Before you can create a great brand, you need to lay the groundwork. At Matchbox, we believe that the foundation of any strong brand starts with a clear and well-defined Brand Strategy. This crucial phase helps to ensure that everything you do moving forward is aligned, consistent, and purpose-driven.

What is Brand Strategy?

Your Brand Strategy is essentially the blueprint for how your brand will communicate and connect with your audience. It serves as the guide for the entire creative process and ensures that every decision we make—from design to messaging—is rooted in a solid understanding of your business, market, and audience.

Client Survey & Brand Workshop

We kick off the strategy phase by gathering insights from your team. First, we send out a Client Survey to all key stakeholders to capture a range of perspectives. This allows us to get a comprehensive view of your business goals, challenges, and vision.

Next comes the Brand Workshop, where we dig deeper into your business, your industry, your target audience, and your competitors. This hands-on session is designed to explore your brand’s essence and uncover the unique opportunities within your market. We use this workshop to get everyone on the same page and start building the foundation for the strategy that follows.

Crafting the Brand Strategy & Platform

With the insights gained from the workshop, we then develop a full Brand Strategy document. This document includes:

• Audience Personas to help us understand who we’re speaking to
• A Competitor Audit to identify how you can stand out in your market
• A Brand Platform that establishes your brand’s DNA, personality, and positioning statement

The Brand Platform is a crucial tool throughout the branding process. It acts as a reference point that keeps us aligned, ensuring that every creative decision we make reflects your brand’s core identity. It also helps to measure the success of later creative steps, putting some objective parameters around what is often a subjective process.

A Collaborative & Iterative Process

One important aspect of the Brand Strategy phase is collaboration. We want this to be a truly iterative process, where your input helps shape the final outcome. The decisions we make here will impact everything that comes next, so it’s important to push back and let us know if something isn’t resonating with you.

We’ll continue to refine the Brand Strategy until it feels just right. Once that happens, we’re ready to move on to the creative phase, starting with Mood Boards.

For more on the Mood Boards phase, check out this article.