BRAND STRATEGY? WHAT THE HELL.

Understanding the lay of the land before you go into battle

Brand stratgey is a phrase that gets thrown around a lot, often without anyone really stopping to explain what it actually means. For many business owners it feels vague. A bit corporate, a bit theoretical, something that sounds important, but is hard to picture or apply in the real world let alone understand why you would bother.

It's often talked about in frameworks, diagrams and jargon, which makes it feel distant from the day-to-day reality of running a business. When you’re busy delivering work, managing people and keeping things moving, it’s not always obvious where strategy fits in.

So I’ve been thinking about how to explain it in simpler terms.

The clearest way I’ve found is this:

Brand strategy is about understanding the lay of the land before you step onto the battlefield.

Where most businesses get it the wrong way round

What I see time and time again is businesses jumping straight into activity.

• A new website

• A refreshed logo

• Let's use more blue and make our logo bigger

• Social posts on every channel

• A campaign here

• A brochure there

All very exciting tactics. And none of them wrong in isolation but the problem is that they often come before any real thinking has taken place. There’s energy, momentum and a genuine desire to grow, but very little clarity around why these things are being done or what they’re meant to achieve.

It’s action before direction. It's setting off on an adventure without a map & compass.

Brand strategy is the moment you pause before charging forward. It’s where you stop, look around and properly assess what you’re walking into.

Understanding the terrain

Before any battle, you’d want to understand the landscape.

In business, that means asking some uncomfortable but necessary questions.

• Who are you actually up against?

• What does the market really look like?

• Where are the pressures coming from?

• What do customers genuinely care about?

But it also means turning inward.

• Who are you as a business?

• What do you believe in?

• Where do you truly excel?

• And where do you have a genuine advantage that others can’t easily replicate?

This is the terrain. Without understanding it, it’s very easy to fight battles that were never yours to win. To chase work that isn’t right. To copy competitors who are playing a completely different game and even worse, to pour money into marketing that never quite lands.

Strategy brings context before commitment.

Choosing the right weapons

Once you understand the land you’re operating in, you can start making better choices about how you show up. This is where brand strategy often gets confused with design, but they’re not the same thing. Your visuals, the nice designed bit if you like, is just one tool.

Strategy is deciding what tools you actually need.

• Your visual signals or codes

• Your messaging

• Your positioning

• Your tone of voice

These are your weapons, not in a dramatic sense, but in a practical one. They should suit the fight you’re in, not simply mirror what everyone else is doing.

Doing what your competitors do, but slightly better, rarely creates distinction.

More often it just creates noise.

Strategy helps you decide what not to use, as much as what to lean into.

The people and the reality check

Then there’s the human side.

• What skills already exist within the business?

• What gaps need support?

• What level of activity is actually sustainable?

There’s no point building a strategy that only works on paper. It must be lived and breathed. I must be your guiding light.

The map and the compass

This is why I often describe brand strategy as the map.

It doesn’t do the work for you, but it shows you where you’re going. It gives you direction when decisions need to be made and confidence when opportunities appear.

And once you have that map, you don’t need to constantly reinvent your approach. You simply keep checking the compass to make sure you’re still heading the right way.

That compass might be your values, your positioning or your long-term ambition, but it gives consistency to your choices.

Why strategy matters

Brand strategy isn’t about making things look good.

It’s about making decisions clearer.

It helps you move from reacting to choosing.

From scattered activity to intentional action.

From doing more, to doing what matters.

It won’t win the battle for you.

But it gives you a fighting chance to win the right one.

No matter where you are in your journey, reach out. Let's chat over coffee about how Sprout Creative can help you achieve your goals and ditch the dull!