Someone on Twitter or LinkedIn posted the question, “What are your favorite brand strategy frameworks?”  My answer was “It should be your own.”  In a perfect world, there should only be one framework.  But the world isn’t perfect. The fact that there are scads of frameworks shows why brand strategy is stuck in the mud.

I’m not going to explain my framework, though I can in one sentence.  It’s that simple.  But whatever you do don’t Google brand strategy framework.  A while ago I asked Kevin Perlmutter, a friend and one-time employee of Interbrand, who now runs brand strategy firm Limbic Brand Evolution, what the Interbrand strategy framework was.  A bit befuddled he suggested we Google “Interbrand Brand Strategy.”  Here was the result:

All these and pages more, from one company. A company at the top of the strategy pecking order.

Brand strategy as art may have multiple frameworks and approaches. Just as art does.  But brand strategy as science should have one framework. A replicable means of organizing product, experience and messaging. My company’s name is “What’s The Idea?”  In brand strategy there can only be one brand idea or claim.  It’s not What Are The ideas? It’s one idea.

Oh and one framework.

Peace.