardest to control and takes the longest to build.
Image, experience, and reputation together define how the brand is truly perceived by the audience – such as customers, rivals, and the media.
Brand as a Discipline
As mentioned earlier, a brand is shaped by everything a company does – and by everything, I mean every detail. This includes physical spaces such as offices, stores, warehouses, factories, and other buildings, along with their exterior architecture and interior design. A great example is IKEA, which has mastered the showroom concept by showcasing furniture combinations and setups tailored to various customer segments, such as students, young adults, and families. IKEA's stores are designed as mazes to create a stimulating shopping experience that encourages impulsive purchases – a strategy customers have embraced. This unique store concept is a vital part of IKEA's brand identity.
Branding can serve as a driving force to guide a company and lead strategic initiatives by identifying desired outcomes and aligning them with tactical activities.
Here's an example from the consulting world:
- Strategic Objective: Win design competitions to strengthen the perception of design excellence and persuade prospective customers.
- Tactical Activity: Deliver high-quality outcomes in client projects that can be showcased in design competitions.
While this example may seem obvious, its importance is often overlooked. Many companies fail to recognize the value the brand gains from awards. Designers may sometimes dismiss the significance of design awards, but from a prospect's perspective, awards can be a decisive factor. Imagine a client choosing between two companies with comparable offerings and pricing: if only one has design awards, which one do you think they will choose?
One often overlooked aspect of branding is the employer image and its significant impact on a company's overall brand. How a company treats its employees directly influences how those employees speak about the company to friends and family during their free time and on social media. A happy employee is not only a valuable asset but also a brand's strongest advocate. When a company invests in its brand image – such as creating professional facilities, and marketing materials like advertisements and websites – it fosters pride among employees. This pride translates into stronger loyalty and a positive employer image, significantly enhancing the company's overall brand perception and giving it a competitive edge in attracting top talent over competitors with weaker brands.
Defining Brand Foundation
Developing a brand is a fascinating and complex topic, spanning disciplines like business, design, marketing, and productization. While defining a brand on paper might seem straightforward, implementing it in practice is far more challenging.
Here are some foundational building blocks to guide the process of brand development:
- Unique Offerings: Align your offerings with identified market needs to create a compelling value proposition.
- Fitting Identity: Ensure the brand's identity supports its offerings and communicates the desired brand message effectively.
- Superior Quality: Deliver excellence in every aspect of the company's operations. While quality should be a given, it often isn't without dedicated focus.
- Exceptional Experience: Foster lasting and joyful relationships with customers and employees by delivering outstanding brand experiences.
A brand is a discipline that touches every aspect of the company, influencing how the business is structured and how it is led. For a brand to succeed, it must be firmly integrated with the overarching company strategy, forming a unified narrative for both internal and external stakeholders.
Blueprint for a Coherent Brand Narrative
- Select a Brand Archetype: Identify an archetype that best reflects the brand's core essence and sets its emotional foundation.
- Create a Brand Persona: Develop a persona aligned with the archetype to make the brand relatable and connectable with its audience.
- Define a Brand Personality: Add human-like characteristics to the persona, making the brand more engaging and approachable.
- Establish a Brand Voice: Develop a unified tone of voice that maintains consistency across all brand touchpoints.
“A brand is a voice and a product is a souvenir.”
– Lisa Gansky, an entrepreneur, speaker and best-selling author.
Avoiding Contradictions
It's crucial for the company and the brand to share the same values. Misalignment between the two can cause confusion. For instance, a company aspiring to be perceived as a serious corporate player may undermine its image with overly whimsical product marketing campaigns. Such contradictions dilute the brand narrative, confusing both consumers and the media about how to perceive and communicate the brand.
Brand-Driven by Offerings
Many brands are driven by their most desirable offerings. Tesla's electric cars and Apple's iPhones are prime examples. Even Apple's new Spaceship campus architecture was reportedly inspired by the rounded corners of Apple's products and the Home Button design from older iPhones, as seen in its elevator buttons. Steve Jobs exemplified holistic branding by retail stores, factories, and products into thoughtful works of art and engineering. He utilized these spaces strategically, arranging interviews and presenting them to the media to strengthen Apple's brand narrative.
However, this level of holistic branding – designing everything the company builds, owns, and operates – is rare. It's incredibly expensive and requires relentless commitment. Only a handful of companies worldwide have the resources and willpower to achieve such a comprehensive approach, but it represents the pinnacle of brand development.
“You can't build a reputation on what you are going to do.”
– Henry Ford, an American industrialist and business magnate.
Creating a Brand Strategy
With a clear understanding of brand anatomy and a well-defined brand foundation, the next step is to create a concrete brand strategy. This involves diving deeper into the methods for defining a solid Brand DNA, which serves as the backbone for achieving a winning brand strategy.
Brand Purpose
Brand purpose is ideally defined in the company's business plan, where market needs are identified, and solutions are proposed. This aligns with the basic principles of supply and demand. However, the brand purpose extends beyond profit-making by answering the question: Why do we exist beyond making money? Consumers typically don't care about a company's profit margins – they seek a resonating story or a noble intent, such as improving everyday life or building a better future. This paradox highlights the need for companies to balance their profit motives with a purpose that emotionally connects with their audience.
“Products are made in a factory but brands are created in the mind.”
– Walter Landor, an industrial designer and pioneer in branding.
The Golden Square model is my adaptation of Simon Sinek's Golden Circle, starting with an added Whom question to make the process of defining the brand purpose more customer-oriented. This flexible model can be applied to any strategic challenge.
Brand Story
The brand story builds on the purpose by turning it into a memorable, engaging narrative. This strategic narrative incorporates the company's history ("then and now") and its vision for creating future value. A brand manifest serves as a tool to support the creation of this narrative, distilling the essence of the brand's purpose into a concise and inspiring declaration. Utilizing the brand story, the primary goal is to foster an emotional connection with the audience, deepening the bond between the brand and its customers. Marketing initiatives and design activities are key tools for embedding the brand story into every aspect of the brand's communication and experience.
Brand Essence
The brand essence is a single word, phrase, or sentence that captures the soul of a brand and serves as its foundation, ensuring consistency and authenticity. It defines what makes the brand unique and emotionally resonant, evoking specific thoughts, feelings, or emotions in consumers. Typically expressed in one to three words, the brand essence becomes a guiding principle for the brand. For example, Dyson has defined its core spirit as "efficiency" and Disney as "magic".
Brand Position
Brand position is defined through market studies and competitive analysis. This analysis involves identifying all market players – both closest and most distant – and examining competitors' branding, packaging, features, pricing, and customer experiences. Tools like competitor maps, SWOT analysis, and positioning statements help identify the target audience, define the value proposition, highlight competitive advantages, and ensure alignment with the overarching company strategy.
An example of the Solar System model, which I've used to illustrate the entire competitive ecosystem, identifying both the closest and most distant rivals.
Brand Touchpoints
Brand touchpoints encompass every event and interaction where the brand engages with its stakeholders, particularly customers. Each touchpoint is an opportunity to enhance brand awareness and build customer loyalty. Touchpoints are visualized, categorized within the brand anatomy – image, experience or reputation – and evaluated for their current state. Additionally, responsibility for each touchpoint is assigned to a specific unit or individual. This mapping provides management with a holistic view of the brand's current state and serves as a strategic tool for planning actions to further develop the brand.
An example of a company's brand touchpoint mapping, categorized by physical and digital attributes. Each touchpoint was listed in a table, evaluated for its current state, and assigned to a responsible person to strengthen commitment.
Brand Relevance
Brand relevance answers critical questions: Who are we serving? What are their needs? Why would they choose us over competitors? It's essential to understand customer needs and market trends through market studies, customer research, and journey mapping to enhance and deepen brand touchpoints. Staying relevant involves creating experiences that align with customer expectations while also delivering unexpected "wow" moments. Maintaining relevance requires continuous adaptation to evolving market dynamics.
An example of a service offering's entire customer communication lifecycle, visualized as a design blueprint – from prospecting and onboarding to becoming a customer and, eventually, canceling the service. Each service moment was carefully analyzed, and every message meticulously designed.
Spearhead Approach
In my previous article, Business by Design, I introduced the Spearhead Approach, which drives long-term visionary objectives while addressing short-term tactical goals. In branding, the Spearhead Approach can guide product development and marketing initiatives.
A prime example of this is the car industry's concept cars, which generate excitement around the brand. Take the Volkswagen Phaeton: initially introduced as a luxury concept sedan, it moved into production and contributed hundreds of patents that benefited the Volkswagen Group's other models. While the Phaeton acted as the "spearhead" capturing media and car enthusiast interest, mainstream models like the Golf and Passat generated the majority of revenue. This showcases how a spearhead initiative can strengthen the brand while supporting broader business objectives.
An example visualization of the Spearhead Approach, where the most desirable and "sexiest" product is primarily used for marketing initiatives to elevate the brand. A common analogy I use is: people visit the showroom to admire Lexus but leave driving a Toyota. Lexus represents the flagship allure, while the group generates most of its revenue from Toyota's mainstream models.
Marketing Levels
Branding and marketing are inseparable – think of branding as the gun and marketing as the bullet. While the metaphor may feel aggressive, it effectively illustrates their interdependence: branding provides direction, while marketing executes the strategy.
Marketing initiatives typically operate on three levels:
- Brand Level focuses on long-term brand building, shaping public perception and reinforcing the brand image. These rare campaigns often deliver visionary messages without mentioning specific products or prices. For instance, Toyota's hydrogen concept car ads promote innovation rather than tangible offerings.
- Offering Level targets mid-term goals like generating interest in product lines while supporting the main brand. These campaigns often align with product launches, using subtle pricing cues – like "starting from…" – to create intrigue. BMW's 5-series promotions, for example, highlight the lineup without diving into specific details.
- Promotion Level drives short-term sales and revenue through frequent, measurable campaigns. Discounts, limited-time offers, and targeted ads are common tactics, such as a social media ad promoting a specific BMW model with a special deal.
Levels of marketing visualized as a value pyramid. This approach is inspired by YouTube's content marketing strategy guide – Hero, Hub and Help (originally Hygiene) – to lead and guide marketing efforts for brand building, increasing interest, and driving sales.
By thoroughly defining all the topics above, the brand strategy evolves into a clear and actionable framework, driving product innovations, marketing initiatives, and sustainable growth. In the book Playing to Win by Alan Lafley and Roger Martin, this approach is emphasized through strategic principles that advocate making deliberate choices and focusing on key areas to create a competitive advantage and achieve long-term success.
Summary
A brand can be complex to fully define – it's both an emotional connection and a major driver of business success. It creates a competitive advantage that elevates a company from average to exceptional. A strong brand enables companies to command a price premium, allowing them to sell their offerings at higher prices than competitors.
Ideally, a company would have a single overarching strategy, with the brand playing a supportive role in achieving it. However, company strategies often focus solely on business objectives, which may not always align with customer needs or resonate with the public. This is where brand strategies come in – to bridge the gap and strengthen the company's relationship with its audience, particularly its customers.
Why is a designer writing about branding? Because designers, with their expertise in design thinking and service design methods, bring invaluable tools to brand development. They already have the means to define brand strategies that connect with customers and align with business goals. For a brand to truly thrive, design, branding, marketing, and product development must work together seamlessly to deliver holistic brand experiences and exceptional customer interactions. This is how winning brands are built!
“If no one hates it, no one really loves it.”
– Jessica Walsh, an award-winning brand designer and entrepreneur.
Branding is a fascinating and expansive topic, and this article is just the beginning. There's so much more to explore – stay tuned for future insights! ▪