- Now that I've gathered interviews, research,
analytical data, and existing visual material,
it's time to do the hard work.
It's time to solve the problem, but don't worry.
You're not in this alone.
You should still be collaborating with the client.
Remember, they know the business better than you
and may have some great insights.
It's a back and forth process to reach a solution
everyone can own.
The term brand strategy has been pretty darn popular
for a long time.
There are certainly enough people who claim
that's what they do.
But much of the work is data collection
with no suggested direction.
There is a difference between regurgitation and strategy.
It's not your job to throw back every tiny detail
of your research to the client.
That's part of the process to reach a conclusion,
but you've been hired to solve a problem.
I've seen too many strategy documents
that are simply pages of interviews,
data, and bad stock photos.
At the end, one is left to wonder, well, now what?
The client could do this alone.
Taking all this information
and determining the correct communication strategy
is where it gets messy.
This is the creative part
and creativity is never nice and neat.
Let's explore the answers one by one.
What are the company's primary values?
I may have 10 different ideas.
The CEO's answer is the right one.
I may need to do some simplifying
and remove anything redundant,
but the answer is usually right there.
Years ago, I had a client
with many different answers from many sources.
So I went back 100 years to the company's founder
and discovered that his vision was about family and service.
That was better than any complicated answer I received.
Use the information about the values and work with the CEO
and any other stakeholders to create a list
of five to eight words.
These will be the guiding words when you start to design.
Go back to your findings
about the company's strengths and weaknesses.
Make lists of all the answers and eliminate the duplicates.
Even if they aren't true, these are the perceptions.
What message is the company communicating now
and what should the company be communicating?
What does the visual collateral say?
Is it clear or confused?
Is there a message or just a mess?
Do the logo, colors, typography, and image
reinforce what the client thinks he or she is communicating?
If not, you need to be able to show how it isn't.
Pull together a board of all the existing materials
and communications you can find.
It's never to point out how awful it is.
Remember, you're presenting to people
that were engaged in creating it.
It's to show how more consistency in the message is needed.
In part two of this, we'll explore the solutions
for the audience, competition, and medium.
Our goal in the end is to find answers
that can help you determine the best approach
for the message, visuals, and choice of media.