A bit about us.
Many moons ago, over a cheeky pint or two, a young Sun Tzu reeled off a piece of wisdom that has helped to shape The Brand Directive;
“Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.”
While Sun may have been making a point on military strategy (from all reports he had a tendency to double down on this topic), we love its applicability in helping brands to find their competitive edge - in a non-violent way.
With this in mind, our approach is focused on the marriage of strategy and tactics; to help brands bring their big ideas to life, without putting the cart before the horse.
How we can help.
Whether you're after a full brand refresh, some tinkering behind the scenes, or if your brand just needs a little shake up, our expertise lies in building brand growth from the inside out.
In short, The Brand Directive is here to 1) help clarify what "on brand" looks like for you, and to 2) make it easier to stay "on brand".
We do this by creating tools and resources that are genuinely useful on a day-to-day basis; so you're not left with a 100-page brand dossier that ends up as a makeshift laptop stand for Kevin in accounts (ergonomically excellent, but there are more efficient options).
Brand Strategy
Brand Activation
Who you are, why you exist, where you sit in the market and your brand personality.
How to bring your strategy to life and maximise the impact of your communications.
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Insight gathering & analysis Why? To help to uncover any gaps between how your brand is seen internally, how your customers see your brand and how you want your brand to be seen. |
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Market landscaping Why? To deep-dive on the state of the market, the competitive landscape, the market dynamics, emerging trends and your brand's secret sauce. |
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Segmentation & targeting Why? To map out the segments that make up the market, to work through the potential of each of these segments and to decide which to go after/which to ignore. |
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Target segment profiling Why? To get under the skin of the chosen target segment(s) to clarify who they are, what makes them tick and how to find them. |
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Brand purpose & values Why? To clearly articulate why your brand exists (beyond making money), and to devise a set of values that will help to guide the behaviours, standards and decision-making internally; aligning your culture with your brand purpose. |
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Brand architecture Why? To establish a logical structure for you to efficiently and effectively organise your brands, sub-brands, products and offerings. |
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Brand positioning Why? To develop a clear understanding of the intended brand image; what and how you want people to think and feel about the brand. |
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Brand personality & voice Why? To create a distinctive and consistent brand personality and tone-of-voice that will best bring to life the positioning. |
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Brand messaging hierarchies Why? To build a suite of externally facing key messages (organised in order of importance), taking on the brand personality and tone of voice. |
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Internal comms planning Why? To build a multi-channel communications plan to drive brand love from the inside out; embedding your purpose, values and strategy internally. |
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External comms planning Why? To build a multi-channel communications plan that clearly and consistently keeps your brand front of mind - aimed at driving both awareness and consideration, this would incorporate both BAU communications and seasonal campaigns to capitalise on key moments in time. |
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Content creation Why? To help lighten the load on your team in creating some of the content in your internal and external marketing plans. |
Andrew
Mitchell
Hi, I'm Andrew, founder of The Brand Directive.
In short, this venture was founded to make strategic brand guidance accessible to businesses of all shapes and sizes, by offering brand help that's free from the typical agency fluff.
Our collective experience spans over 25 years, working both agency and client-side across a range of industries including hospitality, retail food and beverage, travel, fashion, telecommunications, professional services, construction and real estate.
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