Can a brand be strategic or must strategy be left to the brand managers? Save for machines, inanimate things can’t do animate things. However, by recasting the What’s The Idea? tagline, to include “Brand managers come and go…a powerful brand strategy is indelible,” I offer that a brand can be strategic.
In Kansas City many moons ago while exposing ads to consumers for the launch of WorldWorx videoconferencing service, a focus group participant claimed “That’s not an AT&T ad. AT&T would never speak to me that way.” Ad dead. Brand strategy alive and well.
People are the best administers of brand strategy yet they are fallible. Only when brand strategy is truly codified and attached to a product does it begin to grow in brand value. One claim and three proofs planks is how one builds a brand strategy. It’s how a brand sustains — in deeds, actions, messaging and, even, offering itself.
If your brand cannot be articulated via this simple claim and proof array, it’s not strategic. The people are. Bad berries.
Peace.