What Is Brand Strategy, Actually?

Brand strategy gets used as a buzzword so often that it's lost some of its meaning. Stripped down, it's the answer to three questions: who are you talking to, what do you want them to believe about you, and how do you say that consistently everywhere.

What it includes

• Audience research — who actually buys from you, and why
• Positioning — what makes you different from the next option
• Messaging frameworks — the language you use to communicate that difference
• Content direction — how that messaging shows up across video, web, and social

Why it has to come first

Creative work without strategy behind it is just guessing with better production values. We've seen brands spend significant budget on beautiful video that didn't move anyone, because nobody had answered the question of who it was actually for.

Strategy isn't a slower path to creative work — it's what makes the creative work actually land.