3 Phases of Developing a New Brand Strategy

I was recently approached by a potential client about developing a new brand strategy.  “We need a new logo,” they told me. “And we need it now.”

While it’s not unheard of to design a new logo within a 2-3 month timeframe, it’s nearly impossible. And it’s the wrong way to go about it if you really want to create a new brand strategy.

Because a brand is not a logo.  It’s not an identity package. And it’s not a product.

A brand is a person’s gut feeling about a product, service, or organization. It’s who you are and what you stand for — all of which is communicated by your logo, marketing materials, products, and more.

(See some more of my thoughts on branding and content marketing for small organizations in this short presentation.)

A new logo is a by-product of a thoughtful, deliberate brand strategy development process.  The icing on the cake after you’ve mixed all the ingredients and baked it.

Here are the three phases of developing a new brand strategy:

1. Brand platform development:  Includes information-gathering, research, analysis, feedback, and recommendations.  Goal is to create a brand platform document that establishes the company/organization’s market positioning, key attributes, and target audiences.
2. Brand identity development:  Includes creative brief, design concepts, design refinements, and a final logo and artwork/templates. Could also include a new website.
3. Brand roll out:  Includes elevator speech, news releases, internal presentations, long-term marketing plan.

A typical time frame to do all this is 9-12 months, depending on the complexity of the organization and review and approval process.

Sure, you could start revamping your brand by designing a new logo.  But that’s not branding. It’s just design.

Building a successful brand platform that will help grow and sustain your business ends with design.  It starts with discovery.

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