Why Is Brand Strategy Important

Designing since 1985

I’ve been a designer for as long as I can remember. I usually like to say that I started in the seventh grade, after being tenacious enough to badger my father into buying my first Macintosh computer and then spending hours noodling in MacPaint and MacDraw. Pixel by pixel, I painstakingly drew Christopher Columbus’s ship, the Santa Maria, for a book report cover. I observed the lines of the parabolic exterior of Saint Mary’s Cathedral, known colloquially in San Francisco as “the washing machine,” and replicated them in MacDraw. Of course, that’s not design, but that was the start of my use of the computer to make visuals that communicate. Needless to say, I didn’t know what brand strategy even was, or why it’s important, but we’ll get there.

Screenshot of MacPaint (1984)

Amateur hour

The first real logo I designed was for a friend of mine who ran a computer consulting company consisting of only himself. Imagine the word “MacSpect” set in Garamond, with a black square preceding it and then a wave running through the shape and logotype, inverted out of the letters. I thought it was the coolest thing in 1992. But it meant nothing. There was no concept behind it. It borrowed Garamond from Apple’s official typeface at the time, and the invert technique was popular in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Author’s attempt at recreating his first logo from memory, 32 years later

Concept is king

Fast-forward to my first real design job after design school. One of my early projects was to design a logo for Levi’s. It was not to be their official corporate logo, but instead, it was for a line of clothing called Americana. It would be used on hangtags and retail store signage. I ended up designing a distressed star—grunge was the shit in the mid-1990s—with a black and white inverted bottle cap pattern behind it. (There’s that inverting again!) Even though this was just as trendy as my student-level MacSpect logo, this mark worked. You see, the Levi’s brand has always been rooted in American authenticity, with its history going back to the Gold Rush in the mid-1800s. The distress in the logo represented history. The star shape was a symbol of America. And the pattern in the circle is straight from the label on every pair of Levi’s jeans.

This logo worked because it was rooted in a concept, or put another way, rooted in strategy. And this is where I learned why brand strategy was important to design.

Why is brand strategy important? Why does it matter?

Designing something visually appealing is easy. Find some inspiration on Instagram, Dribbble, or Behance, put your spin on it, and call it a day. But what you create won’t be timeless. In fact, its shelf life will be as long as the trend lasts. A year? Two at best?

Trends like neumorphism come and go quickly

But if your design is rooted in brand strategy—concepts representing the essence of the brand you’re designing for—your creation will last longer. (I won’t say forever because eventually, all logos are redesigned, usually based on the whims of the new marketing person who takes charge.)

Brand strategy is the art of distilling a brand

Big design, branding, marketing, or advertising agencies have dedicated brand strategists. Clients pay a premium for their expertise because they can distill the essence of a brand into key pillars. The process is not unlike talking to a friend about a problem and then having them get to the heart of the matter because they know you and have an objective point of view. For a client, seeing excellent brand strategy deliverables is often jaw-dropping because strategists can articulate the brand better than they can. Their secret isn’t telling clients something they don’t know. Instead, the secret is revealing what they know in their hearts but can’t express.

Brand strategists work their magic by being therapists to clients. (Midjourney)

How do brand strategists work their magic? Through research and by acting as therapists, in a way. They listen and then reflect what they hear and learn.

Branding is more than just creative work

The brand insights articulated by brand strategists are typically used to inform the creative work. From logos to slogans, from landing pages to Instagram posts, all the creative is rooted in the pillars of the brand. So then, the brand’s audience experiences a consistent voice.

However, what clients find most valuable is the illumination of their brand purpose and company mission. You see, brand strategy also crosses into business strategy. They’re not one and the same, but there is overlap. The purpose and mission of a company help align employees and partners. They help with product or service development—the very future of the company.

This is why Simon Sinek’s “Start with why” talk from 2009 resonated with so many business leaders. It’s about purpose and mission. Why also happens to be the root of great branding.

Brand strategy is the foundation for building brands—and the companies they represent. And the partner agencies that create that brand strategy for them are invaluable.

Offering brand strategy can propel you from “vendor” to “partner”

Clients will call freelancers and agencies “vendors,” lumping them into the same category as those who sell them copy paper. To transcend from being thought of as a vendor to being a partner, offering brand strategy is crucial.

Nearly all clients not listed in the Fortune 500 will not know what is brand strategy, nor why is brand strategy important. But once they see it, they’ll come to appreciate it.

This shift demands not just skill but a change in mindset. As a freelancer or small agency owner, your value lies in weaving brand stories, not just creating aesthetically pleasing designs and building websites. Your work should mirror the brand’s ethos and vision, making you an essential part of your client’s journey.