The Iconic Brand Blueprint

Hey there,

Welcome back to the 24th edition of Brandish, your guide to crafting an iconic brand.

In this week’s newsletter, I want to talk about brand strategy, story, and positioning.

Why?

Because, although it's incredibly important, most brands often don't think enough about it or lack a real process for figuring out what their brand stands for.

So, without further ado,

Kick up your feet,

Grab your Brez

And let’s dive into it

Why You Need a North Star and Guiding Principles

First things first, when building your brand, determine your North Star. What are your brand's goals?

Who are you trying to serve, and what impact do you want to have on your customers' lives?

Most founders figure this out by tackling an existing problem in a better way or addressing a completely new problem.

Either approach works, but knowing your north star goal is crucial. Some people also call this their mission statement.

Secondly, determine your guiding principles.

Think of it this way: The mission statement or North Star is your destination. The principles are the collective behaviors that will get you there, guiding every interaction with every stakeholder in the company.

They guide how your team serves customers, how your executives serve investors, and how your organization thinks and operates in general.

Why This Is Critically Important

As your company grows, you, as the founder, will no longer be close to every task or stakeholder interaction.

You simply can't.

Therefore, the only thing you can do is build the right team, set their direction, and then coach them on how to improve at their job and make your life easier. But to do so, you need a lot of clarity regarding

A)Where you are going,

B) What your brand stands for,

And C) how you are serving every stakeholder.

Crafting Your Brand Story

Crafting a strong brand story is one of the most important things you can do for your business, full stop.

Here are some questions to ask yourself to develop a strong story:

• Who is the “common enemy” you are trying to go against?

  • For example, this might be a popular but inefficient solution that most people in the market use.

• Brand Personality and Voice:

  • If your brand were a person, how would you describe its personality?

  • What tone and voice do you use in your communications, and why?

• Community and Culture:

  • How does your brand contribute to or interact with the community?

  • What kind of culture do you want to build around your brand?

• What transformation do you want your customers to experience when they use/consume your product?

• What inspired the creation of the brand?

  • … and how can you tie that back into your customers' world, creating a story they can resonate with?

These are the 80/20 of the questions you need to ask yourself to come up with a strong brand story.

The Value Proposition

How are we adding value to our customers' lives? How are we making an impact?

How is your brand different from everybody else's? How are you serving customers?

This also ties back to guiding principles.

To give you an example, there’s a brand called Little Words Project by Adriana Carrig.

This brand has one of the most easy-to-copy products in the world, yet it has grown sustainably over the last 10 years.

Why?

Because their value proposition is not the product, the materials used to create it, or how fast they can ship it.

Instead, their value proposition is kindness, support, and community. They sell an emotion of kindness.

They sell an emotion of empowerment.

And they sell a community filled with both. That's their value proposition - and that's why nobody can copy them.

It’s easy to copy products. It’s very hard to copy emotions.

The Face of The Brand

Who will be the face of the brand?

An influencer? The founders?

An employee?

Maybe even some characters, like we’ve done with Paw Rangers?

Each option has its pros and cons.

But the most important thing is figuring out who or what will communicate with your customers and how they can easily identify your brand through a familiar face or character.

Thanks for reading along.

That’s all for today’s newsletter. If you enjoyed it, feel free to reply to this email. If you didn’t, also feel free to reply with your feedback.

In any case, I look forward to serving you again on Sunday.

All the best,

Ankit