Brand Strategy That Creates Classics.
A brand is more than a logo. From creating new brands to repositioning global brands, we can make your brand valuable, present and relevant in today’s culture.
Our model breaks down the key elements to brand success, specifically crafting each before creating an integrated system that ties them together makes classic brands.
Why Classic Brands Matter
Classic Brands Don't Just Exist.
All successful brands are a tool for association – fostering mental and physical availability to the right moments, triggers and needs.
Brands become classics by interacting with the world around them to make stronger, wider associations.
Our Brand Creation Model
Classic Brands Are Interfaces.
Your brand touches everything you do and make – from your customers to investors, products, experiences and employees. It is the interface for everything internal to the wider world.
We build brands using a model which considers internal and external tensions, putting a brand position at the heart of considering your internal value with external needs & opportunities and powering interaction.
The Components of Our Model
The Elements of a Classic Brand
We use eight different inputs to build brands, spanning from internal alignment to external identity and behavior. Each is connected to the others, creating a system where a brand position sits at the center of these different forces.
Challenge + Vision / Mission
A Brand Begins With a Story About What It Solves
A brand is rooted in a challenge, which creates growth and value from solving it. It tells a compelling story about solving this challenge to inspire and engage others.
We identify tensions in the wider world that we can help address – turning these into a vision (long term impact of the solution) and mission (short term daily steps to solve it).
Output: Vision / Mission Statements
Allies + Growth Audiences
A Brand Begins With a Story About What It Solves
Brands don’t exist in a vacuum, they become classics in the minds, culture and world of customers.
They consider who to help and who can help them as advocates or cultural allies. They think about who will oppose their growth and how to turn the opposition into an advantage.
We identify the commercial and influential value of different audiences, mapping them to prioritize who we build the brand around.
Output: Growth Audiences
Product / Service + Value Proposition
A Brand Creates a Unique Functional and Emotional Value
A brand’s many different products or services need to be sharpened down to a specific features and key benefits it provides. These need to be considered as providing both functional and emotional value.
Output: Value Proposition
Opposition + Expansion Audiences
A Brand Can Grow Through Opposition
Not everyone will buy or even like your brand, but these groups are still an opportunity to consider for expansion. Those who passively reject a brand can be future acquisition targets. Those who actively reject a brand can serve as a cultural foil to increase brand presence or reinforce brand meaning.
Output: Expansion Audiences
Competition + Point of Divergence
A Brand Is Distinctively Valuable
A brand has to be distinct (not necessarily different) from its competitors to succeed. To find a point of divergence, we consider the different markets a brand competes in and the functional and emotional value competitors in these markets provide. These are clustered to provide one or more ‘market conventions’ that we diverge from.
Output: Point of Divergence
Platform + Comms Barriers
A Brand’s Position Can Be Sharpened
While a brand’s positioning statement guides everything it does, it may not be the sharpest articulation for external audiences. To ensure that a position has internal and external value, we also create an external facing brand platform. The platform is created by considering what communications barriers exist in driving external engagement with the brand.
Output: Brand Platform
Identity + Key Assets
A Brand’s Identity Is A Vessel for Meaning
While the composition of an identity changes with each brand, every element needs to focus on communicating or reinforcing a part of the brand. From names to additional phrases, art direction, typography, motion, iconography and more – each needs to have a defined role.
The most important of these become ‘key assets’ we ensure are established and associated with the brand.
Output: Key Assets
Behavior + Principles
How a Brand Behaves Says As Much As Its Message
A set of principles serves as the criteria for everything a brand does – reflecting the strategy & position. From tone of voice and media placement, to UX, employee engagement and even innovation – a brand’s principles should have a role in guiding its overall actions.
Each principle should have a valid alternative and be intentionally chosen to impact specific areas of a brand’s behavior.
Output: Principles
How We Work TOgether
Different Ways to Collaborate
Depending on your resource, business type and scale, we offer several different ways to work together to create a classic brand strategy.
We offer fully led brand development, workshops and self-guided development (only for non-profits and charities).
Get In Touch
Let's Talk About Your Brand.
Our brand planning approach can adapt to each unique brief and business.
Send us a message below or at hello@newclassic.agency. We’ll quickly reach out and arrange time for an initial discussion.