Let’s Talk Strategy (1/2)

Part 1: what is brand strategy?

In my last article, I spoke about identifying brand essence in order to write in the right brand voice. Today, we’re going to move higher up in the funnel of creation. From writing to strategy.

What is brand strategy and who are brand strategists?

To those unfamiliar with the creative process, brand strategy is an extremely important step. Before it comes down to the creative teams, strategists are the ones who filter and structure all relevant data and bring juicy insights to creative teams so they can go ahead and do their magic.

But Mallika, why is this important? It seems like a futile exercise.

No! You take that back! (Ok that was a conversation in my head 😁)

Strategy is imperative to the creative process because it ensures creatives are factually correct and relevant for the audience. It also gives the creative team a view of what’s already in the market and what competitors are doing/saying. So it offers some perspective too.

As you grow in your creative role, it is essential to be able to understand, dissect and sometimes even create strategy.

You see, creatives can’t just go ahead and create masterpieces, we are problem solvers, not artists, in advertising. For those who haven’t watched the hit series Mad Men, here’s a scene from the show where the Creative Director Don Draper explains this to his Copywriter Peggy Olson.

In a nutshell, brand strategists help creative teams solve problems effectively.

This is just a gist, brand strategists do a lot more. Google the role of a Brand Strategist and you’ll get a better idea. Or better yet, ChatGPT it.

Ok so this article will get really long if I go into details I want to get into. So I’ll be creating a second part where I’ll walk through a strategy framework founded, used and popularized by essentials giant, Unilever.

I’ll get into:

How do brands decide what their brand’s essence is going to be?

How do they know how the brand should speak?

How do they decide what emotion to evoke among their target group?

And we’ll take an existing brand and apply the framework to it, so you get an idea of how this works.

See you in the next one.