First of all, let me just say I love working with talented designers. I’ve been doing that for 35 years, and it’s a true joy to see my ideas brought to life in vivid graphic form.
I agree with Tom Peters who famously said that design should be part of business school. And in business, “design should be on the agenda in every meeting, in every department.”
Alas, it is not. And designers rarely have the business acumen needed to do brand strategy on their own.
But more and more designers are shape-shifting their way into the role of “brand strategist.”
It makes sense for them as it increases their billable hours, but I worry about the takeaway value for clients.
Here’s what I’m talking about…
This was a LinkedIn ad. This company was very proud of the brand strategy work they recently did, and they wanted to share. It included copy explaining each of the four “brand pillars…”
I applaud their effort! It’s nice to know that even farmers are thinking about branding.
But there are a few big problems with this…
First, those are not brand pillars. They’re just brand attributes, or what’s commonly known as features.
You don’t need a brand strategist to make a list of product features, organize them into four buckets of chicken feed and then design a graphic.
That’s not brand strategy.
Another problem is how they’ve taken a slide from their so-called “brand strategy” deck, and turned that into an ad.
They’re skipping a crucial step!
It’s a common problem… Business owners get all excited about their new brand strategy and they just want to make use of it.
But there’s a lot of work to be done before you can translate brand strategy into effective advertising. Don’t confuse the two.
Your brand strategy doc is for internal use only. It should be a key part of the employee manual and a constant source of inspiration and direction.
It’s part of the brief that you provide to your creative team.
It’s not ad copy.
There are a lot of options these days for business owners who are serious about doing some brand strategy work.
You can try to do it yourself… There are classes you can take, webinars to watch and rudimentary guides to follow. It’s like paint by numbers, but it’s better than nothing.
Or you can hire a designer who’s calling herself a brand strategist.
But here’s what’s missing from both those options: Deep, meaningful insight and a big idea based on that insight.
If you want a better brand strategy, one that’ll sustain your business for years to come, you’ll have to go deeper than just pillars of features and puffy adjectives.
You have to stop patting yourself on the back and start making tough decisions.
That’s what real strategy work is all about… Making choices. Thinking big then trimming things down. It’s about new angles on old products and categories.
Insight drives the strategy that directs the tactics that produce results. That’s the recipe for better brand strategy.
(Here’s the difference between strategy and tactics)
Bottom line: If you want a truly insightful brand strategy you need more than just a designer doing the work.
You need a team of at least two people: a designer paired with a savvy, strategic writer. Words always come first!
Preferably there’d also be a third person involved… An account planner or researcher who specializes in digging up those insights you need.
Three heads are 100 times better than one.
If you’d like a second opinion on your brand strategy, contact me here. Do it now, before you run any more ads based on it.
