Nika Worlund (00:00)
when I work on big brands, like big international brands, think Dove, think Johnny Walker,
99 % of the time, brand positioning on those brands is already set. Those companies don't mess with their brand positioning very often. They tweak it to they're moving with times, but they don't just come to me every day saying, hey, we're gonna change our
brand strategy and I'm changing brand positioning. No, brand positioning is set. Most of the time, it's a part of the brief. They come to me, they say, hey, this is our brand positioning, but we need something else, right? Another brand strategy task. What are those tasks? my gosh, there's a bazillion of
Nika Worlund (00:45)
Welcome to Design Bigger, the podcast for designers and studios ready to think bigger, design bigger brands and land bigger projects. I'm Nika Worland, an Exbig agency brand strategy director who took her blue chip client expertise and built a freelance career helping independent agencies around the globe. This is the podcast where I share the tricks of the trade for lean design thinking to set you up as a world-class creative talent. As a translator between business and creatives, I'll show you how to speak client, hack top agency frameworks and think like the best studios out there.
If you're ready to design bigger, hit subscribe and let's get started.
Nika Worlund (01:19)
Hello, Design Studio owners.
creative directors
your host Nika is here and today's episode is inspired by a conversation I recently had
Have you
ever thought that your client only wants design from you Because they already have brand strategy figured out.
If the answer is yes, this episode is for you.
we're going to be talking about how to sell strategy to clients who already have it. And I put who already have it quotation marks.
not because don't have it and they're just lying to you because they don't want to spend money on it. For that, I have a different episode. It's episode number seven, how to sell strategy to clients who just want design. The reason who already have it is in quotation marks is because
IT is much more vast and complex than what you think. Let me explain. I think in general, there is confusion about what brand strategy is in the design circles.
And very often brand strategy and brand positioning are used interchangeably. And I think it's because the bulk of what design agencies do is brand creation or rebrands where the big chunk of what you do is a brand positioning.
However,
Brand strategy has a much bigger toolkit than brand positioning. So when I talk about brand positioning in my head, I'm literally picturing a brand model, right? Something like a brand pyramid that has brand attributes, functional, emotional benefits,
consumer insight, brand personality, values, brand purpose, brand idea, right? Mark Ritzen literally said, like, if your brand positioning is more than one page, like you made it too damn complicated. And I could not agree with him more. I love him.
And that is exactly how I feel, but that is your brand positioning, right? Is there more to brand strategy than those? How many 10 things that you put on a page? Absolutely.
And to make you believe that, I'm gonna tell you that
when I work on big brands, like big international brands, think Dove, think Johnny Walker,
99 % of the time, brand positioning on those brands is already set. Those companies don't mess with their brand positioning very often. They tweak it to they're moving with times, but they don't just come to me every day saying, hey, we're gonna change our
brand strategy and I'm changing brand positioning. No, brand positioning is set. Most of the time, it's a part of the brief. They come to me, they say, hey, this is our brand positioning, but we need something else, right? Another brand strategy task. What are those tasks? my gosh, there's a bazillion of
Probably the most popular task that I do as a brand strategist
at an agency that works on big international brands is new sub-brand development. They say, hey, we're Coca-Cola, but we're launching Coca-Cola Live. Or we're launching
a new flavor range. How do we make sure that it is on brand, it is aligned with our brand positioning, but it appeals to this new segment of consumer, Gen Z, for example.
So what you're doing is you're doing a sub-brand development and you're looking how close or far away it can be from the brand core.
what assets and what parts of the story are fixed and what can flex for this new consumer.
How far can we move this new sub-brand visually from the core? How different can it be, right? That is a big chunk of what I do.
But let's rewind.
There kind of four levels of brand strategy, right? There's brand strategy on the foundational level, which is when a brand is created or a sub-brand is created, and this is where you do innovation, you do research, you might create a new brand positioning or create like a sub-brand positioning based on the core brand positioning.
then there is the executional brand strategy, which is when the client comes to you, they already have the positioning, right? If it's a sub brand, they already have an alternative idea based on the core brand positioning, but they want you to figure out how the brand looks. And they want you to come idea. Maybe they already have the creative idea,
start develop marketing, they realize that they need creative principles, guiding visual principles that will ensure that everything that they do is on brand. They might come to you and say, hey, we just realized that we sound really corporate. Can you please develop tone of voice guidelines? And this is where you come up with messaging ideas and the tone of voice.
that helps them sound consistent on Instagram and billboards and TV ads and on the website. These are executional brand strategy tasks. So
When I hear independent design, see just telling me that, well, our clients already have strategy, so we have nothing to do. I just really want to open it up for them and say, there is so much more you can do. And even beyond the executional level, there is activation brand strategy, right?
that's when the client comes to you and they say, we already have the positioning, we already have brand idea, we have defined our creative principles, we have defined our tone of voice guidelines, we have defined our art direction, everything creatively is done, we want you to come up with.
ideas on how we activate it. What does all of this theory, because up until this point, it is really theoretical, right? We want you to come up with
Com's ideas, content pillars, launch event activation, go-to market strategy, content strategy. We're developing a website like...
We need copywriting, like long form copy for the web. All of these are brand strategy deliverables that you can sell as an agency or a freelance designer to a brand that already has it. Quotation marks.
now you might have the imposter syndrome about delivering some of these tasks. And I'm not saying you need to deliver these tasks. You can choose what you can offer based on your strengths.
so maybe you're not confident doing copywriting.
but deliverables like creative principles, tone of voice guidelines.
brand world thinking.
coming up with a creative idea is absolutely in design world. And AI made it a little easier
to do cooperating as a designer. So you outline a tone of voice guideline and then ask Chad GPT to refine it.
It won't be as good as going to a copywriter.
but it might take you one step further and then maybe the client will get your point and then will go and actually hire the copywriter. So this was a very quick episode. I just wanted to debunk this myth that brand strategy is brand positioning. And also once the brand positioning is done, there's nothing else a design agency can do in terms of brand strategy. No.
I work on brands been around for 200 years. Their brand positioning is set and somehow every single day I'm busy doing things.
If you want to learn more about what those things are, what those tasks are and how a designer can. Execute brand strategy without a strategist in house, or maybe how an account manager, account team can do brand strategy. Follow me, sign up for my list on my website, nicolewarland.com. I am currently building amazing.
service that will help non-strategists do strategy.
It will be full of quick, actionable explanations of how to do each strategy task with templates that you can just drop into Figma or Keynote and run with it. Because I know how short the timelines are between you get a brief and you need to deliver the first stage of thinking.
Subscribe to this podcast on Apple or Spotify to get these quick 10 minute episodes that make you smarter every day. And you can also follow me on Instagram where I'm sharing some really helpful carousels on how to do brand strategy in the wild.
So that's it for today.
go create something big and beautiful and remember that the best designers and the account managers are strategic.
