Brand Strategy Checklist 2: Mental Strength for Purpose-driven Brands

January 10, 2018 | a toolkit by David Lemley

In segment one of our brand strategy checklist, we explored the external forces shaping your brand. In part two, we examine the areas of your brand strategy driven by the psychology of your management team.

It has been said that the success, challenges, and struggles of any business are the direct result of the psychology of the leadership. This is where brand strategy expands the domain of marketing. It’s where the perception of marketing changes. It goes from being viewed as a mechanism for the organization to always be reaching outside itself for answers and ultimately customers and sales to begin to influence organizational development at the roots of the business. We believe this is one of the most overlooked areas of brand strategy.

In order for brand strategy to become a powerful driving force for your organization, you need to get out of your own head. This means that you and your team need language to describe the real and (hopefully) dramatic differences between your brand and your competitive set. Then, it is up to leadership to understand and evangelize the way your organization’s self-talk, behavior, and vocabulary shapes your employees’ and customers’ experiences.

We will look at:

  • The 12 questions you need to ask yourself to build a mentally strong, purpose-driven brand.
  • How and why to conduct a cultural assessment.
  • The importance of brand positioning.
  • Tips and tricks on how to meaningfully separate yourself from the competition.
  • How each of these components affects your brand’s known and unknown gaps.

Cultural Assessment

What is it?
A cultural assessment is a look at the driving forces within the company to understand historical preferences, passions and quirks, social, economic and marketplace bias, strategic assumptions, and marketplace performance.

The “Retail Voodoo Way:”
We believe that the fish stinks from the head down. If there is a cultural problem, it’s almost certain to be a leadership problem. We conduct a cultural assessment as part of a key stakeholder survey. One of the outcomes is overall company appetite for change.

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David Lemley

David was two decades into a design career with a wall full of shiny awards and a portfolio of clients including Nordstrom, Starbucks, Nintendo, and REI. His rocket trajectory veered when his oldest child faced a health challenge of indeterminate origin. Hundreds of research hours later, David identified food allergy as the issue and convinced skeptical medical professionals caring for his child. Since that experience, David and Retail Voodoo have been on a mission to create a cleaner, healthier, more sustainable food system for all.

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