What Is Strategic Branding?
When you mention the word “brand”, the first thing that comes to mind for most people is actually visual branding (and more specifically, a logo). Nike’s swoosh, Starbucks’ siren, McDonald’s golden arches… you get the idea.
And while visuals are important (Specht & Co. is a brand design studio after all), they’re just the tip of the iceberg to strategic branding.
The best explanation I’ve ever heard about what a brand truly is, comes from the one and only Seth Godin. He says, “A brand is the set of expectations, memories, stories and relationships that, taken together, account for a consumer’s decision to choose one product or service over another.”
So if a brand is essentially how the world perceives your business, and a visual brand is how your business physically shows up in the world, then what is strategic branding?
Strategic branding is the process of intentionally defining the experience that you want your audience to have when they interact with your business, and then using that strategy as the driving force behind the design of your visual brand identity.
In other words, strategic branding is the combination of a brand strategy and brand identity.
So let’s flush out what exactly is included in each of those components.
Strategic Branding Part 1: What is a brand strategy?
Brand strategy serves as the foundation for your visual brand identity. It’s the non-sexy, but super important stuff that comes before we create a Pinterest board, define your color palette, or start sketching logo designs.
The strategy phase of a branding project involves defining your “why”, digging deep to get to know your ideal audience, auditing your competition, and making sure that everything about your brand is crafted in an intentional and strategic way in order to help move your business toward your goals.
So what specifically does a brand strategy include? At Specht & Co. we divide brand strategy into three components including brand substance, brand positioning, and brand persona.
Here’s a brief overview of what each of those components consists of:
Brand Substance
Your brand substance is the meat and potatoes of your brand, and is arguably the most important part of any brand strategy. As such it’s vital that we really spend some time thinking through each of these elements when crafting your brand strategy.
Purpose: Your brand purpose is your “why”; the reason that your business exists. Aside from the obvious purpose of any business (making money) why do you do what you do?
Vision: Your brand vision is just that, your vision for your brand’s future. What does your brand/business hope to achieve in the long-term? This should be an ambitious and aspirational statement.
Mission: Your brand mission is what your business is committed to doing every single day in order to fulfill its purpose and vision.
Values: What does your brand stand for? What are absolute non-negotiables when operating as a business? These are your brand values. They act as a compass when making decisions in your business and should be infused into everything your business does.
Brand Positioning
Brand positioning refers to how and where your business shows up in the market. Defining your brand position involves taking stock of other players in the market (competitors), identifying what sets you apart from those competitors, and distilling that down into a brand positioning statement.
Audience: The first step in defining your brand’s position involves identifying your ideal audience and getting to know them really, really well. During this phase of a brand strategy project we’ll focus on getting to know who your audience is, what they value, where they spend their time, what their fears, goals, and core desires are, and much more.
The more specific we can get in defining your ideal audience, the better we can craft a brand that speaks directly to them.
Competitor Audit: After getting to know your ideal audience, it’s time to turn our focus to your competition with a competitor audit. During this audit we answer the following questions in order to better understand the landscape of your industry and market:
What is their core offer?
What is their pricing structure?
What is their brand message?
Who is their target audience?
How effective is their online presence?
What are their clients saying about them?
Unique Value Proposition: Why should someone choose your business over one of your competitors? Why are you different and/or better? The answer to these questions becomes your unique value proposition. The unique value proposition is the crux of what your visual brand identity will be built around.
Positioning Statement: Your brand’s positioning statement is a summation of what your brand does, who it does it for, and why it’s the best option for your audience. Here’s an example:
For [Target Audience] who [Statement of Need/Want] the [Business Name] is a [Business Category] that [Key Benefit] unlike [Primary Competitive Alternative] we [Unique Value Proposition]
As a note, the brand positioning statement is typically an internal statement and is generally not used word-for-word in client facing materials.
Brand Persona
I like to imagine your brand persona as the piece that bridges the gap between strategy and visuals. A brand persona is just that, your brand personified. How does your brand look? How does it sound when it interacts with your audience? Is it formal or casual? Serious or joking? Reserved or outgoing? Grungy or preppy? You get the idea.
All of this helps us to then start identifying what your visual brand should look like. What fonts should we choose, what color palette will best resonate with your audience, etc.
Strategic Branding Part 2: What is a brand identity?
Now that we’ve very clearly defined your brand strategy, we use all of that information to craft a visual brand that (no surprise here) is rooted in strategy rather than frills and personal preferences.
The work we’ve done on the front end to define your purpose, vision, mission, and values as well as audit your competition and get inside the heads of your ideal audience allows us to design a visual brand that not only looks beautiful, but *gasp* actually helps you connect with clients and grow your business.
So what’s included in a visual brand identity?
Logo: Your logo is generally the most obvious and recognizable part of your visual brand identity. Typically we’ll design a few variations of your brand logo for use across different platforms, and once designed this logo will remain a constant symbol of your brand.
Color Palette: Your brand color palette is just that, the colors that are used in conjunction with your brand. Since we have a clearly defined strategic branding, we are able to carefully curate your color palette using color psychology in an effort to make your audience feel a certain way when interacting with your brand.
Typography: Your typography palette includes the fonts that are used for your brand. Generally a maximum of three to four fonts are selected for a single brand. These include a headline font, sub-headline font, accent font, and body copy font. Again, your brand strategy will heavily influence which types of fonts make the most sense for your brand.
Image/Graphic Style: What types of graphics and imagery does your brand use? Bright, punchy, and full of color or dark, muted, and moody? Similar to color and type, these decisions will be informed by your brand strategy, and specifically your brand persona.
Brand Strategy + Brand Identity = Strategic Branding
So there you have it, a strategic brand is just that. An intentional marrying of strategy and design created to help your business meet its goals.
Sure, you can build a beautiful visual brand identity without bothering with strategy. But chances are you’ll wind up with a really pretty brand, that unfortunately doesn’t convert, and we both know that’s not what you want.
When you work with Specht & Co. on your branding, we always employ a strategy first approach so that we can be sure that the brand we create for you actually moves your business forward. If you’re interested in learning more about our strategic branding and design process, downloading our service guide here!
