Brand Strategy is a formal plan to portray a particular image of a business to its audience. It communicates what a business is about and ideally, it depicts what differentiates it and makes it unique.

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A well-defined and executed brand strategy affects all aspects of a business and is directly connected to consumer needs, emotions, and competitive environments. In a nutshell, brand strategy defines the ideas and concepts that the public will associate with your business.

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What makes a well-defined brand strategy?

Attention to detail, the more detail goes into the plan the easier it will be to execute. It is of core importance to have a deep understanding of who the target audience is, their needs and frustrations and how you can offer value to them. Communicating what your brand stands for in a way that connects with your prospective clients, is what will ultimately make your brand recognisable.

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Attention to detail, the more detail goes into the plan the easier it will be to execute. It is of core importance to have a deep understanding of who the target audience is, their needs and frustrations and how you can offer value to them. Communicating what your brand stands for in a way that connects with your prospective clients, is what will ultimately make your brand recognisable.

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However, executing a brand strategy successfully is more complex than defining it. In today’s business world we have a great array of channels through which to communicate with our audience and utilising them appropriately is paramount in any modern branding strategy.

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There are several approaches to branding strategies, which one to implement will depend on the type of product and the target audience.

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Name and Brand Recognition

This is the type of strategy well-established companies mostly rely on. Starbucks, Apple and Mercedes-Benz are some examples. The name is so iconic that the target audience will immediately correlate a product with a concept. This type of strategy requires time and impeccable consistency in how the message is conveyed to the audience.

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Individual Branding

This is the case for companies with multiple products, each with its own identity. Some of the clearest examples are in the food industry, we recognise certain products by their brand immediately, but that brand isn’t necessarily the manufacturer.

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Attitude Branding

This strategy is quite peculiar and tends to be somewhat ambiguous. The product or name itself isn’t the core strength of this strategy, instead, a certain personality is brought to life. The audience identifies itself with this personality and connects with it. From the user's point of view, the experience feels personalised because he or she identifies with the attitude that is portrayed. This is often the case with sports or clothing brands.

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Brand Extension

This particular strategy applies to companies that branch out into other markets in which they weren’t involved before. It can be considered the early stages of Name and Brand recognition. The main goal of this strategy is to carry the initial brand’s identity to the mix of products and across the different markets.

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Crowdsourcing Branding

In this case, the audience participates in the creation of the brand. Being involved in the process effectively drives personal interest in the product. When applied appropriately, this strategy can be a very powerful way to establish a connection with the audience, making them feel like brand ambassadors because they took part in bringing it to life These five strategies are only the peak of the branding iceberg and strategies are never written in stone, there always are ways to innovate and devise forward-looking solutions.

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The Kenshō team specialises in integrating these as well as other techniques to design tailored branding strategies for our clients and we love it!

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Which one of these five strategies do you think will suit your business better? Would you like to know more about how we design strategies for clients? Get in touch at hi@kensho.marketing