Why Brand Strategy is so Hard to Get Right: 3 Big Reasons
Before you jump down to the three big reasons, you might be tempted to ask your GPT answer engine, “What is brand strategy?” Go ahead, I’ll wait.
Excellent. Now, you might be wondering if there is any point to reading this human-generated article? You’ll simply have to believe me that there is.
That long-winded answer you got should have included the words “long-term.” That is the crux of a good brand strategy. It is a clear and extensible throughline that permeates every part of your brand and business, consistently and continuously. And there are so very many things that prevent that from going well. But here are the three big ones every business should look out for.
Word Salad
To someone running a business, concentrated on operations and finances (without which everything else fails), brand strategy can look like a lot of word salad. It’s a lot of missions and visions, promise and positioning, values and value propositions. Trying to see through this jumble of jargon and gain some understanding can feel like trying to see through the matrix. But if that sacred piece of cinematic science-fiction taught us anything, it’s that looking through the matrix only seems impossible until you do it. And it’s only when you achieve that vision that you’re able to see the different parts of your brand the way they truly are and should be. But until a brand owner makes that effort to gain that understanding and takes that leap … they’re more likely to skip the salad course.
Job descriptions
The problem with a long-term, interconnected brand strategy that touches every part of your business is that the people in all those parts actually have to implement it. They all have a role to play. However, they don’t always know that role because it’s not technically part of their job. They were hired to achieve X. X is why they’re here. Their performance reviews, their bonuses, and even their ability to enjoy their weekends come down to how well they can illustrate they are doing X. People can tell them that Y also matters and how important Y is to the company, but their paycheck depends on X ultimately and not Y (Y is brand strategy in this scenario). There’s no easy answer to how to make brand strategy part of everyone’s job description, but it starts by ensuring they know that they are working not just for a product or company but a brand. They are part of that brand, and if that brand succeeds, they succeed.
Staying in character
Carrying out an effective brand strategy, for those doing the carrying, can get tedious and repetitive. Even if you’re doing everything right, maintaining that amount of focused differentiation can get … boring. Someone down the chain of command (or even up the chain) will start to feel hamstrung or stuck and decide it’s time for a change. It is a fact of life that you will get tired of your brand long before your audience will. You are simply more exposed to it. A lot more. Some brands even change strategy before their audience is really aware of their brand. Preventing this boredom from derailing good brand strategy requires planning ahead, some built-in modularity (to keep the boredom at bay), but more than anything, the conviction, discipline, and all-in buy-in to see it through.
Final word
It’s a lot of eating your vegetables, going outside your role, and staying bored. None of that sounds fun, and those are just three of the big reasons (there are many more, I promise you) why brand strategy challenges even the best marketers. That’s why the really smart CMOs seek out even smarter partners. Adcetera has a team of people who live and breathe brand strategy. We even developed a proprietary methodology that’s been used successfully for more than twenty-five years. We know how to build and execute effective brand strategy. And if you don’t believe me, ask your GPT.