Brand strategy development

Study of consumer expectations

Regardless of your company’s experience and client and market knowledge, regular customer research remains an important element of professional marketing.

We are experienced in various types of marketing (customer) researches, both standard ones including focus groups, retail audit, assessment of brand awareness and brand loyalty, and ad hoc exercises (where the research format is tailored to specific needs of a brand).

Great attention is paid to the proper planning of the research, namely, to goal setting, selection of the most efficient research tools, development of questionnaires etc.

Competition analysis

Scrupulous and diligent search for source data (both from public sources and from purchased professional reports) as well as examination of the sectoral experts’ opinions provide for justified conclusions about the brand’s position with respect to its immediate and indirect competitors, main sources of competition threat and weaknesses of competitors that would allow seizing their market share.

Based on the above mentioned data, we can also forecast the competition dynamics in your sector.

This analysis may be valuable both as a stand-alone exercise and as a component of a brand development effort.

Brand positions

Selection of the market segment (segments) where core brand operations and resources will be concentrated is a very important strategic decision to be made by our Client.

The consultant’s role includes professional, justified and understandable explanation of benefits and weaknesses of each alternative, presentation of further development scenarios and their risks and threats.

Considering the current status of your brand in the market, we may also forecast the outcomes of the brand up-marketing (increase in the ‘price status’) or down-marketing (expansion of the target customers and brand democratisation).

Since several strong players may claim the same segment in a competitive market, this process will also include the unique market positioning of you brand.

Brand book

Brand book is a very important tool in the organisation of advertising and other marketing activities of a brand.

This book describes the ‘handling rules’ for all attributes inherent in the TM advertising activities: a logo, corporate colours etc.

Depending on the company’s sector of operation, size, cost and number of advertising messages, we recommend following content of the brand book:

• Soft copy templates and printouts of ALL permanent creative elements of the brand attributes;
• Detailed instructions for the work with the logotype: size, colours, background, location, possible modifications depending on the medium and combinations with other graphic elements;
• Possible use of several logotypes (e.g. with other logotypes of your company and of other companies in the course of event sponsorship etc.);
• Rules of handling the graphic version of the brand slogan and its relation to the logotype (in a similar manner);
• Description of corporate colours;
• Hidden or allegorical version of the logotype (e.g. when advertising opportunities are limited);
• Corporate fonts and font sizes;
• Official document templates;
• Templates of graphic advertising messages (for magazines, newspapers, outdoor advertising etc.);
• Description and samples of the voice timbre and music for video and audio messages;
• Other, depending on the company operation and brand specifics.

Brand long-term budget

Sufficient knowledge about the market where the brand will operate (including the knowledge gained at early stages of the projects, as detailed above), as well as about your company’s plans and capabilities allows us to forecast future budget of the brand (both income and expenses).

The usual planning horizon is from 3-4 years to 7-10 years, which should secure complete repayment of investments into the brand and provide information on the further brand margins.

This forecast is not a brand (company) operating management tool, since it is based on rather rough assumptions. But it provides information you may need to take a final decision on the brand project implementation.

Usually we propose that two or three options of the long-term budget forecast be considered: pessimistic, expected average, optimistic, reserve etc.

Strategic brief

A task is set to the service provider on the basis of a written brief usually approved by the Client.

The brief includes a description of a brand platform, tasks and specifics in the format and scope to be disclosed to third parties on the principles of confidentiality; a detailed description of goals and tasks of this advertisement activity, limitations and planned expenses on this advertisement activity.

Depending on the specific task, additional data may be attached to the brief.

The volume of the brief depends directly on the complexity, scope and anticipated cost of the activity: this varies from 2-3 to several dozens of pages with information.