Six steps to bring your brand to life
When I talk about a brand strategy, what do you expect that to include?
For years now I’ve grappled with understanding where brand strategy ends and content strategy begins. As a content strategist I’ve had to retrofit more brand strategies and brand visions than I care to count. Brand strategies are rarely fit for purpose to meaningfully bridge the intention of the brand vision with the actual reality of the lived experience of that brand and everything in between. And with many of the outputs of a content strategy bridging brand and experience, the quality of the brand strategy is essential to the success of a content and experience design strategy.
So, how can we successfully design a brand strategy that provides the actual bridge needed for a successful content strategy? I cover this in my From Brand Strategy to Content Strategy workshops, but I’ve also framed it into six crucial steps, which I’ll outline below. In summary they are:
Identity
Difference
Promise
Evidence
Representation
Experience
I’ll now explain what each of these steps includes…
Identity
This should be a clear and concise statement of who you are and what you exist to create and stand for in the world. This might also include a reflection on your values if that is core to your identity, but equally values definition can also be part of the “promise” (see below).
An important thing to remember here when developing this with your communities is to focus on who you are, and not so much on who you are not. It’s often all too easy to define ourselves by what we’re not, but that typically doesn’t offer clarity about who we are. Your “difference” statement provides the opportunity to signal some of this.
I’d typically suggest that your identity statement be 2-3 sentences maximum. And if you can get it into fewer, even better!
Difference
I like to think of this section as being a narrative framework that answers the question “Why us and not another organisation?” In other words, this area of work will clearly articulate your distinctiveness and your unique or exceptional offerings. Notice the deliberate use of the word “exceptional” here. In the education sector, it’s not always easy to point to things that make us totally unique. But if you can show why and how your offering is superior, then you have something to work with.
Start defining this by creating an “only we” list. Only we have… Only we can offer… And see what that creates.
Promise
Your promise statement is a narrative framework that captures your commitment and promise to the world and to your stakeholders, customers and communities. It will articulate your highest and best goals and intentions, but phrased so that it’s clear to different groups of people what your promise is to them.
The key here is to make it about them, to make it relevant and to be willing to be powerful. Be careful when your promises might really just be vanity measures. In other words, you might lean more towards “We are the organisation that will cure childhood cancer” instead of “We will be in the top 100 universities in the world”.
Evidence
Here you will articulate the supporting evidence that validates the claims you make about your identity and difference. It might also be the evidence that proves that you really are the organisation that will deliver on its promise.
So, this can be a collection of facts, insights and stories. Referencing case studies is also powerful here. Create a bank of this evidence for you to be able to draw on at different times, for different purposes and with different audiences.
The other thing that you might include here is a reflection on the company that you keep. Particular strategic partnerships and collaborations can add credibility to your difference, and generate trust that you can deliver on your promise.
Representation
Representation refers to the ways in which you represent your organisation in the world. This might include, but isn’t limited to:
actions
products
partnerships
language
style and tone
voice
inclusion
content types
storytelling
conversation
visual identity
signage
animations
sounds
and more…
This one can be huge. It is the bridge between your brand strategy and your content strategy. Spending time and resource on this to really get it right is essential. (Don’t have that time? Contact us to ask how we can help with this or any of the other sections).
Experience
This last area is the one that unites brand, content and service design. When we talk about experience or experience design, we are pointing to the whole experience, not just a part of the experience (like printed materials).
Here you’ll design a vision to create brand consistency and integrity through the human interactions that people have with you. Experience occurs in a great many forms and might include:
Being impacted by your research
Engaging with your communications
Experiencing your learning and teaching approaches and styles
Engaging with public outreach activities
Receiving customer service
Being on the receiving end of public affairs and policy initiatives
Attending an event
Having physical campus experiences.
By following these six steps, you will be able to define and present your organisation’s brand in an authentic and powerful way.
Need more?
If you need help with any of this, our team can help you. Connect with us for a chat.