What Is Brand Strategy? A Plain-English Guide
Brand strategy explained without jargon: what it covers, what it produces and how to tell when yours is working.
Brand strategy is the set of decisions that explains who you are for, what you offer them and why they should believe you. It comes before design, because design needs something to express.
What a brand strategy contains
Most strategies answer the same handful of questions, whatever they are called:
- Audience: who you are trying to reach and what they care about.
- Positioning: the space you want to own in their mind. See our guide to positioning.
- Proposition: the promise you make and the proof behind it.
- Personality: how you sound and behave. This feeds your tone of voice.
- Purpose and values: why the business exists beyond revenue, if that is true for you.
What it produces
A good strategy is short. One or two pages that a new hire could read in five minutes is far more useful than a sixty-slide deck nobody opens. It should end with clear implications for design and messaging.
How to tell if it is working
Ask three people in the company to describe what you do. If the answers match, the strategy is doing its job. If they differ, the problem is upstream of your logo.
Do startups need one?
Yes, but it does not need to be heavy. An early-stage team can agree the essentials in a workshop and refine them as the market responds. Many studios now run strategy as the first stage of a brand sprint for exactly that reason. The Design Council's Double Diamond is a helpful model for seeing where strategy sits in a design process.
Looking for an agency? Read the full shortlist on Seed to Brand.
