How to craft your own strategic Brandscape
Whether a company is a few days old or a hundred years, creating an easy-to-digest brand strategy is imperative for both, connecting internal teams and engaging audiences. There is no hard and fast rule for how a strategy platform should be created, however, it’s important to understand that people don’t have the mental capacity for long-form explanations of a brand.
While there is a place for in-depth brand guidelines, every brand should have a one-page Brandscape that that allows you to quickly gut check new executions with a simple review of the following sections:
Target Audience
The success of a brand can be determined by what people are saying about that company, more specifically, what their core audience is saying about them when they’re not in the room. Whether you create customer ambassador teams, focus groups, surveys, or a number of other engagement tools, it’s imperative to know who you should be talking to. Knowing who they are and what they care about is critical to branding.
Competitive Advantages
The competitive advantages of a company should be identified as you work through each target audience. In particular, how needs are met, or problems are solved. These answer “why would this audience choose our company over someone else?”
This list often ranges from 3 to 5 advantages. Including any more than that may require you to go through the list again to make sure each point is true and meaningful.
Positioning
A well-written positioning statement provides strategic thinking combined with descriptive language to help bring its essence to life. It embodies the brand in a way that should inspire internal teams and clarify how audiences should be spoken to.
Here’s our approach to defining positioning:
What: The category you occupy in the mind of the consumer.
How: Your One-of-a-kind way
Who: Colorfully describe your primary customer.
Where: Where do you work?
Why: Why do customers choose you?
When: What forces are you fighting against?
Key Competitors
The number of competitors to include within your Brandscape should reflect those you are most concerned with, specifically those taking market share and any others that pose a possible threat to your success. Beyond brand expression, this area should focus on positioning and any key strategy elements that should be known.
Onlyness
Once a long form positioning statement is created, editing it down into an onlyness statement is much easier. In its simplest form, an onlyness statement uses the following formula: “Our (offering) is the only (category) that (benefit).”
It’s all about defining the thing that your company does that either no one else does or that it does significantly better than anyone else? The result is a statement that can be more aspirational in its direction and help you see what you really want to achieve.
Purpose
Beyond making money, why does this company exist? Your purpose essentially ignores the tangible elements of your organization and focuses on its heartbeat. It is the unchanging, driving force behind how a company operates, who it hires, and who it partners with.
Mission and Vision
In thinking about vision and mission, companies must envision them side-by-side. Both depend on the other to be true.
A company’s mission summarizes the master plan for creating value. This statement is a one-sentence, action-oriented explanation of “how” the company will accomplish its vision. In creating a mission, consider the inner workings of the company and what you’re trying to do for customers.
A company's vision can be defined as the shared picture of mission success. What does success look like—in a tangible way? Ideally, it uses language or an end point that can be measured to avoid uncertainty and confusion about the direction of the company.
Core Values
The core values of a company should reflect and support its purpose and culture. Within the Brandscape, core values should be written in the identified tone and voice of the brand. Avoid using language that could be considered corporate sunshine; the values should be simple, believable, and demonstrated by the rewarded behaviors within the organization.
Brand Personality/Voice
Each brand has human-like qualities, including personality and tone of voice. Taking time to describe these elements in 3 or 4 short, adjective-heavy sentences makes it easier for internal teams to create materials that align with the brand.
Daake utilizes archetypes, universally understood character types, to help companies understand the human characteristics they possess. The language and feel of a brand’s archetype is often used in the Brand Personality/Voice space of the Brandscape as it creates a clear, easy to understand vision for how the brand should sound across all communications.
Big Idea
The Big Idea takes into account everything above, which is why it is typically presented last and right at the center of our strategic summary. But try not to think of it as a tagline or position. Instead, think of the Big Idea as a snappy summary of the brand. For some companies, this leans toward brand promise. For others, it becomes an internal rally cry to keep employees focused and clear about the brand.
Creating a well-thought, honest Brandscape is challenging yet brings an incredible amount of clarity once completed. It gives you a new ability to clearly quickly and confidently respond when someone asks, “Is this on brand?”.
If you’re interested in a more in depth look at the Brandscape brand elements and a guide to completing your own, download our strategic white paper, Understanding (and Getting the Most from) Your Company’s Brandscape.
