What a Brand Strategy Actually Is
A brand strategy is the short, opinionated document that decides — in advance — what your brand will stand for, who it's for, how it will behave, and what it will refuse to do. Everything downstream (the visual identity, the voice, the campaigns, the hires, the product roadmap) flows from it. When the strategy is missing or vague, every team makes its own private interpretation, and the brand slowly fragments. When it's clear, decisions get faster and more consistent without anyone in the room having to relitigate first principles.
The most useful distinction we draw with clients: a brand strategy is not a brand deck. Decks are the artifact of the workshop; strategy is the artifact you actually use. If your document is 60 slides, it's a deck. If it's one page that a designer, a copywriter, and a product manager could all reach for to settle an argument, it's a strategy.
What Belongs on the One-Page Strategy Doc
We've used dozens of templates over the years and have collapsed them down to six fields that earn their place. Everything else is a footnote.
- Audience. Not a demographic profile. A description of the specific person you're choosing to serve better than anyone else, written in language they would recognize. A sentence like "small-team founders running a values-led service business" beats a persona deck with stock photography every time.
- Positioning. One sentence describing the place you intend to occupy in the customer's mind. We cover the frameworks for arriving at this in our brand positioning sub-topic.
- Values. Three to five non-negotiable principles that explain how the brand will behave under pressure. Values you'd still hold when they cost you a deal.
- Personality. A short list of human traits that describe how the brand shows up — warm but precise, direct but generous, opinionated but humble. This is the bridge to brand voice.
- Promise. The specific commitment you make to the customer every time they engage with you. Not a tagline. A promise has consequences when broken.
- What we don't do. The most under-used field on any strategy document. A short list of the customers, projects, channels, and tones you've consciously chosen not to pursue. This is the field that gives the others teeth.
The Inputs Behind a Strategy Worth Trusting
A brand strategy written in a vacuum is a wish list. A strategy written from real inputs is a working document. The three input streams we run before drafting anything:
