Part of an agency’s value comes from bringing in experts who know how to think about your audience and brand differently in order to execute the most impactful campaign.
Every marketing agency has a different proprietary process to accomplish this. Brand strategy means nothing if it’s not the right strategy. That’s where MKR — and the Brand Strategy Playbook — comes in, yet, you could argue that they’re all basically the same thing:
Research Audience → Create a Campaign → Monitor Performance → Optimize
The key, and point of differentiation for many agencies, is the development and execution of the right strategy. This is called a Brand Strategy Playbook.
Spoiler alert: it’s a lot simpler than you may think.
Step #1: Identify Audience Motivators
Sometimes, it’s easy to forget that audiences are people.
John isn’t just a 35-year-old male who shops at Costco, lives in Atlanta, and makes between $75,000 and $95,000 annually.
John cares deeply about spending time with his family. He values the quality of his work-life balance, loves taking his dog for long walks at the local park, and enjoys reading 800-page fantasy novels. Wait, am I John?
Audience insights reveal what your audience truly cares about, and they’re often uncovered through conversation. Talk to your audience, ask them meaningful questions, and do actual research to understand them. Through those discussions, you’ll get to know their beliefs, values, needs, and wants.
You can build your list of audience motivators using these discussions. Three motivators is a good number to aim for, but the most important thing is that you use this time to thoroughly understand what your audience actually cares about and who they really are. Doing so makes your product offering better and your messaging more resonant, meaning your audience will be more engaged and likely to buy.
Step #2: Define Your Brand Attributes
Next, it’s time to get critical about your brand.
Attributes are the elements that make up who your brand is. What are its differentiators? This is a good time to revisit that elevator pitch, which we all know you have memorized … right?
These attributes represent your brand as it stands today, not your vision for what it will be in the future. If you were to outline your brand’s ideal, future-state attributes, your campaign wouldn’t be representative, and the audience that engages with your brand would feel they’ve been lied to. Not good.
Take your time with this process, and be critical. Like audience motivators, the best way to define your brand attributes is to talk to people who truly know your brand. That means asking yourself, your employees, customers, whoever, “If you had to describe [Company X] in a single sentence, what would it be?” MKR can help your brand do so by conducting focus groups to learn more about your brand attributes and audience motivators straight from the source.
Step #3: Outline Your Brand Strategy
Now, it’s time to put it all together.
The final component of the brand strategy playbook is, fittingly, the brand strategy.
The intersection of the Audience Motivators and Brand Attributes forms a Venn diagram — the center, where the two meet, is your brand strategy. This short statement often summarizes the connections between these two elements. Since the playbook isn’t your tagline and is not a public-facing tool, let your copywriting skills fly and have some fun. From there, take some time to write a slightly longer explanation of the strategy.
The brand strategy is neither a business objective nor an analysis of your strengths and weaknesses. It isn’t a business plan or a slogan, a vision or a mission statement. Your brand strategy simply shows people why they should care about your brand. As a result, it inspires creative campaigns and messaging choices. It can reveal opportunities you didn’t know existed and point the way toward growing the business.
The most influential brand strategies are backed by strong research and supported by intuitive, creative thinkers.
The Brand Strategy Playbook in Action
MKR uses the Brand Strategy Playbook to showcase the association between human behaviors or beliefs and your brand elements. The intersection of these factors should be used to guide all future marketing and advertising initiatives.
At MKR, every strategy is supported by a playbook. Each playbook:
- Summarizes research into the most important insights
- Outlines audience motivators and brand attributes
- Illustrates the intersection of these items as the brand strategy
Playbooks are made for you as much as they are for us, the creative agency. They will guide the creation of innovative campaigns that pull people to the products and services from exceptional brands (that’s you)!
Think you’re ready to build your brand’s Strategy Playbook? Let’s talk. Reach out to Kelly Ryan, SVP of Business Development.
