Every business wants the marketing and communications items they produce to deliver results. But we all know that most of the items we receive may get a few seconds of our attention, at best, before they are cast aside.

Marketers and designers get blamed when returns are not at the expected and projected levels. But I’d suggest it’s a tad more complex a scenario than it first appears.

Generating communication items that create a good ROI is never simple. It’s all about those first seconds – capturing attention, raising interest and instilling a feeling that is strong enough to stop your audience from instantly discarding your email, newsletter, brochure etc. into the trash. Making it past the instant edit of their ‘opening the mail’ routine is key.

Creating items that people keep to hand is a challenge for every marketeer or designer. 

Let me share a couple of real life examples.

I had a business contact comment on my business card last week: “It’s always on the top of the pile on my desk… it’s still the best business card I’ve seen in ages.”

This week we met for a 1-2-1 and I asked if I could quote him – just so you could know you can be sure this is genuine and not a fabrication (which I would never do anyway), the above quote comes from Scott Willis of CFO Hub. Thanks for the encouragement and for allowing me to quote you Scott.

Now, I have no illusions about the fact that at least 80% of the communication pieces I create, for myself or for my clients, are destined to end up in the trash pretty swiftly. Either physically thrown into the waste paper/recycling bin or moved into the electronic bin icon on a computer screen.

The big challenge for any business (and particularly the design and marketing teams) is to ensure that the items they send achieve their aims before they hit the trash.

Or, better still, that they are kept around for as long as possible to give a greater chance of the right people seeing, and engaging before they are cast aside.

How can you achieve that elusive ask?

There are 3 recognised ways.

1. Make the item useful

2. Make it aesthetically pleasing

3. Make it relevant to the customers’ needs

… and ideally, it should be all three.

Please note, I didn’t say to make it beautiful. We all know beauty is in the eye of the beholder – but intrigue or unusual design can be more engaging and deliver better results than following the established conventions and traditions that are commonly regarded as ‘beautiful’.  Different and interesting will trump beautiful but boring most of the time.

Be different

Scott evidently finds my business card unusual or intriguing enough to keep it around. That’s partly because I designed it specifically to achieve that end. It was purposefully designed to be different – to stand out from the crowd. To grab attention and to be remembered.  I’m often told that people remember my card.

For a start it’s square – not the usual oblong business card shape and size. Therefore it doesn’t fit the various filling systems people use to store the cards they collect.

But Scott is only in his early 30s and firmly fits into the digital native generation. Like most of us he probably just adds his connections directly into a CRM system or connects with them directly via LinkedIn. (I have another electronic card that makes that process super streamlined but I won’t get into that here).

But I’d like to think there is more to Scott keeping my card than it simply not fitting his chosen storage system. That there is ‘that indefinable something’ that means he hasn’t simply cast my card into the bin. Maybe, it is because he wanted to book that 1-2-1 meeting and the card acted and he kept it to hand as a visual reminder? The actual reason it is still on top of the pile of cards on his desk is not as important as the fact that it is still there!

Whatever the reason (for him) the intent behind the design worked. Maybe it was the design itself – or maybe it was the spot varnish on the face of the card highlighting the stylised S2 text that forms our logo. Maybe he just liked the colour.

The fact is that the totality of the card design meant he kept it to hand. When sat at his desk he has a constant reminder of S2 design and of me personally. So the desired action was achieved.

Good brand design is all about getting noticed. Being recognised, respected and remembered.

I tried to embody that thinking within the approach and design of my cards. Modelling tangibly the strategies I promote to my clients. Strategy and an understanding of human psychology are two of the most vastly underrated aspects of any good branding exercise.

Unfortunately, lots of companies concentrate their efforts on the aesthetics of their marketing output and not its actual impact. Useful and relevant are arguably more important to your target audience than how good it looks.

Now that might seem a strange thing to say as a designer, but it’s true.

It’s not an excuse not to make things look good and user-friendly – but I’m sure we all have things in our houses and in our offices that we keep around simply because they are useful. They serve a purpose and that purpose is more valuable to use than how they look.

After all, my office filing cabinet is not particularly good looking – but it’s useful and the service it offers me is relevant to my daily needs. The same goes for my stapler or the case for my glasses.

However, design can be a huge aspect of why transient items of communications and marketing do make it beyond our initial ‘edit’.

So, what other items can I tell you about that I know have held some ‘keepsake’ appeal?

When I was looking for my first full-time job after completing my degree, I created a CV that I know won me more than one interview opportunity simply because of its design and construction.

I graduated in the early 90s when we still trawled our large portfolios around to physically visit the creative directors of agencies in their offices. We also still used the Royal Mail to send out the letters and CVs that we used to secure those interview opportunities.

My CV wascreated to be get itself noticed from the piles of other CVs arriving at those agencies – and was specifically designed to immediately capture attention as soon as the envelope was opened.

When removed from its envelope my CV would quite violently ‘pop-up’ into a self-constructing pyramid. The mechanism was triggered by an internal rubber band which was held in its ‘primed’ state by the tension of the envelope. The envelope itself was an unusual corrugated card design, which suggested psychologically that what was inside was unusual, that it was valued and that I had invested in this opportunity to present the contents to the agency.

Once ‘popped’ the resulting pyramid was about 17cm tall, and the different faces of the pyramid held the usual details found on any CV.

I know that some recipients kept it simply because of its novelty factor. Some kept it, they later told me, to figure out how I’d made it.

One recipient specifically called me to tell me it ‘nearly took his eye-out’ – bouncing off his glasses. But he called to talk to me even though he was not hiring at the time.

I also know that CV lived on the desk of my boss (at the first job that I did land) for a few months. I also know it was retrieved from his bin on at least one occasion because he couldn’t figure out how to collapse it and ‘it took up too much room in the bin’! Not the reason I expected it to be retained but I wonder if the same thing happened at other places I’d sent it? I do know that I got call-backs well after I’d secured that first job and well beyond the period you’d expect a normal CV to generate calls.

A few years, and two jobs later, I was working at a small agency in West London.

I was commissioned to create a ‘coffee table item’ to promote all the arts and cultural events throughout the coming year scheduled to take place in the borough of Kensington & Chelsea. From the Royal Opera to Notting Hill Carnival and a myriad of about 60 other events from poetry readings to ballet.

The final items created were an A4 booklet accompanied by a website and an online calendar of events. The graphic styling was very adventurous for a local council and the paper stock used was unusual, the layout was both modern and bold – but also allowed for the individual events to retain a sense of individualism. Our client loved it and it still remains one of my own personal favourite pieces of work.

But more than that, it did what it needed to do. It was useful to the intended audience and it was striking enough to hold its place on the coffee tables of the Kensington and Chelsea residents throughout the year of events it covered. And beyond!

I know this for a fact because I happened to show it as a sample to a potential client of a few years later and they instantly responded with “Wow, you did that. We had that in our house for ages. Always wondered you’d designed it. I think we only threw it out recently when our toddler spilt his juice on it and ruined it.” (I’m paraphrasing as I don’t recall their exact words)

I’m not telling you these stories simply to take a walk down memory lane – nor to brag. One example pulled from every decade I’ve been working is hardly an extensive or impressive list.

But with these stories, I do want to challenge everyone involved in devising communications, be it marketing or purely an information piece, to think a lot more about what they are doing – and to consider how they present their items a little more strategically.

How will that next piece of communication get noticed? How will it stand out from the plethora of items we each get bombarded with daily? Apparently, the average person in the Western world sees between 4,000 and 10,000 advertising messages every day! Getting noticed, commanding your audience’s attention, capturing their interest beyond the instant toss into the trash and earning the right to engage them a little further… this is precisely what all our communications efforts are aiming for.

After all, if you don’t have their attention, you won’t have their business.  

Good communications items, and good marketing, are created through a union of great copywriting married to great design – these are the foundation stones needed to get yourself noticed.

Once noticed you have a chance to communicate a little more. If the design and copywriting do their job you start to engage your audience enough to grant you a few seconds of their time – and in that time and ‘attention transaction’, you get an opportunity to plant your flag in the mind of your audience.

If you can claim that ‘mental real-estate’ in their minds as the go-to company for your service then you have achieved what 95% of businesses fail to do. And once you have claimed that mental real estate it’s far easier to defend it than it was to claim in the first place.

Getting noticed in our busy world is arguably getting harder. I’ve not even talked about the specifics of social media in this post – but the core principles are the same.

Make an impact – get noticed, be seen. No one wants to be invisible.

… pronounced dead but still kicking!

We’ve all heard the pronoucements.

Cinema theatres are dead. And Terrestrial TV is dead – or in intensive care at the very least. As streaming becomes the norm they say no one will bother going to the cinema or watching scheduled terrestrial TV anymore.

Print is dead. Why bother with bulky books and magazines when we can carry an entire library of reading matter around in our digital devices?

Advertising is dead. Social media has changed the game and advertising is no longer relevant.

Vinyl is dead and live music is dying – as music streaming services and playlists of thousands of songs, can be carried around on any smartphone and concerts can be accessed in the same way … and usually with a better view than being there in person.

Design and illustration services are dead – as AI can deliver in seconds what used to take days or weeks to create.

We’ve all heard these prophecies time and time again. What will be the next industry to be killed off by the fortune tellers?

The real truth is that those ‘proclaimed dead’ are all still alive and kicking.

Are these zombies’ businesses? Are they death-row industries, condemned but not yet executed in a ‘dead man walking’ style?

Things change continually, and the pace of change only ever gets faster as technological advancements impact every walk of life, but humans have an incredible ability to adapt. As each new thing arrives, some will only hear the death knell ringing, while others see huge new potential – new collaborative and adaptive opportunities.

So let’s look again at our zombies

Advertising

Advertising is not dead in the slightest – but it has fundamentally changed. It’s more targeted. More interactive. More personalised. But we still see billboards on the streets, bus shelter adverts, ads on tube trains and on the escalators we take to those trains. If there is a captive audience (especially if they might be bored) then there is likely to be an advertising media space close at hand.

These ad spaces may slowly be transforming into digital billboards and posters but the core skill of the advertising agency is still needed. Namely, to create the concept, ad design and messaging that will capture peoples’ attention. Arresting the viewers’ gaze long enough, to capture their interest, well enough, to implant a message into their psyche.

Likewise, TV and Radio ads still deliver. They are not yet the ‘dead donkeys’ that many suggested they would become. How can we be sure of that fact?

TV and Radio

Just watch your favourite shows and see what advertisers and brand names crop up – both within the ad breaks and in the programme itself.

Brand and product placement advertising within the actual programme content has become a normal practice – but it’s not advertising as many traditionalists would understood it. It’s changed. The ad execs have reimagined the possible and devised a new way of achieving their ends. It may not be overt, but seeing your hero use a particular phone, laptop, or car – or drink a particular soda even, are brand reinforcement advertising techniques that are changing the face of what we think of as advertising practice.

The objective of any brand is to occupy a specific area of real estate in their audience’s brain. Given that end objective, then you can be sure these are well-considered tactics. They use the same psychological formulas to engage our minds and our emotions, to feel and think about brands and products, in exactly the way the advertisers want.

In the TV ad breaks themselves, you may not find the hard-sell approach, of a few decades past, used quite so often now. But there are ads still present. And you can be sure, given the high costs and production values needed for a good TV ad campaign, that the big-name brands who are booking these slots are definitely seeing (and carefully monitoring) the return on their investment.

Like the ads that appear on it, TV is also not dead.

Many of us just consume it differently now.  We are not as bound by the scheduler’s dark arts of playing one popular programme off against another or trying to stop us switching chanel by pcking lots of high engagment shows back-to-back at prime time. But there are still prime slots. Programmes are still scheduled against (or sometimes to avoid) a known favourite of another channel. Why? Because some people do still consume TV in the traditional way. They watch communally with family – just log into twitter (renamed to X now) whilst some of our most popular programmes are on and watch the chatter. We even have TV programmes about people watching TV programmes together!

Instead of killing off TV, the digital revolution has opened up new ways for people to engage with one another and with the programme-makers. Competitions are devised specifically within the programme format, vote-ins and other audience participation and interactions have become popular but you have to be watching live to participate.

Sometimes those interactions are within another space entirely. We may be watching TV but we’re also engaged in a conversation on social media about what’s happening on the TV.

Branding and advertising spending are often undertaken to illicit the same outcome. Namely, owning that little bit of the real estate in their audience’s brain that associates a particular product or company instantly with a particular need. Having their brand or product living rent-ree in your head. Instantly popping-up in your thoughts whenever the right trigger occurs. Be that the concept of a luxury car, or a box of chocolates that every lady loves. Like Pavlov’s dogs, they get the desired response whenever they ring the right bell because they have specifically nurtured that association.

The ads we see on TV are often also shown when we visit the cinemam – sometimes even created with the cimema viewing expreience in mind – which is a neat segway to look at the idea that cinema might be dead!

Film and cinema

Film and cinema is not my area of expertise and what I’ve said about TV can be transplanted to film without needing any real fine-tuning.  But as this is not my core expertise let me turn to and quote the UK Cinema Association figures about how the industry is doing.

“From a historic high immediately post-war of 1.64 billion in 1946, UK cinema admissions gradually declined to an all-time low of just 54 million in 1984. Since that time, the advent of the multiplex, and record levels of investment in improving the theatrical experience (still ongoing), have seen admissions recover such that since 2000, they have remained above 150 million. The 2019 pre-pandemic figures showed over 176 million people visited a cinema in the UK”.

Even with the multitude of TV channels and streaming services people are going back to the big screen in large numbers. Why? Because the experience is different. How it makes us feel is different. For most of us a cinema visit is a social occasion shared with a friend or loved ones. And some things just have to be seen in an immersive environment. Even if you do have a home cinema set-up – nothing can match the real silver screen & pop-corn experience.

The Covid-19 pandemic obviously hit those figures. But when the isolation lock-d0wns were lifted people flocked back cinemas. The novelty of being ‘out’ may well have been a factor but the British public appear to love of an evening at the ‘flicks’.

Print

How many years now is it that people keep trotting out the prediction that print is dead … it’s been going on for at least half my 30-year career in graphic design!

“Print is dead, dealt a fatal blow by digital media and online communications”.

New media has indeed changed the game – but the often claimed line that no one wants to read books or magazines anymore as they can access everything through their screens is patently untrue.  However, the digital revolution did positively alter how the print world worked. Digital printing is now the norm and with it came a great deal of flexibility bringing the ability to personalise printed communications, creating bespoke items at the individual item level.

I do admit that many areas of print have declined significantly. There are definitely fewer print firms around, which tells us something about the general market. But there are also now some very large players who dominate curtain sectors of the print market. Dominant companies always end up squashing some of the little guys out of existence.  Many print runs are also noticeably smaller. But that does not mean that the print world is dying. Different is not necessarily dying.

People have switched to reading more content on screens, that’s a fact. But research shows that is generally shorter form content. Some will read longer form content on a screen but some people have switched back to books too. They found that screen life was not for them. They suffered from eye strain and headaches, and for some, their sleep suffered too. For longer form content and novels many have found they just like the sensation of a physical book or magazine in their hand. At least if you then fall asleep reading in the bath you only need to dry out your book not replace your iPad!

I read some articles online – as you probably do too. But I also know I prefer to do any extended or educational reading via a traditional, physical format, Why? Partly it’s because I like to underline bits, and mark sections I find insightful, or might wish to return to. I want to identify some sections so I can locate them swiftly later and I make notes in the margins as I go too. I’ll sometimes add stickie notes and, I’ll admit, I sometimes fold down the odd page corner or two. (Which I know some book lovers think is sacrilege!)

I know I can do most of that in some ways on an ebook – but it’s not the same.  And I’ve found I rarely go back to the notes in an ebook as often as I consult my library of real books. Perhaps that’s primarily because I’m a visual person. The electronic reading experience does not afford me the same visual reminders or the same experience. I’ll admit this might be more pronounced in my case, as a visual learner and a dyslexic, the visual cues from a physical item might be a larger part of my aid memoir. The book cover, the colour of stickie notes – these may be factors in my ability to recall what I’m looking for.

Other than the convenience – I simply find I prefer to read off a page than on a screen.

But, there are environmental reasons why some are actively calling for the end of print, or at least a vast reduction. The constant need for paper pulp to feed the print industry is a genuine concern. Trees have been felled at an alarming rate to meet that demand. But times move on and new ways of addressing the need are now becoming industry practice.

Recycling is one answer – but recycling uses a vast amount of water, which is another resource in short supply. Fast-growing grasses and old clothing fibres have both reduced reliance on timber to make paper pulp in recent years. I’ve written before and, I’m sure, will do again on the subjects of ecology, recycling and green design … It’s too big a subject to address adequately here as it’s not the focus of this piece. Except to say, dealing with these big issues is never as straightforward, nor as binary, as they at first appear.

One aspect of the move to a greener world is the move away from plastics in packaging. Products will still need to be packaged. For transport, security, shop display etc. so card and paper packaging still need to be designed and printed to be effective. As I said print is not dead but it is evolving. The print world is adapting and learning new tricks.  Print is a long way from dead – it’s just updated itself and looks a little different.

Design & Illustration

The impact of AI on the design and illustration fields is very much still in an pretty embryonic phase. But almost every week something new enters the markets and shakes things up a little more.

Recently, I’ve seen some very impressive illustration content created entirely by AI. However,  there are huge questions about copyright ownership of such items that have yet to be even considered properly. I think even the most ardent supporter of AI would say that there are still many areas that need more work before it can be used properly commercially.

I suspect these tools will become part of the armoury of most creatives eventually. But AI, by its nature, takes the collective information available and works from within that set of known parameters. Which does give rise to lots of variations, very quickly – and is far more time efficient than any designer or illustrator could be (at least to produce those initial ideas) but the parameters are set and so the question of were truly original ideas will enter the process does arise.

Highly impressive variations on a theme, rendered at speed, will certainly be very usefully in lots of creative scenarios. But to create truly original work, new concepts and ideas, which are unique and mould-breaking, is going to be almost impossible working within the algorithm of an AI engine. The engine needs to be fed references, source material, style sheets and cues to do its thing, at present at least. There may well be stylistic and superficial uniqueness but there still needs to be a creative brain driving the process and directing the outcomes.

Just in the last few weeks I saw a completely AI-generated short film. It was a talking-head piece with just one locked-off camera shot of an individual talking. The image, the person, the make-up, the lighting, the voice … nothing existed in real life. (But I did note that the voice sounded a little synthetized even before I knew it was AI, a bit like the autotune used on some music tracks). The only thing that had any human intelligence in its creation was the script that the ‘non-actor’ delivered.

Big questions exist around the ethical use of this type of technology when essentially ‘anyone’ could be made to say anything with just a few hours and a powerful enough computer. How can we trust anything we see on the news if deep fakes can be produced with such relative ease?

When impactive and game-changing creative work comes into the market it is the quality of the concept, the strength of thinking and problem solving, coupled with the quality of execution, that makes them special. AI may well be able to deliver some aspects of that creative process but just take a few minutes to google AI-generated poetry and you’ll soon realise that some things are far better with a human touch.

One area I think does need a human brain is brand design.

Brand design

I’ve seen AI-generated logos – with varying degrees of success in my opinion – but few have ever felt like convincing, confident, cohesive full brand solutions.

When one of the key considerations of the creation of a brand logo is differentiation from the competition – it would seem a little counterintuitive, to me, to use an AI platform that by its essence will draw its references from similar businesses. Accessing industry trends and styles and then expect it to create an effective, considered and most importantly, differentiated brand.

However, the initial research phase could be a great place to use AI. The data sets and wide reference points would seem ideal for AI involvement. But I believe it will remain a tool used to shorten delivery times and bring added efficiencies in the early stages of a brand delivery project. At least for some years to come anyway.

AI won’t kill off brand and logo design. People who trade on the speed of delivery and price may well need to reconsider their business models as AI design would seem to possibly look to inhabit the same business arena as the likes of Canva, and Fiverr.

There will be a marketplace for such work – the client base who are more concerned with speed and cost than in quality or a long-term strategic approach will appreciate the benefits of fast, cheap design. But the holistic, considered and long-term work required to devise a thoughtful brand strategy and overarching brand design project would, as yet, seem to be beyond the capability of an AI robot.

Given that one of the core aspects of any good brand design is to create an emotional connection with the target audience I suspect a human mind directing things will be needed for some time.

Like in the FA cup, sometimes the small clubs will get a big win. Or even a decent run of wins … but if you need consistency across the season (or more aptly) across several seasons, then you’d be better-off picking someone with a proven track record who has proven that their wins are consistent and can be reproduced over and over again.

So what does the future look like?

Should I really try to be a crystal ball gazer and predict anything? Or am I as likely to be as wrong as those who have prophesied the death of all the businesses I’ve been writing about?

Personally, I remain hopeful. One of the most fascinating, and truly inspiring aspects, of the human condition, is our collective ability to adapt. The fact that we strive to move forward and explore new ideas, new horizons. Humanity is continually evolving and exploring – always seeking to know, understand and to create.

So our expressions of society are also evolving and developing. Adapting to new ideas, new input and new challenges. Obviously, communication needs and models are embedded within the cultural frameworks that we develop within those societies and in our communities – so they are also remain in an ever present state of flux and adaptation.

The next time you hear someone announce that anything is dead due to new technology or changing society, take a second. Take a breath or two. It may not be as black and white nor as stark as the prediction seems to suggest at first.

In 2014, Forbes carried an article about the large corporations giving designers a seat at the board room table. At that time big names like Johnson & Johnson, PepsiCo and Philip Electronics NV had all recently appointed Chief Design Officers. In the ensuing years many other organisations have followed.  Tiffany’s, Vanguards, Ericsson and many others have appointed Chief Brand Executives to their C-suite.

So why have branding and design become C-suite activities?

This comment from John Mathers, Chief Executive of the Design Council, from the introduction to their ‘Design Buyers Guide’, sheds some light on the matter:

“Used effectively, design can help you anticipate what customers need, develop the right offering, get it to market fast and improve your bottom line. There’s evidence to prove it. A recent survey showed that for every £100 design-led businesses spend on design, their turnover goes up by £225.  But getting full return on your design investment can mean having to find new ways of thinking and working”.

The key is in the practice of design thinking and the advancement it can bring. At it’s core Design thinking embraces the idea of change. There are different versions espoused by different people, varying from 4 – 10 or more steps, but the essence is always constant – focusing on learning new insights and adapting accordingly.

This is the core structure no matter how many steps each exponent likes to add in.

1.     Research

Conduct research to understand the problem. Gain empathy with the customer/users experience. Define the issues identified.

2.     Explore

Generate numerous creative solutions to address the defined issue.

3.     Prototype

Whether creating a website, a logo, a user-interface or a new car everything should be prototyped.  By this we simply mean creating a minimum viable option to be able to move to the next phase and test the solutions proposed.

4.     Test

The whole point of the prototype is so you can test the solution that has been created. So at this point we circle back to No 1 to again get real understanding of how our proposed solution is received by our target audience.

5.     Iterate

The test and iterate phase of the process is a continuum. Once you settle on a solution that is viable you have to ‘push the button’ and launch it.

6.     Implement

If it appears to work then place it into the world – and watch!

7.     Monitor

Is it working as intended/expected? Are some elements not working? Are there further tweaks that can improve it?

Designers are usually by nature people who embrace change. Which is heightened by their training.

They are generally looking to see how things can be improved, looking to identify problems and created credible solutions. They embrace the process and know that taking action will give additional insight.

Sometimes the design process leads to great strides forward. More often, like the Olympic Cycling Teams theory of ‘marginal gains’ –  progress and success is based in lots of small improvements and striving for ‘better’.

Not every organisation is large enough to need a CDO or CBO. But any business that does not implement design thinking at a management level is destined to be left behind.

(or what is brand strategy and what does it do?)

Where’s the good knife? Who used my mug? We all have favourites, right? We may have a draw full of knives but there’s that one that we like using most.

Maybe it’s just a bit sharper – or maybe it feels more comfortable or more balanced in our hand. It’s a personal thing. Like your favourite mug.

Why keep the others around? Just in case! Or, for when the favourite is in the dishwasher maybe but the fact is that some things, some people and some businesses – just ‘sit’ better with us.

Given the choice, we’ll use them. We may have other knives in the draw – just in case – but we have our preference, and given the choice, we’re using that one.

For anyone running a business, it has to be our desire and our drive to hold that position of ‘favourite’ in the minds of our customers. Achieving that position is not easy but that is where good brand strategy comes into play.

People often get confused about branding – they conflate brand and logo, they talk about identity when they are really talking about marketing collateral. So, let me try and define brand strategy.

For me, the brand strategy defines rules and guidelines on how, what, where, when and to whom you communicate your message. It’s the strategy that dictates how your brand will be presented in the marketplace; where you’ll show up, how you’ll sound, and what you’ll look like. It defines whom you’re talking to, how you express yourself and what that target audience can/should expect at every single contact they have with your business. So it encompasses quite a lot.

Going back to the opening analogy. Your favourite knife, became your favourite knife because it feels good in your hand, and you probably like the look of it. But it also delivers to you what it promised. It does the job, does it well, does it consistently – and it feel right when you are working with it.

The same is true for a business. It has to deliver on the promises made, it has to do so consistently, doing the job well and it has to feel right to the user.

Brand strategy is the plans and methodology to connect your brand and your target user. I liken it to building a bridge. You start by making sure you have firm foundations and build towards the middle – towards a true connection. For a business or organisation that means knowing clearly who the target audience is, and also being sure about who you are too.

That assurity gives the business the ability to address the right people in the right way, with the right message, through the right media, at the right time.

Your brand strategy becomes the filter through which every action and interaction is passed.

If all the ways that the business interacts with its potential customers align, and each potential touch-point delivers the same message and creates the same ‘feeling’ within the customer then you are onto a winning formula.

There are physical, tangible expressions of your brand – and they are what most people often focus on: the logo, the website, the marketing – even the social media presence.

But there are lots of intangibles too. If what one of the godfathers of branding, Marty Neumiere, states is true, that “A brand is a person’s gut feeling about a product, service or organisation” – then a brand strategy is how the company, service provider or organisation tries to manage their reputation and customer interactions in the most favourable way.

You can’t tell people you have great customer service if they can’t get through to you on the phone – or when they do the receptionist is rude and unhelpful. The brand expression has to be true and has to be consistent.

There is a reason in the design world that brand guidelines do not generally contain anything about the strategy.

What’s the difference between brand guidelines and brand strategy?

Brand guidelines are a collection of examples and templates to help define the tangible elements – they are designed to be shared with third parties and collaborators to ensure everyone expresses the brand consistently and in-line with the strategy.

The strategy is the thinking behind that expression of the brand and this is usually held very tightly within an organisation – and guarded jealously. Why would you risk potentially leaking your strategy to your competition?

A well-defined brand strategy will identify and leverage your competitive advantage, and could even contain research that highlights your competitors’ weaknesses. That’s worth protecting.

Would you like to be able to hold that position of ‘favourite’ in the minds of your customer? Do you have a brand strategy to get you there? Do all your employees know what that strategy is?

If you can’t answer those questions with a resounding ‘yes’ then it might be time to talk brand strategy with a professional.