Expectation #1: Jargon and more jargon

A brand strategy presentation may be filled with terminology obscure enough to remind you of flipping through the real What to Expect to learn what Kegel exercises and Braxton-Hicks contractions are all about.

It’s no secret that both the clinical and branding worlds share a bit of a vernacular problem. Strategists will readily speak of brand pillars and promises without explanation, then go straight into how this lingo facilitates a cohesive brand framework, a dynamic yet systematic brand architecture, and ultimately, comprehensive brand success! 

Thing is, if you don’t understand what these terms mean and how they work, there’s little chance that they will work at all. Whether it’s your first strategy presentation or you have a growing family of brands, confusion can strike at any time. Luckily, it’s perfectly normal and completely solvable.  

What to do about it: 

Hold your agency accountable to speak in a language that you and your fellow stakeholders understand. If they throw out little-known terms and thereupon build an entire strategy upon them, challenge them early on to clarify and pair insider terminology with simple explanations. Your agency should be able to clearly articulate what constitutes brand strategy, and even have this on repeat at the top of every presentation. This is for your benefit, of course, but some strategists may confess it helps them keep it all straight, too.

Moreover, don’t be afraid to be the one person in the meeting who asks for clarification. If you’re unclear on something, chances are others will be too. And even if you’re already well-versed in the branding tongue, hearing an explanation can help when you have to explain it to someone else. Clarity at the outset will only help the brand strategy grow throughout your company. 

Expectation #2: Multiple, complex components

Just like jargon, brand strategy presentations can contain enough figures and diagrams to give you flashbacks of assembling that crib from IKEA: brand pillars 7-10 fit into positioning columns A-E, which becomes the framework that supports the operational guardrails for market growth (see Fig. A3).  

Be it a pyramid, benefits ladder or golden circle, brand strategists love using frameworks to illustrate the different parts of strategy. And they can be useful in showing the distinct purpose of each element: a brand position is not a mission statement, nor is it a vision or values—each one has a specific role and they work together as a whole. But clients can sometimes expect each part to do and say more than it should. Knowing every nuance and facet of a brand, a client may expect all those facets to be represented in every strategic element put forth.

The point of strategy, however, is to distill brand elements into distinct units and apply them all in a framework that provides a solid foundation for moving forward. Each piece will have a singular function, and when it all fits together correctly and is screwed in tight, you have a structure built to last. 

What to do about it: 

Step back to see the big picture and how it works together. If any one element seems lacking, clarify its usage: who it’s for, what it does, and perhaps more importantly, what it doesn’t do: “Should my brand purpose statement identify an audience? How many brand pillars are too many brand pillars? Can the brand’s essence vary by customer type?”

Your strategy team will have fielded questions like these before. So along with definitions of terms, feel free to put the framework and its individual elements to the test. With a clear understanding of what the individual parts do and don’t do, and how it all works together as a whole, you’ll be free to focus on the actual content. 

Expectation #4: Seemingly off-topic discussion about emotions

“Brand strategy” may seem like a rigid, cut-and-dry endeavor based strictly on intellectual rigor, but there’s a softer side—one that taps into human feelings and motivations. That’s because consumers often make decisions based on emotion, and brand strategy must account for the emotional factors that contribute toward moving your target audience to a desired action or enduring relationship. 

This means strategists may ask you to embrace spirited ideas of safety, belonging, or pride in accomplishment—things that may seem completely irrelevant to, say, selling chemical reagents to lab scientists. Odd as it may seem, those strategists are seeking a foundation for the brand that builds relevance and can move it forward in the long term, as opposed to solely addressing current market conditions or immediate sales goals.

What to do about it: 

Feel free to infuse some tangible into the intangible. If a presentation begins to veer too deeply into “the feels” for you, ask questions that insert your interests into the conversation. For example, if your strategists are suggesting your brand rally around a feeling and you’re more concerned with beating your competition, try asking, “How does this compare with the feelings owned by our competitors? What brands outside my industry are doing something similar?” Or, “What would my company start or stop doing based on owning this feeling?”

Also remember there is a time and place for promoting the finer points of a product, communicating functional benefits or combating the claims of competitors. Product claims and promotion fall back into that realm of advertising and external messaging, but your brand’s foundational strategy goes much deeper than that—it’s highly introspective and internal, the fundamentals that underpin it all. 

Expectation #5: Losing sight of why it all matters

So you’ve translated the jargon, grasped the frameworks, looked deeper than the words and embraced the softer side of branding. But it’s all come at a cost, and now you’re as frazzled as a parent up all night tending to the cries of quintuplets. 

Just like a new baby can upend a household, a new brand strategy can raise questions about what a company even does in the first place. And just like new parents can be always on edge, stakeholders facing a new strategy can find friction over the tiniest of things. What was intended to give clarity seems to have brought confusion, and perspectives once considered universal now seem at odds. If you find yourself asking, “What are we trying to accomplish here again?” then you may be asking the right question.

What to do about it: 

Take some notes, take a break and don’t just “get through it.” This last point may be the most important relation of a baby to brand strategy: It. Can. Be. Messy.

Welcoming a new strategy is a massive event that transforms life and, yes, things may seem in disarray for a little while. It doesn’t help that diverse opinions will be voiced, not only on the strategy itself, but how it’s being handled, and some opinions may come from stakeholders who really shouldn’t have a voice in the subject matter, but somehow do. (Glad you came to visit, Uncle Frank, but how long are you staying?) 

If evaluating your brand strategy gets to be too much, too opinionated or too obscure, clients may be tempted to force final decisions by the meeting’s end, or just move on and have the agency sort it out while shifting attention elsewhere: “So when do we see logo concepts?”

Instead, ask your agency to recap the main objectives, encourage your team to jot down some thoughts based on those objectives, and let everyone be with the new material for a while. It’s perfectly okay—and generally advisable—to let things sit for a day or two before determining what works and what doesn’t. Your brand strategy will be with you for a long time, no need to start perfecting your relationship in the first few minutes.