Here’s a game. I’ll think of three numbers.
The first number is between one and six. So is the second number. The third number is between one and nine.
You have to guess those three numbers, in order. Every time you guess a number wrong, we’ll cross it off, so you know it isn’t that one. We’ll keep going until you land on the right three numbers, in order.
Sounds pretty dull. But throw in a dice and some storytelling about a murder, a list of suspects, a weapon and various rooms in a stately home, and you have a wildly popular board game that’s endured and entertained for over 80 years.
Good storytelling elevates the mundane. This isn’t new news, nor will it ever be old news.
So I can’t help rolling my eyes when I see yet another industry article earnestly asking, “Is Brand Strategy dead?” – see also: broken, outdated, irrelevant, or in one particularly harsh case, bullshit.
This narrative has taken off recently in the wake of WARC’s The Future of Strategy 2025 report.
It’s important to note that for their report, they use a broad brushstroke definition of “agency-strategy: encompassing the creative, digital and media industries, thereby combining brand, advertising, marketing, PR, social, influencer, and all the rest. This should be the first red flag.
But it’s still done a job in seemingly lending a semblance of credibility to a swathe of LinkedIn doom-mongers.
There are apparently numerous contributing forces, including:
The inevitable AI and automation.
Those pesky consumers and their ever-evolving expectations.
The fragmentation of media and attention
Next-gen talent’s tendency to challenge legacy models and eschew rigour in favour of fluidity.
The rise of community-led and participatory branding.
The shift from brand purpose to brand proof.
The blurring of brand and product experience.
It’s heady stuff.
But while all those factors are worthy of our attention – and are influencing the branding landscape – none of them mean stories are any less appealing to us as human beings, or that stories don’t influence how we feel about things, people and places.
And that’s what brand strategy should do. Whether those stories are told through brand architecture, purpose definition, brand positioning, verbal and visual identity or brand experience, they should all enhance the psychological value we attach to a product or service through effective storytelling.
WARC’s general theme is that clients still want and need strategy, but it’s at a crossroads. It needs to be more solution-led, less bland and more brilliant, with fewer frameworks and more lateral leaps.
“47% of strategists say fear of risk, leading to bland work, is the biggest threat to the discipline”, WARC advises.
“Strategists can deliver transformative strategy by challenging the status quo and looking beyond the obvious.”
Uh-huh.
“Look to break category norms and find the brand’s asymmetric advantage. Simplify the chaos for clients.”
Ok.
“Agencies need to encourage more imaginative and disruptive thinking.”
Sure. I’ve never used the phrase ‘Twas ever thus,’ but I’m tempted.
So let’s be grown-up about this. Brand strategy isn’t dead, broken or irrelevant. An easy way to tell, is that those suggesting it is…are strategists. And their proposed solution is brand strategy. Just, ironically, rebranded.
Brand strategy isn’t some archaic, old-world concept that’s being somehow “overthrown” by tech-enabled, enlightened revolutionaries.
How we identify audiences, conceive ideas, construct themes, how we craft and execute them in a way that resonates, has always been influenced by what’s around us.
It’s always been about keeping pace with culture and technology. Brand strategy isn’t a relic of a slower, more predictable era – it’s ever evolving.
Technological and cultural evolutions may be the pages turning, but this isn’t a plotline of old vs new, or big vs small, or institutions vs independents.
It’s simpler than that. It’s good vs bad.
There’s always been good and bad examples of brand strategy and always will be. Those that attract attention, those that don’t. Those that compel people, those that get ignored. Those that endure, those that fade.
The most iconic brands owe their success not to tools, but to an understanding of the human beings they engage with.
Because good brand strategy has rarely been about tools, and almost always about taste. The ability to discern the right story for the right people at the right time.
Brand strategy isn’t dead, bludgeoned with a candlestick in the kitchen by Colonel Mustard. It just needs to be good to survive. So ignore the clickbait. There are better stories out there.
Sam Hollis is head of strategy at FutureBrand.