Brand Architecture

Sometimes you’ve gotta go back to go forwards. If you’re not absolutely clear about your promise to the market – and we mean the one big thing, not the five big things – your marketing strategy is like a house built on unstable ground.

This ‘backwards’ step, which we call brand architecture, is critical because it provides the stable base for effective marketing communications. It differentiates your offer, allowing you to claim a position in the market. And when done to its fullest, it unifies and galvanises the team around a shared ‘reason for being’, goal and vision for the future. Brand architecture can really be transformative.

You know your offer so well that it is often hard to see the big picture from within the organisation. There’s too much detail and history getting in the way. Get outside help to complete a brand architecture process, but make sure you ask for these key outcomes:

• A single-minded promise that speaks to a customer/prospect need
• An elevator pitch that tells your brand’s story in a nutshell
• A personality for your brand that will live and breathe through all communications
• Sometimes a tagline is warranted, although not every brand needs one.

Lion’s Share often also provides:

• Clarity about purpose – the ‘why we do it’ question answered
• A list of the values that guide the organisation – the ‘what we stand for’ buttoned down
• A succinctly expressed, highly ambitious goal to catalyse the team
• A longterm vision for the future that gives everyone something to reach for and a sense of what success will feel like.

Ask about the methodology your consultant uses to produce these outcomes before you engage them. It’s important that it is research-based, thorough and well proven.