Brand Discovery. What is Brand Discovery? As the name suggests Brand Discovery is about discovering the truth about your brand. Unearthing real insights and perceptions. Understanding its DNA. Getting under the skin.
Discovery is not about gut feelings or assumptions. It’s about knowledge, insight and, most importantly, a clear direction. Developing a brand strategy born out of intelligence that anchors to your business aspirations and visions.
It provides us with the platform to create a compelling proposition.
It gives us a base to deliver strong brand strategy.
It allows us to deliver single-minded creative.
It gives you marketing plans that are commercially accountable.
Since we pioneered this approach in 2001 we’ve embarked on Discovery programmes for clients of different sizes, of different stages, with different challenges, in wildly different sectors, but all with one common theme: a driving ambition to improve the performance of their business.
The result is always the same: work that works.
How does it work?
First and foremost, we use Discovery to inform our creative and strategic thinking. It involves analysing different target audiences, different business dynamics and different market situations to inform and create a core brand promise that we can work from. It’s based on three founding principles:
1. Knowledge before assumption
2. Strategy before tactics
3. Business fit versus budget fit
No two journeys are alike, but they all follow the same four stages:
1) 360° Audit
The starting point of every Discovery, the 360° Audit is about pulling information together from the people who know you best. Your customers, your consumers, your staff, your competitors. We speak to anyone and everyone to create a fully rounded picture of your brand: its performance, its challenges, its opportunities and its ambitions.
2) Knowledge Review
At the heart of stage two lies a single question. Single, but fundamental.
“What does all this information mean for our client, in relation to their brand, their consumers and their people?”
Everything we have learnt from the 360° Audit is interrogated and challenged with this question.
It informs the generation of key insights into your brand.
It identifies the values that lie at the heart of your business – the brand essence.
It is the foundation of your proposition.
3) The Proposition
Ask 100 marketers for a definition of a proposition and you’ll get 101 answers. And not many of them will be single-minded.
We believe a proposition should be simple, clear and concise. It should articulate the promise your brand makes to its customers. It should tell the key benefit of why you’re best. It should play to your strengths.
This proposition may only look like a short sentence, but it’s an incredibly powerful short sentence. It’s a short sentence that forms the essence of your business. It’s what will transform your business.
4) Brand Strategy
The final stage of Discovery is possibly the most important. All that good work is nothing if we don’t create an accurate, timely and effective implementation plan. A plan that identifies which channels we will use to target current and future audiences. A plan that anchors every element of the brand strategy to your business objectives. To put it simply: how can we get more, keep more and sell more?
There’s no rule to what shape it takes, no allegiance to one form of tactic over another. It comes down to knowledge coupled with experience to create a plan that’s the perfect fit for your brand.
