Every successful brand strategy starts with alignment.
During the kickoff phase, the brand strategy team and client define:
- Business objectives
- Project goals
- Timelines and deliverables
- Roles and responsibilities
- Internal stakeholders
This stage ensures the branding agency and client team share the same expectations before research begins. Clients are often given guided exercises or “homework” to help uncover preferences and insights, such as:
- Mood boards or visual inspiration
- Brands they admire
- Product or ingredient details
- Cost or positioning considerations
- Thoughts on audience or market perception
This collaborative foundation strengthens the entire brand discovery process.
Step 2: Audit of Existing Brand Assets
If the brand already exists, the next step is a comprehensive brand audit.
We evaluate all current materials to understand what is working and what needs evolution:
- Logo and visual identity
- Packaging design
- Website and digital presence
- Marketing collateral
- Advertising and campaigns
- Social media content
- Brand voice, messaging, and tone
- Name, tagline, and brand language
The goal of this brand assessment is to identify strengths, inconsistencies, and opportunities for improvement.
If the brand does not yet exist, this step shifts toward deeper market and competitor research — but the strategic framework remains the same.
This collaborative foundation strengthens the entire brand discovery process.
Step 3: Competitive Analysis
Competitive analysis is a core part of brand strategy research. It reveals how a brand fits into its category and where white space exists.
Typically, we analyze 3–5 key competitors, reviewing their most important brand touchpoints:
- Websites
- Packaging architecture
- Social media presence
- Advertising and campaigns
- Brand storytelling and messaging
We examine:
- How do they position themselves
- Their tone of voice (playful, educational, premium, etc.)
- Their visual style
- Their value propositions and claims
- How consistently they express their brand
This step helps determine whether the client's brand should stand out as highly differentiated or compete within a more familiar category.
Step 4: Brand-Level Research
After understanding the broader market, the focus shifts to defining the brand’s own strategic territory.
We identify and compare:
- Who are the competitors speaking to
- Who the brand should speak to
- Audience needs, motivations, and behaviors
Brand personality shapes both visual identity and messaging. We determine:
- Is the brand playful, authoritative, serene, bold, educational, or premium?
- How does its personality differ from competitors?
- What emotional space does the brand occupy?
We assess:
- Product benefits and claims
- Company mission and values
- Marketing language
- Storytelling approaches across the category
This informs how the brand's voice and narrative should evolve.
At this stage, we develop up to 3 potential brand positioning directions — not final messaging, but strategic “zones” the brand could own in the marketplace.
The research culminates in a visual mood board that represents the potential look and feel of the brand.
This includes:
- Color direction
- Typography tone
- Imagery style
- Design references for service or retail competitors
- Overall aesthetic mood for logo identity, website, social, and potentially packaging
This ensures alignment before moving into creative brand identity design.
Step 5: Product Category Research
Brand strategy must also consider the product itself, especially for packaging design and consumer goods.
This stage dives into product-level insights, which are often more detailed and technical than brand-level research.
Product Analysis
- Product features and benefits
- Functional differences
- Ingredients, materials, or formulation (if applicable)
- Claims that can be made on packaging or marketing
We study emerging trends within the product category, including:
- Consumer expectations
- Industry innovations
- Packaging norms
- Messaging conventions and CTA's
We define how the product stands apart:
- Functional differences
- Unique brand promises
- Performance capabilities
- Emotional vs. lifestyle positioning
Understanding category pricing helps determine whether the brand sits in a premium, mid-tier, or value position in retail or online — a key insight when creating both the brand messaging and packaging design.
Step 6: Synthesis of Discovery Insights
The final step of discovery is integration.
All findings from:
- Brand audit
- Competitive analysis
- Brand-level research
- Product category research
are synthesized into a cohesive discovery foundation. This creates a strategic lens through which all future creative decisions are made.
With this solid research base in place, the process moves into the next phase: Brand Strategy Development (Strategy Phase) — where brand positioning, brand messaging & content rack frameworks, and brand direction are initiated.
The discovery phase of brand strategy development is where clarity is built before creativity begins. This stage blends research, analysis, and collaboration to understand the brand, its market, and its opportunity for differentiation. Whether a company is a startup or an established brand, the discovery process follows the same strategic framework.
Strategy
The strategy phase of brand strategy development is where research becomes direction. After discovery clarifies the brand’s landscape, competitors, audience, and opportunities, strategy translates those insights into positioning, messaging foundations, and the core narrative that will guide brand identity, packaging design, and marketing.
This phase bridges research and creative execution.
Get In TouchStep 1: Translate Discovery Into Strategic Direction
Brand strategy begins by synthesizing all discovery insights into a working strategic framework.
This includes:
- Competitive positioning insights
- Brand differentiation opportunities
- Product advantages and claims
- Market white space
- Audience understanding
The goal is not more research — it is interpretation. We define what the findings mean for how the brand should show up in the world.
In brand strategy, audience definition focuses on clarity, not restriction.
Rather than building a hyper-specific persona, we establish a broad but meaningful audience profile that reflects how most brands operate in real markets.
We define:
- Age range or life stage
- Education and sophistication level
- Values and motivations
- Buying behaviors
- Emotional drivers
This helps shape brand voice, messaging tone, and visual identity without over-limiting future growth.
The brand positioning statement defines the brand's ownable place in the market.
It answers:
- What does this brand uniquely offer?
- Why does it matter to the target audience?
- How is it different from competitors?
This is the strategic core that guides messaging, design systems, and packaging communication.
Step 4: Develop the Company Offering Statement
This is a clear, concise summary of what the company provides.
Often used in:
We define:
- Retail presentations
- Sales materials
- Investor decks
- Investor decks
The company offering statement translates strategy into a simple explanation of products or services, making the brand easy to understand in professional or commercial settings.
Step 5: Define Brand Personality
Brand personality gives the brand human-like emotional and behavioral traits. This helps guide both visual identity design and messaging.
We define:
- Emotional tone (warm, bold, calm, playful, authoritative, etc.)
- Behavioral qualities (helpful, innovative, honest, luxurious, educational)
- Where the brand sits emotionally in the category
Personality ensures the brand feels consistent across every touchpoint.
Step 6: Establish Brand Voice & Communication Style
Brand voice determines how the brand speaks.
We analyze:
- Tone of voice (friendly, expert, minimal, inspirational, etc.)
- Language style (simple, technical, poetic, direct)
- Education approach (instructional, storytelling-driven, benefit-focused)
Often, insights come directly from client interviews, where natural phrasing or beliefs hint at the brand's authentic tone. These cues help ensure the voice feels real, not manufactured.
Step 7: Refine the Visual Mood Board Direction
Unlike the exploratory mood board in discovery, the strategy-phase mood board is directional.
It connects:
- Strategic positioning
- Brand personality
- Audience expectations
to a clearer visual path for:
- Brand identity design
- Packaging systems
- Typography and color direction
- Imagery style
This step prepares the transition from strategy into brand identity development.
Using positioning insights, we create 1–3 brand territories — focused strategic directions the brand could own.
Once a territory is selected, strategy evolves into a narrative.
- More emotional storytelling
- More functional or benefit-driven storytelling
- A balance of both
These territories help explore different expressions of the same strategic foundation.
Step 9: Create the Brand Story
Once a territory is selected, strategy evolves into a narrative.
We develop:
- A clear brand story
- The brand's purpose or belief
- How the brand improves the customer's life
- Its emotional and functional value
This story becomes the backbone of the website's messaging, packaging copy, and marketing communications.
Step 10: Develop the Tagline
The tagline is a distilled expression of the brand strategy.
It captures:
- The brand's promise
- Its positioning
- Its personality
In a short, memorable phrase that can live across packaging, advertising, and brand communications.
Step 11: Strategy Alignment & Handoff
The final step ensures all strategic components work together:
- Positioning statement
- Audience definition
- Company offering statement
- Brand personality
- Brand voice
- Visual direction
- Brand story
- Tagline
This strategic foundation becomes the blueprint for brand identity design, packaging development, and future messaging systems.
Step 12: When to Revisit
Revisit yearly.
Refresh every 5 years.
Your brand strategy is your foundation, and it should be revisited at least once a year. Even if it remains unchanged for several years, an annual review ensures it still reflects your business goals, audience, and market conditions. In rapidly evolving industries, staying aligned is critical, because what resonated last year may already feel outdated today.
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