What research should we run before approving this brand brief?

Brand brief validation starts by checking whether the stated challenge is the real challenge. An inherited brief can reflect internal priorities, established beliefs or a particularly loud group of stakeholders, rather than the issue that needs solving. Begin with open questions about the business context, the forces shaping the situation and the assumptions behind the proposed response.

Then define the problem more precisely and design research around it. Internal stakeholder interviews should cover people at different levels, functions and locations, not only leadership. Ask where they see opportunity and challenge, what they believe customers need, what the brand is known for and where views diverge. Contradictory accounts are useful. They can reveal whether a perceived brand problem is actually rooted in employee experience, market change or an untested internal story.

Audience research should uncover how people make decisions, what they need to know and where they look for answers, rather than relying on a fixed persona built around a title. In complex B2B buying groups, useful customer intelligence covers the individual pressures, business challenges and information sources that shape audience relevance.

Speak with customers, subject-matter experts and employees who understand customer pain points. Explore what keeps audiences up at night, the requirements they are trying to meet and the language they use to describe the problem. Use the findings to create profiles that reflect real needs and contexts. Research can also examine the nuanced queries audiences are asking, helping a brief define the content and message-market fit needed to answer them clearly.

A credible brand brief needs an outside-in check, because internal alignment alone cannot confirm market relevance. Compare the organisation's capabilities with audience needs, competitive offers, market opportunities and threats. Then look beyond the immediate category at wider social, cultural and environmental forces that could make messaging feel out of touch.

Combine qualitative interviews with social listening or other market signals to see whether internal beliefs match the real-world conversation. Do not treat every finding as confirmation of the original brief. The useful outcome may be a reframed problem, a narrower audience priority or a different strategic direction. Share the findings before approval, agree what they mean and turn the agreed insight into a creative brief with clear choices behind it.

We believe a brand brief should be a tested point of view, not a polished record of internal assumptions. That means starting with the context, listening carefully and staying open to the possibility that the original problem has been framed too narrowly. We begin every project with research, speaking to employees across levels and locations before sharing insight and agreeing direction. Our work for a maritime engineering firm showed why: interviews uncovered a negative employee perception that was being shaped by competitive propaganda, changing the strategic response. For Yokogawa, listening to people across the business helped shape a brand centred on its people, The Precision Makers. We look for the story beneath the first story.