Brand Strategy

The following is an overview of the top secret formula that Noel Fox, FreeBird Agency founder, created while developing the brand platform for a small 2nd floor retail store called lululemon. At a time when no one knew what yoga was, Chip Wilson presented Noel with his goal of making the small start-up lululemon, as big as Nike. Only ten years later lululemon is now an international brand worth $3.2 billion and is currently second only to Nike when it comes to making women’s fitness apparel–not too bad.

We’re betting you’ve heard of yoga now too.

At FreeBird Agency we start by understanding who you are and what your short and long term goals are. The way we see it, a well planned Brand Strategy is your company’s roadmap to success.

It’s a lot like going on a road trip. Before you go you look at a map and figure out the best way to get to get to where you want to go. You also prepare for the road ahead making sure that you are well equipped and have what it takes to get you to where you want to go.

Understanding where you want your brand to go and planing how you are going to get there is the secret to success.

Defining your brand

When developing a Brand Strategy we focus on the clearly defining the following four main areas:

ESSENCE

Define the heart and soul of your brand. It’s usually only about two to five words and they hold true across all categories.

POSITION

The image or identity that we want to create in the minds of our target market for our product, brand and organization.

CULTURE

Clearly define what the brand does and doesn’t stand for.

PERSONALITY

Establish the visual tone of voice for all marketing materials.

Book a brand strategy meeting »

FreeBird Agency met with with us here in Austin, Texas and lead us through two days of brand strategy workshops. Looking back it was a pretty intense, yet an enjoyable series of conversations.

Mike Wyrzykowski CEO | DealerVu, BlackPurl, The Super Co.

Brand Planning

In the brand planing stage we create a road map for how all of your marketing materials are going to work together to help you achieve your marketing goals. We work with you and your budgets in planning out how to best roll out your marketing plan in a series of stages. Ever marketing effort needs to have a clear purpose and should either drive sales, or build brand. With all of the new media available online there has never been an easier time to reach so many potential qualified customers. It’s very important that you have a manageable plan in place and that you know the purpose of each touch point. Is the purpose of your social media channels to drive traffic to your website, or is to create conversations that generate traffic directly to your business?

We work with you every step of the way establishing which social media channels are best suited for your individual needs, planing how to get the biggest bang for your advertising dollars in both the traditional and new media spaces, connecting you with PR and Bloggers to move your brand forward and connecting you with your customers both locally and globally.

Mood Boards

Now that we have spent 20% of our time up front getting to fully understand who you are and where you want to go it’s time to get the creative juices flowing and have some fun!

We start the creative process off by creating a Mood Board which established the visual tone of voice for your brand. The board is a carefully chosen selection of images, graphics, type fonts, colours, other visual ideas and words that best represent your future brand. By understanding the creative vision of the brand before we jump into the actual creative stages, we are able to jump straight into the heart of your particular needs. This saves time and ensures that all of our creative exploration is focused on what we already know works for your brand.

Creative

Creative now flows easily and on-brand because we know who you are, where you need to go and in the Mood Board we have established the visual tone of voice for your brand. We start by creating a overall brand look and feel with it’s own unique tone of voice and from there we carry the brand through all of it’s many touch points.

We feel that it’s important that your brand stay consistent regardless of it being in print, online, video, the press and wherever else it may live.

Having a cohesive plan for your brand, understanding how each and every touch point is communicating with all of the parts, and then clearly communicating that so that it drives sales and builds brand is the key to your success.