It’s no secret that a great brand is an important part to success in business. The more consumers love your brand, the more likely they are to stay loyal and buy from you again and again. But what is it exactly that makes a brand great? It’s simple: clarity and consistency! A strong brand strategy helps you cut through all of the noise out there and tell your story in a way that resonates with people. Brand strategy comes before you do anything else, especially, deciding on a name, creating a logo or briefing a designer to create your brand assets. Here are some tips on what to do first and how to write an effective creative brief for designers so they can visually bring your brand strategy to life.
Brand Strategy helps you to identify what your brand stands for and decide how you want to present it to the world.
Brand Strategy is the foundation for your creative. It’s the key to unlocking your consumers’ hearts and minds, and a road map which helps you avoid costly mistakes.
You can have all the money in the world to spend on your marketing campaign, but if it doesn’t communicate what your brand stands for and why people should engage with it’s like a leaky bucket – your marketing budget will just fall way.
Make sure your brand is strategy is clear and compelling. This is the first step before you brief a designer.
It pays to work with a good strategist to make sure your brand is strategy is clear and compelling. This is the first step before you brief a designer/art director.
A good strategist will help you to define the value of your brand, uncover the deep consumer insight that resonates with your target audience and build all the elements that work together to create a compelling brand. A strong brand strategy communicates the value of your product or service to your customer so they can easily see why they should buy from you. It helps them understand the single minded proposition of your company, which is what you do and who it’s for.
The brand strategy will influence all decisions moving forward, especially when designing products, advertising campaigns and marketing materials like packaging or websites etc.
If you have a strong brand strategy writing a brief for your designer should be straight forward
A brand strategy is the foundation of your creative. If you have a strong brand strategy in place writing a brief for your designer should be straight forward.
To get the creative juices flowing, make sure these key element are included in your brief;
- Brand strategy: This should include your brand’s purpose and value proposition, as well as how you want to be perceived. It’s also important to articulate the experience you want to create for your customers.
- Target market: Don’t forget that all of this starts with who you’re talking to. A good brief will include details about the people who make up your target audience and what makes them unique. Targeting can be geographic (geos), demographic (demo), psychographic (psycho) or behavioural (behav). For example: if you were targeting a tourist board in New York, then geos would be very important – as this would impact on how people find out about the product and how they interact with it. Demographic could also be a consideration if there are specific demographics that are more likely to use the products/services than others. Similarly, psycho and behav could be used if there is particular psychographic or behavioural characteristics of certain groups within the population that will benefit from these products/services more than others.
- Single minded proposition and proof points: What’s the single most important message that needs to be communicated? What is the key take away you want the audience to be left with? Hint – this can change depending on the format but all messages should work together. It’s up to you and your brand strategist to create the key statements that clearly communicates what makes your company different from everyone else out there selling products or services similar to yours and how these messages are applied to the different brand assets or formats you will need.
- Desired action – when the consumer comes across your creative asset whether it be packaging or digital advertising be clear on the behavior change you wish to elicit. What action do you want them to take after seeing your piece of creative?
- Format – What is the format of the creative – is it packaging, a tagline, website etc
And in addition;
- Make it easy to read and understand
- Be clear on the deliverables
- Include a timeline for delivery of materials (ideally, no longer than 30 days)
- Provide budget guidelines or limitations on what you can spend
Your brand strategy is the first step in creating great creative! And we can help. We offer brand strategy services and via our amazing partners we can support you brand creative and brand execution! If you are in the position where your brand needs to be created, strengthened, refreshed or repositioned feel free to contact us to see how we can help.
