Stephen Houraghan here at BrandMasterAcademy.com and in this video you're going to learn exactly
what a brand strategy session is and the three phases that will help you structure your sessions
but more importantly enhance your results now when it comes to developing brand strategies
and strategic brands for your clients then the brand strategy session is really really important
but before you go diving into a session without understanding what your goals are and what your
approach is it's important to know what options are available to you it's important to know what
you want to do what you want to achieve by the end of that brand strategy session and
the different ways that you can go about it so you actually have a strategy for your strategy
session so why don't we start by defining exactly what the brand strategy session is well
the session is just another word for a meeting so the brand strategy session is a meeting
between the business leaders and the strategist to uncover the critical information about the
business about the market that that business is in the industry that it's in so that the
strategist has the critical information that they need to map out a plan to build the actual brand
now the first part of this session is all about learning it's all about an opportunity for the
strategist to learn about the business to learn about its operations who is trying to appeal to
the market that it's in the competitors that it's in so that they can understand the complete
market landscape and when they do that when they understand the market landscape what competitors
are out there and what the audience wants then they can start to put together a plan to shape
the perceptions of that audience to how the brand wants to be seen how the brand wants to be seen
within that marketplace so the brand strategy session is that information gathering session
first and foremost to gather all that information to then strategize on the best approach now the
term brand strategy session means different things to different people but there is no right or wrong
way to do your brand strategy session some strategists will take a face-to-face approach
and they'll want to sit down with their clients on a face-to-face point of view in the room with the
leadership team and the c-suite while others will have a remote approach so they'll be able to break
the strategy session up into multiple different sessions and do that from anywhere in the world
through phone or video conference when it comes to your decision it really depends on the market that
you're playing in and the position that you want to take in that market do you want to be known
within your city as a go-to person for strategy so you can sit down face to face with your clients
or do you want to be able to service clients from anywhere in the world so let's take a look
at those two approaches now the first approach is also known as a brand strategy workshop now this
is the face-to-face approach so the strategist will go into the offices of the client and they'll
sit down with the leadership team and the c-suite and this can be a meeting that goes from anywhere
from two hours to three days really depends on the size of the client and the size of the potential
project as well now this approach is suitable for businesses with multiple decision makers that all
want to hand in the direction of the business and the direction of the brand but the sit-down
approach is highly collaborative so the leadership team is going to be heavily involved right
throughout from you know the discovery session right through to developing insights coming up
with ideas and strategizing on the best approach so it's really important that the strategist
in this example has the skill set to be able to chair a meeting like that to be able to hold
a presentation and a meeting over the course of anywhere up to two or three days so it's a really
collaborative environment where they all work together and that can really lead to you know
improving your client relationships and really developing rapport and that is definitely one
of the advantages of this approach being able to develop that rapport and it also throws up some
insights that don't come with a remote approach but one of the disadvantages to this approach is
having that presentation skill set it's not something that comes naturally to everybody
and it does take a certain type of personality to be able to chair a meeting like that
and if you are going to go down that road you really do need to work on those skills or
acquire those skills to be able to hold a meeting like that but another disadvantage
to this approach is the physical location you need to be there to be able to chair those meetings so
this comes back to your position in the market and the market that you're targeting do you want to be
known as the go-to person and the go-to strategist within your given city or do you want to serve
clients all over the world so if you do want to be known within your city or you want to be
physically there then you need to define what area you're going to serve now the other approach here
is the remote brand strategy session approach now obviously the difference here is that you're not
sitting down face to face with your clients rather you're holding these sessions remotely via phone
or via video conference now due to the nature of these sessions they're structured differently to
the face-to-face sessions you're not going to be sat there on a video conference with your
client for days on end and because of that it's a different style as well so it's not the same
collaborative style as the face-to-face approach you need to break up those sessions into smaller
condensed sessions that are digestible so anywhere from you know one to two hours to gather that
kind of information and to be able to then take that information and strategize on that later on
now this approach is more suited to businesses that have less decision makers involved so we're
talking smaller businesses here when compared to the workshop approach they have maybe one or two
decision makers and therefore it's much easier to be able to hold a conference like that via video
or via phone when compared to you know bigger businesses that have you know multiple c-suite
executives that want to all have their hand in their strategic approach so one of the advantages
to this approach as well is physical location you know you don't have to be there in the
office and that means that you can serve a much broader audience you can serve a much broader
market your clients can be in canada they can be in the uk or australia and you can jump on
the phone or jump on skype and be able to hold that conference with them so you can serve a
much broader market and you don't have to have the same skills that you need to with a workshop
approach you don't need to be physically there holding a meeting with multiple c-level executives
over a period of two days that takes a lot more skill to be able to hold a meeting like that
when compared to a two-hour video conference call now the major disadvantage to this approach is in
relation to relationship building and insights if you're in a room with a group of executives over
a period of two to three days there are many many opportunities to make human connections
and to build that rapport and really show your human side and you know build up that human
relationship with them and you know being in an environment like that you're able to bounce ideas
off each other all the time so a lot more insights come up so that is a disadvantage to that approach
you don't have that ability to build that rapport the way you would do in a physical environment
and you might potentially miss out on insights that would otherwise come up
now the terms discovery session brand strategy session strategy development session are all
terms that are used interchangeably but they are different so let's take a look at that
difference so what is a discovery session well put quite simply a discovery session is a game of
understanding it's about understanding as much as you possibly can about the business its operations
the market and industry that it's in who it's serving the competitors already serving that group
of people so that you can really gather as much information and be armed with as much information
as possible before you start to strategize on that information now it's really important to
have a high level of discipline here because in this environment of information gathering there
are a lot of insights and ideas that come up and if the strategist doesn't have the experience it
can be easy to go off on a side track and follow an idea or follow an insight without completing
that discovery session in full but if you cut that discovery session prematurely then the
chances of you missing some important information are really really high and if that's the case if
you do miss some important information then the brand is simply not going to be aligned it's not
going to be accurate based on the information that's available so it's really important to
follow through to the end of that discovery session to not get sidetracked with ideas and
insights and really pushed through to make sure all of that critical information is gathered
then you have your brand strategy development session now this is a game of creative brand
development and essentially what you're doing here is you're taking the information that you've
gathered within the discovery session and you're looking for insights you're looking for gaps
and opportunities within the marketplace and what you're really looking for here
is a spark and that spark will be the driver behind the entire brand development process
i'm talking your internal brand your positioning and differentiation strategy your human brand
persona your communication framework and all of the questions that get answered within this
phase include you know how we're going to position ourselves in the market what value
is that difference going to make in our audience's lives and how do we want them to see
that value what characteristics are we going to display within our personality what stories are
we going to tell how is our brand going to look all of these questions are answered within this
stage and this is where the strategic brand is built so we've separated the discovery session
and the strategic brand development session but sandwiched in between the two is another session
and that is the market research and this is the meat of the entire brand strategy session now
the business leaders that you're working for are going to have a lot of information they'll have a
lot of information about their business about the industry that they're in they might even have a
lot of information about their target audience or the competitors in their space but there will be a
lot of information that they don't have and it's your job as the strategist to go and find that
information and make sure you have everything that you need so you need to dig deep into who
that audience is and go deeper than your clients will have information on so you need to understand
their challenges and their pain points and the emotional investment they have and you
need to understand the strategy behind their competitors as well what is their position
in the marketplace and their messaging strategy as well so it's your job to really dig deep and to
gather that information and the more information that you have at your disposal the more tools
you have to strategize on the best approach i really hope you enjoyed that video and you got
something from it in the next video i'm going to run through a detailed framework that you can use
to hold a brand strategy session if you liked this video please give it a thumbs up
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i want to hand it over to you now are you holding brand strategy sessions with your
clients at the moment or is it something that you're working towards if you want to hold those
brand strategy sessions in those different phases then check out the next video but i'd love to know
what challenges you have when it comes to holding those sessions is there any difficulty that you've
come across or do you have a go-to technique that you use when holding brand strategy sessions with
your client let me know in the comments below i'll do my best to answer all of those queries
and questions until next time brand like a master and I will see you in the next video