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By Chris Suchánek

Let’s not sugar-coat it. Most companies? They’re winging it. They’re throwing digital spaghetti at the wall— running ads, posting content and hoping something sticks. But if we’re being honest, something always feels a little off. The message is muddy. The brand vibe is all over the place. They’re spending money, sure, but the results? Inconsistent at best.

Here’s the not-so-fun truth: Marketing without brand strategy is noise. And the world is full of it.

We live in a broken business culture where activity is often mistaken for progress. You hear things like, “Look at our likes!” and “We got 10,000 impressions!” But none of that matters if you can’t explain what your brand stands for. It feels like progress, but it’s not. It’s a treadmill. So let’s hit pause and call out what most people get completely wrong.

Brand strategy isn’t optional. It’s the starting point. It’s not something you slap on after your website goes live. It’s not something you retrofit after the Facebook ads flop. It should come first, always.

Why Do So Many Brands Get This Backward?

It’s the speed trap: Companies race to get seen fast. They want visibility, reach and buzz. “Let’s get the word out!” they say. But here’s the kicker: They skip the step where they figure out what that “word” even is.

So what do we end up with? A pile of brands that look shiny but feel hollow, campaigns that scream but say nothing, and messaging that changes every other week. It all looks impressive until you look beneath the surface.

When your brand isn’t rooted in anything real, every ad, post and pitch feels a little disconnected. The customer notices it too, even if they can’t quite put their finger on why. It’s like starting a conversation that sounds exciting at first but ends up going nowhere. There’s no spark. No soul.

Build A Brand, Not A Billboard

The strongest brands don’t start with marketing. They start with meaning. They ask the real, sometimes uncomfortable questions: Why do we even exist? What do we believe in? What can we offer that no one else can, at least not the way we do?

That’s what brand strategy is all about. And no, it’s not about logos or colour palettes. It’s about your brand’s core. It’s about your worldview—the stuff that drives every decision and shapes how you show up in the world.

If you want your marketing to stick, and to mean something, this is where it begins.

Brand Strategy: Know Who You Are

This is your foundation. Don’t skip it.

• Define your vision, mission and values in a way that influences real decisions.

• Understand what you believe and why it matters to your audience.

• Nail your positioning. This is the space you want to own in your customer’s mind.

A brand isn’t a product or a clever tagline. It’s a gut feeling people get when they think about you. Brand strategy helps shape that feeling so it’s consistent, honest and memorable.

Market Strategy: Know The Game You’re Playing

Once you know who you are, it’s time to figure out where you belong.

• What are you offering, and why should people care?

• How are you pricing, packaging and delivering it?

• Who’s your customer, and how will you reach them clearly and meaningfully?

This is the bridge between your identity and your actions. It keeps you from wandering in circles.

Execution: Show Up With Purpose

Now, finally, you can talk about branding and marketing. Branding is how you present yourself visually, verbally and experientially. Marketing is how you get your message out through campaigns, content, ads and stories. You need both. Marketing gets you noticed, but branding keeps people coming back. One creates interest, while the other builds trust.

Just remember, this is the last phase. If you start here, you’re building on sand.

Stop Chasing Vanity Metrics, And Start Building Real ROI

Metrics can be addictive. They’re flashy, easy to measure and look great in reports. But if they become your only focus, you’re losing the bigger picture.

Click-throughs and impressions don’t build businesses. Decisions do. Purpose does. Real growth starts when you slow down, ask better questions and build something with substance.

So here’s your challenge: Stop launching just to launch. Stop marketing without meaning. Stop throwing messages into the void and hoping they land.

Start with the brand. Build something solid. Say something real. Make your message impossible to ignore. Put brand strategy first, always.

Feature Image Credit: Getty

By Chris Suchánek

COUNCIL POST | Membership (fee-based)

Chris Suchánek: Founder and CSO of Firm Media, pioneering marketing excellence in the specialty medical sector with award-winning brands. Read Chris Suchánek’s full executive profile here. Find Chris Suchánek on LinkedIn. Visit Chris’ website.

Sourced from Forbes

By Simon Woolford

Simon Woolford discusses how brand strategy distinguishes enduring brands from those easily overlooked in a fast-paced, AI-driven content landscape.

In a world of templates, brand strategy is what sets you apart

The digital age has lowered the barriers to launching a brand. AI tools, pre-made design templates, and plug-and-play platforms allow anyone to bring a business to life in days, not months. For startups and DTC players, the promise is speed and scale — launch fast, iterate later.

But in the luxury space, speed is rarely the goal. And iteration only works if the foundation is sound to begin with. At SUM, we work with brands that understand this. Strategy is not something they bolt on later — it is the architecture that holds the whole brand together.

Brand strategy is a creative act, not a business formality

Too often, strategy is mistaken for paperwork. A slide deck, a positioning statement, a tick-box exercise before the ‘real’ creative work begins. But in reality, brand strategy is the most creative part of the process — it is where decisions get made.

What does the brand stand for? What does it not stand for? Who are we really speaking to — and how do they want to be spoken to? These questions are not answered by visuals or slogans. They require a deep understanding of context, culture, and intent.

For luxury brands in particular, the answers are rarely obvious. It is not enough to be premium — everyone says that. The challenge is defining a point of view and building a brand world that expresses it in a way that feels both refined and distinctive.

Fast brands vs lasting brands

Today’s market is full of well-executed, visually pleasing brands that fail to make any lasting impression. The fonts are right. The photography is polished. But the substance is missing — because the strategy was never there.

The strongest brands we have worked with do not start with visuals. They start with questions:

  • What space do we want to occupy in the market — and in people’s minds?
  • What story are we telling, and how do we ensure it is credible?
  • What principles will guide our decisions as we grow?

Without clarity on these points, it is all too easy to default to trends — chasing the aesthetic of the moment without ever defining what sets you apart. Strategy is what stops that from happening. It acts as both compass and filter.

The role of strategy in a post-AI landscape

The arrival of generative tools has changed the game. You can now create logos, packaging ideas, and social captions in minutes. But the question is not whether you can generate brand assets quickly — it is whether those assets actually say anything unique.

“AI is good at mimicking. It can remix existing data, follow prompts, and simulate voice. But it cannot define purpose.”

AI is good at mimicking. It can remix existing data, follow prompts, and simulate voice. But it cannot define purpose. It cannot craft nuance from lived experience or cultural insight. And it certainly cannot tell you what a brand should be.

This is where brand strategy becomes more valuable, not less. In a world where everything starts to look the same, it is the thought behind the brand that gives it weight. If AI makes design easier, then strategy is how you make it matter.

Strategy as quiet confidence

For luxury brands, being different does not mean being louder. In fact, it often means the opposite. The most powerful strategies are usually the most subtle — the kind that express themselves in tone, restraint, and consistency.

“We have worked with brands who have no tagline, no manifesto, and no overt claims — and yet they feel unmistakably clear. That is not an accident.”

We have worked with brands who have no tagline, no manifesto, and no overt claims — and yet they feel unmistakably clear. That is not an accident. It is the result of strategic discipline. A willingness to define what belongs, what does not, and how the brand should behave across every touchpoint.

Whether it is a fragrance bottle, a website, or an in-store moment, the role of strategy is to ensure all these elements feel coherent. Not identical, but aligned.

Strategy aligns teams, not just visuals

Brand strategy is not just a tool for designers or marketers — it is a tool for internal alignment. We have seen again and again how a strong strategic framework brings clarity to cross-functional teams.

When done well, strategy becomes a shared language. It gives everyone — from founders and investors to designers and developers — a way to evaluate ideas, solve problems, and protect the brand over time.

Without that framework, brand decisions become reactive. Messaging shifts. Priorities change. And over time, the brand drifts away from its original intent.

Why luxury brands need strategy more than ever

Luxury audiences are discerning. They expect more than product — they expect meaning, craft, and credibility. And they have an exceptional radar for inconsistency.

For these audiences, a weak strategy shows up quickly. It might be a jarring product line extension, an inauthentic campaign, or a tone of voice that feels off-brand. The result? Erosion of trust — and in the luxury space, trust is everything.

A strong strategy ensures this does not happen. It keeps the brand honest, consistent, and focused — not just in year one, but in year five, ten, and beyond.

Final Thought

There will always be faster ways to build a brand. But if you want to build something with depth, longevity, and real value — strategy still matters. Perhaps more than ever.

It is not about slogans or slides. It is about decisions. The ones that define who you are, what you stand for, and how you earn your place in the world.

Feature Image Credit: The Faces, YFS Magazine

By Simon Woolford

Simon Woolford is the founder of SUM, a London-based branding agency specialising in strategy-led work for luxury and design-led brands. With over 25 years of experience, he has helped position and scale brands across fashion, fragrance, hospitality, and lifestyle. His work combines strategic clarity with visual refinement – helping brands build lasting equity in saturated markets.

Sourced from YSF Magazine

By Anna King

Brand-building today demands an ever-evolving consumer-first mindset, says Anna King of M+C Saatchi Consulting. It’s more important than ever to keep your brand in shoppers’ minds.

Today’s retail landscape is anything but linear. Shopping journeys stretch across screens, channels, moods, and moments – shaped as much by impulse as by intention. As consumers flow between platforms and purchase triggers, the path to conversion is no longer predictable. To succeed, brands must lead with an ever-evolving consumer-first mindset – showing up with relevance, agility, and precision at every touchpoint.

In this new reality, context is king. A rushed tap of a payment card to replenish a household item is a world apart from an indulgent boutique browse. Decisions are shaped by intent in the moment – mood, setting, and circumstance. The scroll of a phone during a commute, a voice search while cooking, or the draw of an in-store experience all represent vastly different entry points into the purchase journey. Brands must be prepared to respond to these moments with real-time relevance and insight-driven content.

Simply showing up isn’t enough. Understanding which moments matter most – when attention can be converted into action – means delivering the right message, in the right place, at the right time. A well-timed push notification, an influencer’s trusted recommendation, or a seamless cross-channel transition can all shift a shopper from passive interest to active intent. This requires orchestrated responsiveness, backed by unified data and adaptive technology.

New loyalty

As expectations rise, presence becomes the new loyalty. It’s no longer defined by points programs or frequency. Instead, it’s built through emotional relevance, personalization, and utility. Consumers are loyal to brands that add value consistently – not just during a transaction, but throughout their daily routines. Whether through social commerce, direct-to-consumer platforms, or brick-and-mortar, leading brands are creating cohesive ecosystems of interaction. Consumers expect flexibility and intentionality, and brands must design for both.

This evolution requires more than omnichannel reach. It demands phygital brand design, where physical and digital experiences are seamlessly integrated. A consumer may discover a product via TikTok, try it virtually using AR, test it in-store, and complete the purchase via app. The expectation is not just cross-channel availability, but effortless navigation. Every handoff – between screens, formats, or environments – is a moment of truth. When executed well, these transitions build trust. When broken, they sever connection.

Earning attention

What fuels this journey is brand-led experience. Attention is a scarce currency, and shoppers only exchange it for something meaningful. Experiences must be immersive, intuitive, and additive. This might come through AR try-ons, live shopping events, or seamless checkout integrations. Retailers are also reimagining spaces through strategic partnerships that blend commerce with lifestyle experiences. From Superdrug’s Aesthetic Clinics at select locations offering in-store Botox treatments to Jamie Oliver cooking schools in John Lewis, these ecosystems inspire discovery.

These activations are not just brand plays – they are buying moments. They transform engagement into intent. For categories where price and convenience are no longer enough, experience becomes the differentiator. And when shaped by cultural relevance, these brand-led experiences don’t just sell – they resonate.

Meanwhile, the data landscape is undergoing a fundamental reset. The phase-out of third-party cookies is redefining how brands reach and understand audiences. The most successful brands are those that earn their insight, be it via loyalty programs, exclusive content exchanges, direct relationships, and retail partnerships. Zero-party and first-party data is about depth, not just volume. It fuels more relevant, respectful personalization, especially as predictive and AI-driven shopping technologies grow more sophisticated.

But with personalization comes responsibility. Transparency and trust are now non-negotiable. Consumers expect control, and they can quickly sense when a brand oversteps. The line between helpful and invasive is razor thin. Smart brands are leading with value, offering clear reasons to share data, and using it to create genuinely helpful, human-first experiences. This strengthens trust and sustains engagement across the long term.

Authenticity and value

At the heart of this shift is a deeper truth: consumers no longer buy on utility alone. They buy from brands that reflect their values, identities, and communities. This is where cultural commerce takes hold. Brands must not just react to culture – they must participate in it. Trend-tracking, creator partnerships, and social listening aren’t ‘add-ons’ – they’re core components of brand relevance. The goal isn’t to chase every trend, but to know where and how your brand has the right to play – and to do so with authenticity and value.

Cultural commerce isn’t a buzzword – it’s a new model for growth. In a landscape defined by speed, saturation, and shifting expectations, brand desire is no longer created through campaigns alone. It’s created through contextual precision, consistent presence, and meaningful brand-led experiences.

When brands align with how consumers live, not just how they shop, they become more than a purchase option. They become trusted, valued, and culturally significant. And in a world of limitless choice, that’s what turns engagement into enduring brand love.

By Anna King

Sourced from The Drum

Sourced from 3BL

Cutting Through the Noise: Why Brand Strategy Is the Secret Weapon for Social Impact

n a world where attention is a precious commodity, capturing the hearts and minds of an audience has never been more challenging or more critical. As social feeds flood with headlines, causes, and calls to action, even the most urgent messages can get buried in the scroll. For organizations committed to social impact, the question isn’t just what you stand for, but how you get people to stop, listen, and act.

That’s exactly the topic explored in a recent episode of the RENEWables podcast featuring Eric Ressler, founder and creative director of Cosmic, a creative agency focused on empowering mission-driven organizations to rise above the noise.

A Podcast for the Impact-Driven Age
In this episode, Ressler shares his belief that strong brand strategy and compelling digital experiences aren’t optional for today’s change-makers—they’re essential. While many nonprofits and advocacy organizations still treat branding as secondary, Ressler argues that in the age of information overload, your visual identity, messaging, and online presence may be the most powerful tools you have.

And it’s not just about looking polished. It’s about making sure your message resonates, your mission is clearly understood, and your audience feels inspired to engage. When attention spans are short and distractions are endless, the organizations that communicate clearly and authentically are the ones that make the biggest impact.

“If we want to compete in the digital space where attention is limited, we need to meet people where they are—with a message that breaks through.” — Eric Ressler

Why This Matters More Than Ever
While the episode focuses on storytelling and branding, its underlying relevance is hard to miss. Across the globe, nonprofits are navigating tighter budgets, donor fatigue, and increased competition for engagement. At the same time, they’re being asked to respond to complex issues like climate change, equity, education and mental health with speed and scale.

In this context, effective communication isn’t a luxury, it’s a strategic necessity.

Cosmic’s work bridges this gap by helping social impact organizations clarify their theory of change, craft purposeful content, and create experiences that connect emotionally and visually. It’s a holistic approach to brand-building that doesn’t just support the mission—it amplifies it.

Listen & Learn
If you’re leading, supporting, or partnering with a mission-driven organization, this episode is a must-listen. Whether you’re a marketer looking for sharper messaging, a nonprofit executive rethinking your outreach, or simply someone who believes in the power of good design for good causes—Eric Ressler’s insights offer fresh perspective and practical takeaways.

Tune in to RENEWables Podcast Episode #59 featuring Eric Ressler here: https://biostarrenewables.com/resource-library/renewables-59-empowering-social-impact-organizations-to-catalyze-real-world-change/

Don’t just share your message. Make it matter.
Learn how to harness the full potential of your brand to create lasting social impact—one digital interaction at a time.

Sourced from 3BL

By Adam Brotman & Andy Sack

Adam Brotman and Andy Sack are co-founders of Forum3. Adam was a Chief Digital Officer at Starbucks where he helped lead the creation of their mobile order payment and loyalty programs. He has also served as co-CEO of J.Crew, and today he works with companies navigating their brand, digital strategy, and AI strategy. Andy spent over two decades as a tech entrepreneur and venture capitalist. He had the privilege of serving as a Senior Advisor to Satya Nadella at Microsoft, where he led digital transformation and innovation of new products.

What’s the big idea?

Our AI moment is a time for business leaders not just to adapt to the new wave of technology, but to imagine something new and lead with it. To help start shaping your company’s next chapter, AI First is a real-world playbook based on conversations with top AI builders and business executives making their transition to the AI era. It lays out action points that every leader needs to be thinking about right now if they want to stay in the game.

Below, co-authors Adam Brotman and Andy Sack share five key insights from their new book, AI First: The Playbook for a Future-Proof Business and BrandListen to the audio version—read by Adam and Andy—in the Next Big Idea App.

AI First Adam Brotman Andy Sack Next Big Idea Club Book Bite

Audio Player

1. 95 percent of marketing as we know it will be done by AGI.

When we sat down with Sam Altman, he shared a perspective that completely reframed how we think about the future. Within five years (and granted, this was 18 months ago at this point) he believed that 95 percent of what marketers rely on agencies, strategists, and creative professionals to do for them will be handled by AI: free, instant, and nearly perfect. Sam was talking about marketing, but this applies to every function of a business.

As long-time brand builders and innovators, we took that seriously. This isn’t about some distant possibility. If you’re leading a team or growing a company, now is the time to experiment and start getting fluent. The real risk isn’t that AI will replace your people. It’s that others will learn how to use it faster and more effectively, and replace your company. When we spoke with Sal Khan, he reflected that his only regret about adopting AI at Khan Academy was not doing so sooner. We hear versions of that all the time. Companies that act now will leapfrog the competition. Those who wait will be playing catch-up.

People ask, “When will AI start really changing how we work?” Our answer is that it already has. The companies that we’re learning the most from aren’t on the side lines. They’re experimenting right now, using and learning with AI today.

2. An AI first enterprise starts with an AI first leader.

Culture moves at the speed of the CEO’s own AI “holy shit” moment. When leaders model curiosity, learning, and AI-powered thinking, that growth mindset spreads across the company. Teams grow braver, experiments happen faster, and AI fluency goes viral.

We’ve seen it first hand. At Moderna, a C-suite podcast and internal prompt contest helped pull 5,000 employees into daily AI use. At Suzy, the CEO took a build-it-yourself approach by showing, not telling, what it looks like to lead with AI. These visible examples build trust and break down scepticism of AI.

“People don’t need to be pushed into AI.”

Being an AI first leader isn’t about mastering every tool. It’s about creating the conditions for your organization to move with confidence. That starts with a belief in the usefulness of the technology, but even more so in your people. People don’t need to be pushed into AI. They need permission to explore it in ways that feel relevant to their work. You can’t outsource this mindset. If you want your company to be AI first, you have to go first.

3. AI is the new utility.

One of the biggest mindset shifts is treating generative AI not as a tech initiative or bolt-on project, but as something foundational to how your business runs. Like electricity or the internet, it will soon be impossible to imagine doing your job without AI.

Brice Challamel, VP of AI Products and Innovation at Moderna, said it best: Nobody asks for the ROI, electricity, or laptops. AI belongs in that category. It’s becoming an always-on cognitive layer across how work gets done. Organizations that move the needle stop isolating AI as something experimental and start baking it into their systems, workflows, and expectations. It becomes part of how the company operates.

The technology is evolving quickly. Scaling laws suggest we’ll see multiple generations of improvement over the next few years, each bringing stronger reasoning and more agentic capabilities at every turn. This moment demands a dynamic mindset, as the landscape is changing in real-time. It’s not just about whether AI will integrate into your company. It’s about how thoroughly and how fast.

4. AI co-pilots for every role.

Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn, Manas AI, and Inflection AI, often describes the shift we’re seeing as the steam engine of the mind. A future where every function—finance, operations, legal, creative—has an AI co-pilot by its side. Not replacing humans but augmenting them and enhancing judgment, speed, and imagination. This is what makes AI so powerful.

“The payoff is real.”

Hoffman said it will be like having a 10x multiplier on every key function in your company. We’ve seen companies use co-pilots to help less experienced team members ramp faster. We’ve seen internal assistants generate legal summaries, polish executive communications, build financial models, and follow up on sales leads all within the same week. The payoff is real. Studies have already shown productivity gains of up to 25 percent and quality improvements of nearly 40 percent when people work in tandem with generative AI tools.

More than anything, co-pilots create leverage. They help you move faster with fewer meetings, test more ideas with smaller teams, and get more done with the same headcount. That’s not just efficiency. That’s a competitive advantage. The question is no longer whether AI will show up across your business. It’s whether you’ll structure teams and workflows to take advantage of it.

5. You can pick your approach, but you can’t wait.

There’s no one-size-fits-all model for rolling out AI. But one thing is clear: doing nothing isn’t a strategy. Effective AI transformation is ultimately about people, culture, and leadership, which means the right approach depends on understanding your team and how change occurs within your organization. After speaking with hundreds of leaders, we have observed that different paths can be effective. Here are three that stand out:

  • The run approach, a fast company-wide push. Leaders like Eric Vaughan, CEO of IgniteTech, took this path of immediate company-wide activation. It was gamified, fast-paced, and intentionally designed to encourage every employee to engage in hands-on experimentation from day one.
  • Start small and prove fast. Alicia Parker at Tishman Speyer began within her marketing team, rolling out AI tools and training, capturing quick wins, and using them to build momentum and influence the broader Tishman organization. It was focused, fast, and designed to scale.
  • The top-down pilot approach. Matt Britton, CEO at Suzy, began by building and demoing internal tools himself. Instead of selling AI to his teams as a transformational idea, he showed what was possible and let the results speak for themselves.

No matter where you start, the first unlock is going to be AI literacy and education. People need to understand how these tools work, what they can do, and how to use them responsibly. Without that foundation, you can’t govern well, spot good use cases, or build with confidence. And you can’t afford to wait.

Sam Altman said AGI might be five years out, and he said that 18 months ago. This wave is gaining speed, but it’s not too late to catch up with it. The companies that win in this era won’t be the ones that have the most resources. They’ll be the ones that move first, learn fast, and scale what works.

By Adam Brotman & Andy Sack

Sourced from Next Big Idea Club

By Paul Bailey

I’ve been going to meetings, with both B2C and B2B clients, for over 25 years now. Many things have changed over this time, from how we present (no more spray mounting physical work) to where we present (video calls are my new best friend). But one thing hasn’t changed, and that is the seemingly impossible task of getting people to focus on who really matters to their brand – the people that are buying it and buying into it. (Note; this isn’t all clients, just some clients)

Whether my meetings are with CMOs or Heads of Marketing, CEOs or Heads of Brand, I’m constantly amazed by their inability to decide on or define who their audience really is. I find this astounding, because these are the people who really matter to the brand (I know of course your internal audience, your partners, your shareholders, among many others are important)These are the people who are going to pay you to deliver them something. Whether that is a product or a service, it is their financial contribution that is going to keep your business going (hopefully).

Who Is Your Brand For?

Before you start to work on anything you are trying to ‘sell’ to your audience – be that the brand proposition, your organization’s offering, or your business’ actual product or service – you must, must, must define who you are hoping will buy it.

Always define your target audience first. Always.

Don’t Go Too Wide Or Too Narrow.

Now, defining your audience can be quite difficult (but it can actually be quite simple). If you set your net to reach as many people as possible, then there is a degree of ‘wastage’. You will be speaking to a good deal of people who will never convert to a sale, nor will they have any interest in your brand. But, if you go too narrow then if you’re not careful then you may miss out on people who could convert to a sale, or who could be brand evangelists.

Reach too many people and you’re wasting money. Reach too few people and you’re wasting opportunities.

Every business or organization is different, and so every one needs a bespoke analysis of their audience. But there are approaches you might take in order to define your audience.

Maybe, Define Who Your Audience Isn’t.

One approach is to actually define who your audience isn’t rather than who your audience is. I’ve written about this approach previously, but put simply this method defines your outsiders, and anyone else becomes your target audience.

Depending on your industry or offering, these people might be outsiders because they simply can’t afford what you offer, or they have a preference that’s opposite to your offering (eg meat producers and vegetarians), or even that them being associated with your brand would be detrimental to your brand (see Burberry and UK football hooligans). There are many valid reasons people might be ‘outsiders’ for your brand, both practical and emotional.

This is just one approach and will only be right for selected businesses or organizations.

S And T Before The P.

What holds true, whatever approach you take, is the fact that you need to do some targeting of your audience. There is a reason the old marketing structure of STP still holds true today. Because it is still right.

Audience-First. Always.

If you are in charge of a business or an organization. If you are responsible for taking that business or organization to the market. Please do some work on defining your audience first:

  • What are their attitudes?
  • What are their behaviours in your category?
  • Are there specific demographics that are important?
  • What media do they consume?
  • Might you have one or multiple audiences?
  • What are their key characteristics?
  • What is their mindset and worldview and situation?
  • What information do they typically need to make decisions on purchase or involvement?
  • What factors might they compare when considering you and the competition?
  • What are they worried about (that your brand/product/service can fix)?
  • How might they like to be recognized?
  • How can they see that you understand them (that so many others don’t)?

One thing you don’t need to worry about is what they are called. If your audience identification is someone in your marketing department writing a lengthy bit of prose about your ‘audience profiles’ or ‘audience personas’, and then giving them catchy names or titles, please do stop.

Paul Bailey is Brand Strategy Director at Halo – a brand-first agency in the UK, who with bold strategy and commercial creativity improve audience experience and business performance through brand.

At The Blake Project, we help clients worldwide, in all stages of development, define or redefine and articulate what makes them competitive at critical moments of change. Please email us to learn how we can help you compete differently.

Branding Strategy Insider is a service of The Blake Project: A strategic brand consultancy specializing in Brand Research, Brand Strategy, Brand Growth and Brand Education

By Paul Bailey

Sourced from Brand Strategy Insider

By Hunter Thurman

This is the ninth instalment in a series exploring the key decision-making factors that explain shopper and consumer behaviour, focusing on the four behaviour drivers and five barriers that can impede consumer choice and brand use. These factors draw on extensive insights from across psychology and behavioural science.

Together, these core “WHYs” offer a practical framework for assessing what really drives your business, what may be holding back your results, and which actions can significantly impact real-world behaviour.

As neuroscientist T. Sigi Hale, PhD, explains, “Human behaviour is actually predictable; given external stimuli—like a bear on a hiking trail—we know with pretty strong confidence how a person will react. And while it gets more subtle in contexts like everyday purchase behaviours for things like food and drinks, it’s no less predictable.”

This instalment sheds light on a less-exciting-but-no-less-important aspect of consumer behaviour: physical barriers. While transactional elements, such as price, and psychological factors, like consumer emotions, often take centre stage, the physical experience of buying and consuming is frequently overlooked.

As a recap from previous articles in the series, five core barriers can deter someone from making a purchase:

  • Price—Is this worth its cost?
  • Time—What am I giving up if I choose this?
  • Social—How will others perceive my choice?
  • Physical—Physically-speaking, will this negatively affect me?
  • Emotional—Will I be disappointed by this choice?

The fourth, physical barrier encompasses both the shopping experience and consumption itself. Shoppers in this mindset are essentially asking, “How will this choice make me physically feel?”

This consideration can be broken down into one of three perceived definitions of “physical feeling”.

  • Difficulty: Brand use hindered by perceived practical challenges.
  • Acute: Brand use hindered by the concern of immediate discomfort?
  • Chronic: Brand use hindered by potential long-term effects on the body.

Let’s explore these further, how they impact behaviour in everyday life and, most importantly, the ways marketers can overcome them.

Difficulty: Brand use hindered by perceived practical challenges.

This expression of the physical barrier is often misconstrued as being simply about availability. While this can be the case for niche products like speciality Bourbon, “difficulty” frequently surfaces in more routine situations. Often, consumer behaviour is not obstructed by the challenge of finding the brand, but rather the process of getting it stands in the way of enjoying it.

A notable and somewhat paradoxical example is Starbucks with its Mobile Order & Pay. While designed to streamline the drink-buying process—and ultimately reduce the physical barrier—Starbucks’ mobile ordering system can sometimes unintentionally introduce new physical barriers. These barriers manifest as both practical and psychological obstacles.

During peak hours, customers using the app may encounter crowded stores with long lines of mobile order pickups. Beverages are occasionally misplaced, promised ready times are missed, and navigating a busy café quickly detracts from the enjoyment of their coffee. This palpable congestion can turn what should be a convenient process into a stressful one, potentially discouraging customers from using the mobile ordering option or visiting Starbucks during busy periods in general.

This leads us to the psychological or perceptual aspect of the physical barrier: When the only metric you provide consumers is physical ease, it sets an almost unattainable expectation in their minds.

Starbucks initially built its brand around the concept of the “third place”—a relaxing environment for socializing and hanging out. However, in their drive to serve more drinks to more people more efficiently, the experience has shifted to an increasingly transactional, mobile-first model.

While effective, this shift has inadvertently reframed customer expectations, focusing them on the experience’s physical elements—easy ordering, effortless pickup, and so on. Under these reframed experiential metrics, any deviation from a perfectly streamlined transaction is perceived by the consumer as producing “high costs” in the form of the physical barrier.

A similar issue happens with Jimmy John’s sandwiches, whose tagline “Freaky Fast” places emphasis on speed. Once speed becomes the sole measure of satisfaction, it raises the question: How fast is fast enough?

In contrast, QSR Magazine recently reported Chick-fil-A’s drive-thru wait times were long relative to competitors like McDonald’s, Wendy’s, and Taco Bell. However, customer satisfaction scores for Chick-fil-A led the pack.

How’s it possible that the service was slower, but guests were happier? It’s potentially because Chick-fil-A successfully takes the focus OFF of the physical hassle of the drive-thru and refocuses guest attention on non-physical factors like friendliness, order accuracy, and experience.

Acute: Brand use hindered by the concern of immediate discomfort.

This version of the physical barrier focuses on concerns about near-term physical consequences. Few categories face this barrier more widespread than energy drinks. Customers worry, “Will I feel too jittery? Will I feel an energy crash? Will the niacin make my face flush?”

As alluring as the fast-acting effects of these products—from a burst of energy to the convenience of the drive thru—can be, short-term physical concerns can be a deterrent.

Celsius is one brand that disrupted the category dominance of brands like Red Bull and Monster by reframing the physical effects the category provides. Rather than promoting an instant energy boost, Celsius touted the effects of “accelerating metabolism”, which shifted the conversation toward more balanced, health-conscious effects.

This approach successfully repositions the brand’s physical impact from quick energy to a more desirable physical experience which, as the brand’s tagline suggests, helps one “Live Fit.” It promises a much lower physical consequence versus the category’s status quo.

Chronic: Brand use hindered by potential long-term effects on the body.

The third physical barrier that might hinder a consumer’s decision is the more chronic concern; specifically, the concern of long-term physical considerations, such as health concerns.

While it’s difficult to experience the long-term effects of consuming something immediately, the concern of lasting consequences can significantly impact a customer’s decision. The most prominent of these longer-term physical barriers comes in the form of weight management, followed by concerns such as heart health, risk of diabetes, and cosmetic concerns related to one’s skin and hair.

The “clean label” movement addresses the chronic physical barrier, with snack brands like Lays and Walkers easing consumer concerns by highlighting that their chips are made with just four simple ingredients. Kroger’s Simple Truth takes things a step further, leveraging innovation to create offerings that promise more of the good or less of the bad. The brand’s cross-product “Free From” list assures shoppers that the products omit virtually anything that would cause physical concerns in the long run.

As Kroger states on their website: “Trust in Simple, Simple Truth® makes it easy to know you’re getting quality products, Free From over 101+ unwanted ingredients. That’s why we proudly display our ‘Free From’ badge across our products. When you see Simple Truth®, you can be confident in your choice.”

Marketers frequently use the word “feel” when diagnosing consumer perception and behaviour, but this word is usually reserved for the assessment of emotions or mental “feelings”. By assessing the physical domain, however, brands gain the potential to address consumer concerns and remove barriers to brand choice, thereby opening a new domain of consumer experience and brand effectiveness.

Feature Image Credit: Danon

By Hunter Thurman

Hunter Thurman is president of Alpha-Diver, the market research and consulting firm that applies decision science to more deeply understand marketplace behaviour. The firm’s neuroscientists and strategists work with leading brands, retailers, and Wall Street analysts to explain–and predict–consumer behaviour in ways proven to help clients drive double-digit brand growth via activation.

Sourced from Brandingmag

By Maria Greaves,

Size matters – but only if you know what to do with it. And a strategic, sustainable approach is crucial. Leaders from Little Dot Studios, NBCUniversal and Virgin weigh up the scale of the growing YouTube opportunity for today’s marketers.

To build YouTube success, marketers need to realize that YouTube is now “more comparable to a streaming platform like Netflix than it is to a traditional social media platform,” says Holly Graham, chief commercial officer at Little Dot Studios.

YouTube is no longer the home of funny cat videos and 2-3 minute video content by rote. It’s the world’s second biggest search engine. It pulls in 2.49 billion users – that’s 48% of all social media users. And its content formats have changed in recent years.

The platform’s eyeball-grabbing, 60 second YouTube Shorts are wildly popular. Meanwhile, 10-30 minutes ‘mid-form’ content is also on the rise, giving marketers the chance to deepen audience engagement. And then there’s the inevitable counter trend to the short-form boom, with a growing love of richer, more immersive, 30 minutes plus long form content. So, which should marketers opt for? And when?

Graham was exploring how marketers can squeeze more value out of this ever-evolving, brand-building and revenue-raising machine, in an exclusive webinar with The Drum, alongside Nick Savage, senior vice-president, digital monetization & strategy, NBCUniversal and Greg Rose, digital, content and communications director at Virgin. Some of their key rules included:

1. Strategize – and play a long game

A sense of purpose should be the lodestar for any YouTube content creation, the experts agree. Rose advises marketers to ask themselves: “Is it for quick awareness? Do you want to grab people’s attention and then move them on? Or do you want to use it as an education tool to drive that deeper connection? Essentially, what’s the point of it? The audience is smart and will only engage with something if it has that purpose.”

That strategic starting point will then act as a guide for when and which content formats to pick up. Short term content is “a lower barrier to entry. It’s a chance to say things more directly, potentially market more directly, and have a little bit more fun or be more lo-fi with what you produce,” Graham says.

Meanwhile, Rose highlights how leaning into YouTube’s unique ultra long-form engagement capabilities deepened brand engagement for Virgin America. The brand’s famous, six hour BLAH Airlines spoof launched on YouTube as the longest pre-roll video ever produced and became a cult hit worldwide.

And when it comes to measuring those strategic KPIs, go long haul. Even if marketers dip their toes in with a Shorts campaign, they should be underpinning that with a mid- to long-term strategy of what YouTube could deliver over a year or more, Graham advises, reminding us that it’s a “long tail” platform with audiences still eating up content that was uploaded three or four years ago.

2. Get to know the platform

Creating something that feels authentic to the space is just as important as being purposeful and strategic, when it comes to generating engagement. The experts advise marketers to spend time understanding engagement data, watching successful creators or checking out competitors’ content. That will also help guide whether you need to create new content or create something new with old content – extracting as much value as possible out of existing assets.

Savage goes further in recommending: “If you haven’t done anything in the social or the YouTube space, then look to partner with experts that have and know that space.”

3. Remember – creation is only half the job

Driving eyeballs to your content should take up as much headspace as its content, the experts agree. As marketers have less than a minute to get viewers to click onto their content, “You have to think about how people are going to find that video and how they’re going to engage with it…. What are your thumbnails? What are your titles? How do they speak to one another? Are they compelling? How do you think about SEO? How do you think about tagging?” Graham says.

And, investing in a paid strategy should also be aligned with an organic seeding strategy – driving earned and organic engagement, she adds. All of which leads us neatly to…

4. Build a community, own your audience

Marketers do well when they spend time analysing the engagement peaks and troughs of their own channel, to be able to create a community of fans and advocates around that content. That’s when “you don’t just rent an audience for 30 seconds. You own them,” Graham says.

Savage thinks of it as a snowball effect, with a community growing over time. And that’s a community that can be influenced to try similar content, inspired to create their own user-generated, brand-building content or be drawn into a value-exchange where they shape future brand content.

He says: “For example, we would poll fans about their favourite moments from one of our shows, and then produce a video of those moments.” Ultimately, these deeply engaged followers are then more likely to share content and click through to monetized versions on other platforms.

For lots more actionable advice and best practice insights into how marketers can unlock brand success with YouTube content strategies, watch the full webinar now.

By Maria Greaves,

Sourced from The Drum

By Bec Chelin,

Fortune favours brave marketers, so why does it feel so risky? A few hours into her new job at MadeBrave, Bec Chelin aims to derisk bold work.

Conjure an image of a bold creative campaign or a brave brand comms move. You know the type; they either make you wince at a subject matter that’s veered dangerously close to the line of bad taste (but not so much to force X to have a palpable meltdown) or a brand pops up in a domain it has absolutely zero right to play in but, somehow, it just works so damn beautifully.

You don’t need to be Mystic Meg (look her up, Gen Z) or Paul the Octopus (RIP) to predict the owner of said “brave” move isn’t the successful 80-year-old homewares brand that’s been a stalwart of the market for generations. Of course, it’s the new industry kid on the block, looking to get as many eyeballs on their slightly more eco and premium-priced products as possible, with a punch to the gut and a euphoric feeling of: “Finally!

Someone who understands how much millennials want to decorate their homes like a knock-off Soho House.”.

The question is, why?

No, not why are millennials obsessed with Soho House (we’re basic, deal with it).

Why is brand boldness and brave marketing as synonymous with start-ups with bags full of sass and a shoestring budget as Oatly is with shouty billboards?

The latest episode of Jon Evans’ brilliant Uncensored CMO podcast, features Gymbox brand director Rory McEntee, formerly of Paddy Power, Everyman Cinema and Papa Johns fame. Both uncover the winning principles of a challenger brand attitude to create cut-through marketing on little-to-no budget and a “seek forgiveness, not permission” mentality. While listening, it struck me that it’s absolutely batshit that brands simply “outgrow” the foundational tenets of highly creative, innovative, and cost-effective marketing.

The constant push for an unstoppable idea. A determination to stand out in a sea of competitor-set sameness. A new way of doing things that’s not simply: “A bit like last year ‘cos that worked well. Oh, but with less budget, obvs.”

Yawn, yawn, yawn.

If you’re a mature brand, arguably you’re in a bigger competitor set. You won’t be the first to market any more. Or even that different from others in the market. You’ll have competition snapping at your heels and your well-carved market share to boot.

So.

Surely.

This is exactly the time to be brave, and not play it safe.

When you look at how they market themselves, how different really does one mainstream car brand feel to the next? One hotel chain to the other? Do we really have to just play on product benefits that should be downright expected of the things you’re buying anyway (looking at you, Premier Inn and your good nights’ sleep)?

Challenging the challengers

OK, so clearly we’re not just going to risk all our hard-earned brand equity, reputation and, let’s face it, healthier budget on one whacking great slap-you-round-the-face-and-leave-you-thinking-WTF, challenger-brand-esque annual campaign.

But that’s not the part of challenger brand marketing we need to retain.

It’s the test and learn; the try it and see what happens. The boldness to know that whatever you do, you will learn something, and whatever you do also doesn’t have to break the bank in one fell swoop. There will – and should be – other campaigns that follow and eclipse something that might not work. But that brave idea might also just be brilliant. Unstoppable, even.

That’s not to say we throw caution to the wind and machine-gun out a series of hastily brainstormed flash mobs, guerilla-style marketing, AI content pieces and hope for the best. There needs to be a strategy to link the component parts of the test, learn and move cycle. But you can still have fun with it. Just ask Paddy Power and the strategic intent to position gambling as entertainment and gain rather than expense and loss. Whether you agree with the promotion of gambling or not, you can’t argue that it shines through everything they did, do and continue to do… and very bravely (the wincing, close to-the-line of decency kind) most of the time.

So why do brands become less brave as they grow?

Budgets are bigger as you grow and, therefore, are more scrutinized than ever. Concurrently, they’re also historically small as the industry continues to emerge from the pandemic, the recession and the rest.

Add to the fact that marketing budgets are repeatedly pegged as the “biggest most expendable budget line item,” and things feel tense. Basically, use it (well) or lose it. Hell, even if it’s used well, it still might go, depending on other industry and market forces. Or how confused the CEO is.

This is where the fear of loss starts to set in.

And that can trundle on being a bit less brave.

We get a bit bigger, and then shareholders enter the mix. Everything gets a little bit more antsy when it comes to not cocking it all up. Budgets scrutinized more. Brave signed off by legal less.

And then, what’s the opposite of brave? You’re that.

Time to de-risk brave

This is where education comes in. And probably more CMOs on boards required.

Side note: just 2.6% of board positions are held by marketers, also according to Jon and Chris Burggraeve in the 17 July episode of the aforementioned Uncensored CMO podcast. It’s no wonder marketing is seen as an expendable budget item with little business value.

Anyway, back to de-risking brave. Fact is, even shareholders are human.

Danny Kahnmeman’s loss aversion theory tells us that losses loom larger than gains. The more we have to lose, the more aversion to risking losing what we have.

So we play it safe. Rather than looking our millennial friends in the eyes and telling them they don’t just need to paint their walls Soho House Green, but they can go all in, buy the chaise longue, the swanky lighting and ban laptops in certain areas of your house if you want… we don’t. We hedge our bets and try to appeal to all millennials just a little bit, not just those who’ll love us wholeheartedly (and with the whole of their wallet) and our member-club loving ways.

We protect at all odds and aim to please all customers all the time, and we end up pleasing no one. Because being bland pleases no one. Being bold, on the other hand, turns your fans into brand advocates. Knowing your audience inside out and going in hard with this group surely feels imperative to lead the market.

Speaking the sweet language of finance

So far so good, but for this to work, and budgets for brave campaigns to be signed off, you have to make this point in a language the well set board and risk-averse shareholders will understand… a financial one.

Put it this way, we can work very hard to gain a lot of new customers on a short-term basis through trying to please everyone. Ultimately, though, we will lose them on price to our nearest same-same competitor the minute they have a better Bank Holiday sale. Or we can invest in developing fewer, long-term brand fans for life who will ride out price increases with inflation and hold longer-term value with repeat purchase. And that’s before we get into the power of peer-to-peer advocacy or the captive audience / NPD testing benefits of long-term loyal audiences. It’s a simple cost per acquisition v lifetime value of the customer conversation. And now we’re talking.

So the next time we get worried by boldness not paying off, or when brave feels risky, don’t compromise the quality of the creative. That’s not the problem. Bold and brave don’t need to break the bank, but they do need to hit smack in the centre of your well-formed brand strategy to hit that “oh my God it’s mad but genius” sweetspot only your brand can possibly execute.

And what about legal?

Well, just don’t break the law 🙂

By Bec Chelin,

Sourced from The Drum

By Oscar Quine

With seismic shifts underway in the media buying field, The Drum Network hosted a panel to discuss where the discipline is today – and where it might be headed.

Perhaps no area within marketing has felt the sands shifting in recent years more pointedly than the field of media buying. Industry figures have even suggested it may be the first casualty of AI. Privacy changes have exacerbated this squeeze as buyers have less user data to help them target advertising. The traditional marketing funnel is breaking down, while automation is putting the pinch on personnel.

It’s not all doom and gloom, though. There are new developments in measurement, while omnichannel advertising offers new opportunities aplenty. Some even say, whisper it, that the move to automation and AI might usher in a golden era for creative – but, we’ll get to that at the end.

Let’s start on a positive note. Liam Wade, director of performance at Impression, describes the current moment as a ‘really exciting time’ in media buying. “Never before have you had so many competitors that you can guarantee are probably trying to do the exact same thing as everyone else,” he explains. “So if everyone else is doing those things, then what can you do?”

Panellists worried that the industry was full of people trained in skills that might become obsolete in three years, but also argued that automation hadn’t completely rewritten the rulebook.

Mary O’Brien, programmatic media director at PMG, says the rise of universal campaign types, such as Google’s P-Max and those offered by Meta, could lead to a world in which: “we’re essentially siphoning off budgets by platform and then they’re auto-optimizing across their formats and the funnel. So I think that evolution is a little scary”.

However, she’s quick to add: “I think media buyers and planners alike are not ready to give up that level of control yet.”

Team design

For Claire Stanley-Manock, paid media director at connective3, this feeds into a wider question of team design. Explaining that her agency is only four-and-a-half years old, she says it had initially moved towards PPC and social specialist roles, before rolling resources back into one pool.

“It was making communication a lot trickier, and just wasn’t as effective,” she says. “So then we took the decision to roll it all back in again. And then, of course, you have the question around, like Jack of all trades, master of none.”

It’s worked out ‘brilliantly’, though, she adds. “We have a mixed team, which lends itself to demand gen, YouTube, advantage, plus meta, all those kinds of things. So we have one person managing all of it, and they can make the best decision for that client.”

Ang Dahir, vice president of media planning at Jellyfish says that client-facing roles are still indispensable. “Clients still want to be treated the same, the bigger that they get, so they want you to still speak their business and language. You still need someone to play that role. But your investment teams can be more focused and specialized on cross-channel opportunities, etc. The client service piece just becomes more critical in those cases.”

Chris Ebmeyer, senior vice president and director of media services at 160/90, says that while automation is indubitably changing team dynamics, it’s also opening up opportunities.

“I think you might start to see a lot of new competitors come into this space,” he explains. “Because you can take a team of five people and AI is going to now allow you to go into the marketplace with an offering that is almost as good as some of the larger shops because you just need specialists… I think it could be an interesting time in terms of agency offerings.”

New media avenues offer more cause for optimism, says Rachel Owen, senior director of client services at M&C Saatchi Performance. And, have surprisingly, helped introduce her team to more traditional channels too.

“There are more ways to buy those platforms digitally now,” she explains. “The team is upskilling across platforms that they’ve never had experience of working with before. We’re working with connected TV, digital, audio, and all sorts. It’s providing us with a more holistic media mix than we’ve ever had.”

Aengus Boyle, senior director of media at VaynerMedia EMEA, says this shift offers potential new routes for creative to come to life. “There’s a big opportunity now to be more socially led, and to start with relatively small creative bets,” he says. “As you see things gaining traction, you can scale those up so that by the time you get to something that’s a big production-value TV commercial, you have confidence that this will resonate with consumers.”

He gives the example of an idea for a client that began as a piece of TikTok content. After going viral, it was upgraded to run on connected TV and soon had outperformed all the client’s traditional TV advertising.

Essential creative

Ebmeyer had more to say on the changes underway to the traditional marketing funnel model. “Many clients we’ve talked to went very heavy into the performance space for a long time,” he says. “And I think what they started to see was brand awareness begin to drop slightly.”

The funnel was perhaps broken, he says – plus, people are human so ultimately they don’t behave in predictable ways.

“Brands are beginning to realize they need this holistic view, and they need a new way to measure it,” he explains. “That‘s where we‘re starting to see a lot more brand perception studies coming to market, looking at brand awareness and brand consideration. And those are starting to be the benchmarks that we‘re looking at.”

Wade says this context is increasingly important. “Brands starting to realize that they‘re part of a bigger system, and they can‘t just be reporting on Google Ads anymore. They need to be looking at the incremental impact of their channels. So, a lot more incrementality testing as well.”

Despite the fears around the damage AI might do to media buying, Boyle says a silver lining could be found in the area where human input is still essential – the creative.

“I think the key thing as we move towards more and more automation in the media space, is that creative is becoming the variable that we can control and optimize,” he says.

Feature Image Credit: Greg Johnson via Unsplash

By Oscar Quine

Sourced from The Drum