Brand Strategy

Brand strategy that is laden with jargon and presented in complex theory diagrams that are of little use to anyone. Post project, they are often filed away on the server never to be seen again.

This approach can be likened to the great space race, when legend has it that in the 1960s NASA invested millions into developing an anti-gravitational ballpoint pen that could pull ink onto paper without needing gravitational force. But their Soviet counterparts, so the story goes, simply handed their cosmonauts a pencil, which did the job perfectly.

Now don’t get us wrong, we’re happy to do complex when complex is needed but our approach is all about creating insightful, understandable and usable brand strategies.

It’s the Dusted way.

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Brand strategy is an opportunity for your business strategy to be brought to life, it steers the organisation as one, towards your business goals and ambitions. It can also help build and foster a positive culture within your business by unifying everyone around a purpose that they all understand and can really get behind.

Brand strategy – Discovery

Our brand strategies are built using insights from only the key parts of your world. Through stakeholder interviews and brand workshops we get to understand your business, its products and services, your audiences and the market you operate in. These help us to identify an ‘organising idea’. An idea that sits at the heart of your business, an idea that inspires and informs every expression of the brand, and points you in the right direction.

Understanding who you are

We conduct a deep dive into your business and brand to understand where you have come from, what your current state is and where your ambitions and opportunities lie.

First we’ll immerse ourselves in your business, experiencing its products and services first hand. This gives us a perspective which is vital for identifying both the good and bad moments within the customer journey. We’ll also get to look under the hood of your business with site visits to meet the people who make it all happen.

During a brand health check of your current visual and verbal communications across all channels, we’ll consider a number of metrics including clarity of message, consistency of execution and differentiation in the market. This allows us to get an understanding of the key challenges for the identity design and copywriting stages.

We ensure that the relevant internal stakeholders are consulted during the discovery phase with a series of depth interviews, online surveys and workshops. These cover topics such as; the perceptions of your business in the market, current and desired personality traits, what you know about your audiences and where you see yourselves in relation to your competitors.

Identifying audience needs

As well as talking to you about your audiences we’ll also get the low-down directly from them. Through depth interviews we’ll build a picture of their needs and wants, what motivates them when making decisions, what their pain points are and what they love about you!

Market opportunities

Understanding your wider market and benchmarking you against competitors ensures we can position you in an ownable and distinct space in your market. We audit a range of competitors, examining their apparent strategy, their visual identity, tone of voice and marketing activity.

Brand strategy – Definition

Along with your organising brand idea we create the tools you’ll need to build your brand inside your organisation and take it to market.

– A clearly defined purpose to unite your team
– Behaviour-based brand values that help build a positive culture and consistent customer experience
– An authentic story that sets out what you stand for, how you do things and what makes you different.
– Benefit-driven key messages that are built around your strengths and aligned to your audience’s needs
– Defined personality traits to assist with design consistency and writing with one voice.

Brand strategy – Inspiration

The brand strategy’s main job is to inform a cohesive experience of the brand. This could be through consistent visual and verbal communications, or even by influencing the recruitment and behaviours of the very employees that will be delivering the experience every day.

The style and delivery of your products and services should also align with your brand strategy as should the partnerships and endorsements you engage in.

The best brand strategies are something everyone internally and externally can believe in, they have commercial relevance and drive growth, They signal what makes you better than and different from the herd, and they move you towards your business goals.