Where should the focus of brand strategy be these days? It may sound entirely self-evident - "focus on the brand, stupid" - but I'm increasingly thinking that proposition is flawed, or at least in need of some retrofit. And depending on your "client" (internal or external), I'd gas up the bulldozer and get dirty.
Brands sit somewhere. They sit in space, they sit in between other brands, they have edges and corners and cracks. And in our always-on multi-platform experiences, simply focusing on the sole brand itself as the target of our energies, is officially (and finally) not the best strategy. I suggest we add equivalent focus on where a particular brand sits in relation to other brands. Oh, I know we sometimes talk about that idea in nice, intelligent ways, but we don't follow through. We're wimps. We avoid the tough work.
Imagine a traditional brand strategy engagement - constructing attributes, positioning, messaging - not to mention the end game of identity design and its eventual application. And then imagine that output being "placed" into a context that doesn't support it; or sitting in proximity to other brands which dilute the good work delivered.
I hear the retorts already, "Wait, we don't do Point of Sale stuff and isn't this just marketing or media strategy? Didn't we do this in our competitive analysis? Ain't that what we pay our ad agency to suss out and get right?"
I hope not. And that's part of the problem. As brand strategists, we either need to expand our field of view to encompass this issue of where our work will eventually sit and what will sit next to it - or - we're simply noodling around on someone else's dime and our friends at GloboCorp Agency will continue the repeated paths.
If we attempt to think this way, the end game is even more exciting... It's entirely possible to create unique, compelling and successful brand experiences (i.e. driving transactions of some sort) by exploiting this principle. Play the proximities, design for what's most likely going to be next to your brand. Enhance or defy those neighbors, but you better recognize them. In short, stop thinking your brand is unassailable once it's out of the laboratory. It isn't. It's a free-for-all. Embrace the madness.
(The Excedrin is in my top desk drawer, left side)
