Brand strategy isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution for every business challenge.
Not every problem requires a deep strategy overhaul and the answer agencies provide can’t be to just go back to the foundation every time. Sometimes, execution, creativity, or tactical adjustments are more critical than re-examining the strategy.
Many of the clients we work with here at Hyperquake already have a strong brand strategy in place and don’t need another round of discovery or analysis. What they need is effective implementation, creative activation, or a go-to-market campaign and channel strategy.
But more to the point, the savvy marketing leader and brand manager is growing increasingly uninterested in the agency’s take on their strategy – especially when speed to market has never felt more important.
Strategy as a precursor to the proposed work.
As seasoned strategists, it is on us to internalize client requests and begin diagnosing the challenges we’re solving for immediately. We do that through a series of strategic questions.
What emerges is a clearer understanding of the challenge and nuances (or recalibrating of the request) needed to implement with success. That leads to an unimpeded pathway with fewer diversions, which affords the work to happen faster.
We don’t want to take a proposal and then run off to do the strategy work (although sometimes that is part of the request). We must be intentional to reveal our strategic acumen through smart questioning and diagnostic work up front, helping clarify the challenge and articulate proposed solutions.
Our intent is to have clients experience that a-ha moment of clarity even before they sign a contract. They shouldn’t have to wonder and wait for it to arrive months later. We want clients to have confidence about how the challenge gets solved, and who the right partner is to make it happen, as soon as possible.
Strategy is all about choices. We seek to help diagnose the challenge and identify the choices we need to make in order to move a client's business forward.
I should point out that my colleague Mike Fox penned a thoughtful piece about the Power of Strategy Over Tactics. His insights provide sound strategic sense for brands and companies. There is no doubt that brand strategies do benefit from outside eyes and the necessary recalibration of the story it intends to share. That work affords a myriad of tactics that emerge to amplify the accurate story.
At face value this might appear contradictory – an abandonment of strategy as clients say they want implementation – but it’s not.
Our job as strategists is to ask, listen, uncover, interpret, clarify the client, and ask more questions as necessary before we implement.
It doesn’t have to look like traditional discovery processes, and it should move significantly faster when a strong strategy is in place.
When strategy reveals itself matters: We’re being intentionally strategic before the contract is signed. We’re showing great value early. To us, it’s a risk worth taking. It is the character of our own brand in action.
Also, what gets revealed matters: Either a strong strategy exists, or it doesn’t. If it doesn’t, it will require more conversation about the work that needs to be done, and those are valuable conversations for everyone involved.
Asking the strategic questions earlier determines the actual work.
Here are a few questions we’re asking those who are curious about our capabilities to grow their brand value. They are intended to unlock what’s truly needed and where our expertise is warranted especially when RFPs and briefs fail to get specific, invite ambiguity, and ultimately solicit agency processes as usual:
- Do you need executional help or problem-solving help?
- What challenge are you trying to solve?
- What makes you different from your competition?
- If you increased the price of your product or service, why would your customers happily pay it to stay with you?
- What does success look like? What must the outcomes be on the other side of this work?
The questions we ask are unique for every client, but if they can't answer these fundamental questions with a consistent answer among their team, they likely have a strategy problem. If we look at their external brand presence and fail to detect their difference, or that customer relationship, they could have a strategy or an execution problem—but even in bad execution, if it's devoid of their core difference or what they claim to be important in their customer relationships, it's likely they have a strategic alignment issue.
In our experience, clients are quick to recognize good questions, attentive listeners, and a commitment to sound strategies – including the ones that existed before we became a partner. Building trust early reveals a willingness to course-correct as they witness and experience the value of our offering.
Brand discovery and deeper dives are not going away. At the same time, brands don’t have time or money to spin their wheels. Clients need our best knowledge and discernment coupled with our expertise in implementing the work successfully. That’s the value we commit to bring.
It behooves us to acknowledge that not everything needs a strategy, especially as clients too often see the discovery aspects of brand strategy as redundant. The irony is that as we do acknowledge this shift, it affords us to be more strategic on behalf of our clients.
