Start with strategy
Start with strategy
For the creative who simply doesn’t know where to start
Start with Strategy
"The best book in the business" — Somebody
Before you can think about designing or writing anything, you need to think about what you want from the end result.
You need to make a plan that's where strategy comes in
Strategy
A plan of action designed to achieve a long-term or overall aim.
Brand
strategy
A plan of action designed to guide the way people perceive or think about a business.
Picture this: You’re hungry. You’re about to start cooking. But what are you going for?
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Salad?
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Fish?
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Pasta?
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Meat?
It’s hard to make decisions when you don’t know what you want.
At
Koto
we start by asking ourselves a set of fairly standard questions,
to come up with the ingredients for a successful dish.
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01
Who are we cooking for?
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02
What makes our dish special?
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03
How do we want it to make people feel?
From idea to the world
A good brand strategy tells a very deliberate and very flattering story about a business.
So, what's the method for writing it?
Understand the business
First you need to really understand the business you're working with. Immersing yourself in the business offer, the category it exists in, talking to their customers and getting a feel for their company culture, are a must.
Think big and wide
The more you know, the better. Then you can work together to get to a concept that resonates with all of your business' audiences: from investors to internal employees.
Craft the narrative
Finally, you use the chosen concept to write a story about the business that feels exciting.
Strategy frameworks appear in all shapes & sizes
Purpose
Personality
Positioning
Proposition
It all gets pretty confusing.
Frameworks change depending on what a business needs, but they’re often made up of:
Why
The company’s ultimate reason for existing and/or the change they want to make in the world.
What
What a business does, framed in a way that makes it clear how they’re different.
How
The way the brand acts, behaves and shows up in the world.
The strongest strategies are expressed in a way everyone in a business can understand and be inspired by. One clear idea can be more powerful than a 100 page document.
Strategy
values
operations
Strategy is important because it acts as the starting point for every single part of a brand’s expression, keeping it consistent and intentional.
