Plenty of businesses come to a studio asking for a logo and end up talking about strategy instead. There’s a good reason for that. A logo is a decision about how to look, and you can’t make it well until you’ve decided what you are. Working that out is what strategy is for. The chess piece in the image above is a fair picture of it: the shape everyone recognises is cut from the working drawings underneath.
Here’s what those working drawings are made of, in the order we’d work through them.
The seven parts of a strategy
1. Positioning
This is one sentence that says what you do, who it’s for, and why someone should choose you over the alternatives. It’s a working statement for internal use rather than a tagline. “The branding studio for founders who want to look like the company they’re about to become” is positioning. “Creative solutions for ambitious brands” isn’t, because any agency on earth could say it.
Positioning is the hardest part and the one most often skipped, because it means deciding who you’re not for. Everything else in the strategy follows from it.
2. Audience
This covers who buys from you, who influences that decision, what they’re trying to achieve, what worries them, and what they currently do instead of hiring you. Write about them as real people in real situations, rather than as age brackets and income bands. A good audience section reads like it was written by someone who has actually spoken to your customers, and it should have been. Even a handful of short calls with existing clients will tell you more than a demographic chart.
3. Purpose and values
This is why the company exists beyond making money, and the three or four principles it won’t compromise on. The section has a bad reputation because it’s where vague words collect, like integrity, innovation and excellence.
A useful test is to flip a value and see whether any company would sign up to the opposite. If “we value honesty” is on your list, ask who values dishonesty. Real values are specific enough that someone could disagree with them.
4. Personality and voice
If the brand were a person in a room, how would they behave? Pick three to five character traits and pair each with what it shouldn’t tip into, so the design and copy teams know where the line is: direct, not blunt; warm, not cute; confident, not loud. Then set out the voice principles that follow, with examples of how you’d write a headline, how you’d write an apology, and which words you use and avoid.
5. Messaging
This is the positioning translated for the outside world: one core message, two or three supporting points, and the evidence behind each. The tagline lives here if you have one. But most of this section is the argument your website, pitch deck and sales conversations should all make, in the same order.
6. Architecture
This sets out how the brand relates to its products, services, sub-brands and any parent company. There are three broad models:
- A branded house puts everything under one name, like Google Maps and Google Drive.
- A house of brands runs separate brands with the parent kept in the background, like Unilever with Dove and Ben & Jerry’s.
- An endorsed model sits between the two, where each product has its own name with the parent’s backing, like Courtyard by Marriott.
A single company with one offer barely needs this section. A business with three product lines, a partnership and an acquisition needs it badly, because every naming decision from then on depends on it.
7. Proof and measures
This covers what evidence backs up the position today, what evidence still needs building, and how you’ll know the brand is working. Evidence means client results, credentials, reviews and the specific numbers that make a claim believable.
Measures should be a small set of things that would change if the brand did its job. That might be answers to a customer survey, searches for your name, or how long it takes to close a sale.
What a finished strategy looks like
It’s a short document of twelve to twenty pages that a new hire could read in an hour and then make on-brand decisions without having to ask anyone. If it needs the designer in the room to explain it, it isn’t finished.
From there, the identity work has a brief it can be checked against. Does this typeface feel direct without being blunt? Does this layout put the core message first? Strategy doesn’t make the design decisions, but it gives you a way to test them. Without it, the only test a logo gets is whether people like it on the day it’s presented.
Frequently asked questions
What is brand strategy?
The set of decisions about what a company stands for, who it’s for, how it’s different and how it should sound. It’s worked out before any visual identity work starts, so the identity has something to express.
What’s the difference between brand strategy and brand identity?
Strategy is the thinking behind the brand: positioning, audience and voice. Identity is how that thinking is expressed: logo, type, colour and imagery. An identity without a strategy behind it is really just decoration.
How long does brand strategy take?
For a small or mid-sized business, usually one to two weeks of research, workshops and writing before design starts.
