The Brand Platform is a strategic document that defines a foundation and rationale for the brand. Generally speaking, the Brand Platform becomes the standard by which every brand building activity is measured.

It consists of four essential components:

• Brand Vision
• Brand Differentiation
• Brand Promise
• Brand Personality

We express each of these components in a simple, yet very powerful sentence, or two. We also provide the criteria that helps articulate the concept in a more detailed manner.

Messaging distills the essence of the brand into a framework that includes the primary and secondary messages for each target audience. The messaging matrix includes the value proposition, the reasons to believe, and the proof points to support each message. The way we communicate with employees, partners and customers should adapt to the particular areas of interest for each audience - while at the same time the messages should support the overall brand platform. By the way, we don’t consider “messaging” to be the headlines or text used in ads or websites - instead messaging is about the ideas behind the headlines. The messaging platform is a document that should be used by agencies and writers to drive the content being communicated through the marketing materials - ensuring that we’re saying the right things to each audience

Brand Positioning defines the brand in its competitive environment and addresses the brand’s unique attributes and benefits. Working from the Brand Platform, we help clients develop brand positioning concepts and statements that focus on differentiation issues. Ultimately, positioning is about claiming a stake of the market in a way that makes it clear to our audiences why they should choose our brand over the competitive alternatives. This can be sometimes a challenging concept to achieve. However, our brand strategy team has plenty of experience assessing the issues that are relevant, credible, sustainable - and differentiated.

Often brands evolve through mergers and acquisitions. At other times, the growth is organic and product development is driven by marketplace shifts. Either way, the relationship between the master brand and the subbrands can become complex or confusing. That’s when our brand strategy team can help. We know how to evaluate and develop a framework for organizing existing and future brands. We’ve helped brands address what happens through mergers and acquisitions. And we can develop a structure that clearly establishes the relationship between company, product line, service, ingredient, and partner brands.