Yesterday I wrote about shortcutting my normal brand planning rigor, as necessitated by lack of time, budget, client situation or act of God. I don’t like to do it but sometimes an organizing principle lite is better than nothing.
One of the tools I tend to do without when doing planning lite is the brief. My brand strategy brief, a borrow from the NY office of McCann Erickson, has been slightly modified over time. It’s a linear or serial document which navigates things like brand position, brand objective, target, key desire, role of the product, reason to believe, the ephemeral brand essence and brand claim. I call this a serial document because when complete, starting at the beginning, the brief tells a reasoned, logical story or path to the claim. That doesn’t mean the components always fit together right away. Sometimes they need to be burnished. Sometimes revised.
When I do brand strategy lite and overlook the logic ladder (brief), it can still work. But I kind of feel like I have a hole in my pants and no underwear on.
Peace.
