Defining what a brand stands for

Your brand brief should define the business problem, the audience insight and the strategic direction, rather than start with a requested creative output.

Use research that resolves a genuine uncertainty about your business, market or audience, with methods and depth determined by the brand decision you need to make.

Employee interviews can reveal competing accounts of your brand and the experiences or inherited beliefs behind them.

Your brand promise should connect a demonstrated strength of the business with something your intended audiences value.

Agreement on brand purpose comes from framing a shared strategic question, testing possible directions and confronting the business choices each purpose would require.

Your brand's tone of voice should express qualities your business can substantiate, using language that remains recognisable across different kinds of content.

Your brand's words and design should express the same strategic idea, developed as complementary parts of one identity.

Keep your brand's purpose, core themes and personality consistent, while adapting the emphasis and expression to each audience.

Your teams should get a connected foundation of positioning, narrative, language and design that guides practical communication decisions, not just a strategy document.

Reconsider a product name when research shows that the name itself confuses the people who need to understand the product.

Give your B2B brand a tagline when a short, memorable expression can capture its central idea.