Just Give Me The Pill
“Can we do the 12-week branding program without the strategy?”
This is a real question from a real client. (And not the first to ask)So please let me explain why the answer is “Hell no!” with an analogy.
Brand assets (branding) are a means to an end. Even though you might feel that the end goal is always the same - making money - one could argue that the path to making money is always unique and different for every product, brand and company. In fact, making money in my view is the result of having a clear path that is intentionally set.
The keywords here are clear and intentional. So you know your end goal. You just have a million unique ways to get there. In many cases, you as an entrepreneur, marketing manager, or CEO are not seeing the best way, because you are on the path, not in satellite mode.
You have the challenge to define the path to your end goal; with clarity and intention. Imagine you are the patient going to see a doctor to solve your challenge. You’re hoping the doctor has the cure, medicine, and the solution to your problem. Now when you ask a tech branding agency like us to skip the strategy part, you’re basically saying: “Good Morning doctor, I am sick, but I don’t have the time and language to explain what is wrong. Just give me the pill.”
In some cases our clients handover some research and documents on for example the market, the target audience, personas and mission, and vision, and that’s great! But still, we are the doctors. Imagine a doctor giving you a medicine solely based on the patient’s Google search. There is no room for the doctor to ask meaningful questions. So he doesn’t ask about allergies and gives the patient the pill. Extreme situation: what if the patient dies because of an allergy for some of the content from that medicine?
Who is wrong? Good doctor and a bad patient? Bad doctor and a good patient?
What is strategy in our field?
We define strategy as having a solid gameplan; “Strategy is a clear, intentional and sustainable way of adding value to the company or brand.”
Clarity
Making choices takes away a lot of the noise and defines all the necessary milestones towards your goal. “Everybody who wants to lose weight” is not a target audience. Neither is “Everybody who likes our product”. Strategy is making bold choices. Strategy = Clarity.
Intentional
The opposite of intent is randomness. When you start to get intentional about your path and the choices you will see that everything is intertwined. Strategic brand positioning, goal setting, and planning asks for disentanglement and alignment of the factors involved.
Sustainable
A strategy can be sustainable in several ways. Most importantly your strategy must fit your resources of time, money, knowledge, and capabilities. Secondly, a strategy is only sustainable if it makes money. Protect the downside.
Value
A good strategy defines the exact and measurable value that it will bring. For example: do you aim to attract 100.000 new unique visitors to your website, OR do you wish to sell 2.500 more of your premium product in period XYZ?
“Strategy is a clear, intentional, and sustainable way of adding value to the company or brand.”
When tackling branding challenges we can’t afford to be bad doctors. But we can’t afford to waste time either. Therefore we designed the 12-week branding program as a pressure cooker environment for tech companies, startups, and scaleups. Tested on patients and doctors. If you still want to skip the strategy part, there is a box with 99 pills on your way to the exit. Pick any colour you like.
Your brand, (re)invented
Our 12-week (re)branding program is like bootcamp for brands. It’s hard work + a lot of fun; on both the client and the agency side.
