Deal or No Deal? Choose a Briefcase and unlock your next big brand win

20 Briefcases. 20 Brand Tips. One could transform your brand.

In the last 15 years I’ve accumulated a fair share of the do’s and don't’s when it comes to developing and managing a brand to help it succeed and in turn, see greater business growth and success from that investment of time, effort and money into your brand.

Inside each of these 20 briefcases is a brand-related tip for your branding and marketing efforts that I want to share with you. No matter if you’re a business owner, brand manager, brand consultant, designer, whatever, these are for you.

Which will you pick? I mean, you could pick any of course, but to start somewhere, which will you pick? As there is a lot to read through and you can bookmark this article to come back to at any stage.

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BRIEFCASE No.1 Distinctiveness AND Differentiation as much as possible.

Yes that’s right, BOTH distinctiveness AND differentiation as much as you can. Differentiation in many industries is a hard thing to accomplish and maintain, but if there’s a competitive edge that you can effectively exploit to get customers picking your brand for reasons instead of just vibes alone, this can get you one step ahead of the competition. That is, until they catch up. Which they likely will, but then of course you keep innovating where you can.

As for distinctiveness, well, most businesses do a lacklustre job of this too. If your brand is effectively the differentiating factor between you and your competitors, then why look, sound, and be the same as the other mob (your competitors) down the road? Too many businesses fall into this category defining trap of fitting the mold of what everyone else is doing to fit in and meet the expectations of what they think will make it easier for a customer to know what they offer - like a roof logo for a real estate agency or builder. The great thing about branding is that you can be anything in a category of many, but creating a brand that appears as a category of one. In other words, do the opposite of what your competitors are doing to distinctively stand out, get attention and be easily recognisable and memorable.

BRIEFCASE No.2 Product, Placement, Price & Promotion = Marketing.

This is all marketing is and has ever been since a market stall first popped up in some ancient bazaar thousands of years ago. It’s known as the 4p’s of marketing and if anyone tries to tell you there’s actually 6 or 7 or more, they’re just making your life harder. 

The problem for most businesses is that the efforts to develop a business and get it out there to customers are often siloed into different departments, and marketing is often just seen as the promotion bit of shouting from the rooftops that your brand exists. Instead, if you bring in the insights from the marketing team(s) or person into the discussions with your sales, finance and product/business development people, well trained marketers who consider more than just the promotion side of things can help formulate an even better outcome for your brand and business. They focus on what the product offers customers and gaps in how to make that more appealing (Product). Where customers are likely to buy or where they might need it to open up more opportunities for the brand to be present (Placement). As well as what price tolerance the customer has and how to communicate that effectively over time to align with your business's financial plan and goals. 

This is what effective marketing can look like and it’s highly undervalued when it’s only seen as social media posts, ads and email newsletters. Instead, if it focuses on all aspects of how the business can get the right product in front of the right customers with a clear strategy, this might be the missing briefcase tip you’ve been seeking to help your brand win.

BRIEFCASE No.3 A brand is captivating moment of connection that bridges the gap between a consumer and a company to be known for and considered over others.

Quick confession, this is my own take on what a brand is. There are plenty of others out there. But what I often say as a way to metaphorically describe where a brand sits and how it’s used, is that your brand is the conduit, yes, like a pipe, but a nice shiny one, that connects your company and customers.

So if you think of any brand you know, there’s some connection point you have with a business and a reason you remember or choose them. Often it starts by this ‘captivating moment’ that got your attention in the first place, or perhaps a consistent experience that is often sought after time and time again. 

The point I want to stress here is that your business is not the brand, or in the case of a personal brand, you are not the brand. The brand is this removed entity in a sense, that is the connection point between you and your customer. If you treat it as such it becomes far more important to manage the experience a customer receives and they also define what the brand is to them - eg. customers calling McDonald’s ‘Maccas’ here in Australia, or ‘Mickey-D’s’ in the USA.

The goal is to set the expectations and hopefully create a shared belief with your customers. Because if they don’t also believe in it, as in, they don’t want it, they’re not interested in it. Then you don’t have a brand. But when that shared belief is there, this conduit, a captivating moment of connection between your company and customer becomes far more valuable as it can be the defining reason why they choose you over others. Which is what we call brand equity and is why the Nike logo is worth an estimated $30 billion, it’s the reason people are happy to pay more for the Nike logo on a white t-shirt than a standard white t-shirt from Target.

BRIEFCASE No.4 Brand Strategy and Marketing Strategy = same.

This one is more for the branding and marketing people in the room, but this thing we call brand strategy or marketing strategy, they’re just the same thing. Perhaps done differently in practice but it’s simply semantics at the topline level.

But whomever you are, be it a strategist or a business engaging one, both of these strategies are geared towards the same goal; how to make the brand win.  

The simplest process I’ve come across is one from the MiniMBA teacher, Mark Ritson, who has worked with many brands around the world and objectively relies on these 6 or 7 steps that help diagnose, define and execute a strategy.

Diagnosis steps:

• Review (look at what is/isnt working)

• Research (what is your data telling you, what is going on in the market, what is the need)

• Segmentation (who needs this help and in turn, who are all the people who could need/want your offer)

Strategy steps:

• Targeting (which specific customer base (or many) are you going to focus on)

• Positioning (what single thing is your target going to think of you to choose you - the best example of this is KitKat - see Briefcase No.16)

• Objectives (what is your measure of success to measure your targeting and positioning effectiveness - S.M.A.R.T objectives: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound)

Execution steps:

• Tactics (what branding and marketing efforts will you now do to achieve those objectives)

• Budget (based on your budget capacity this will dictate the tactics that can be done and in what order)

Both branding and marketing people both need this kind of strategy to direct their tactics of what they need to do. Which could be a rebrand. It could be a whole new product. It could be staying on course with what has been done in the last 12 months. Strategy is not a one and done thing either, as it should be a cyclical process of forever managing the brand to help it succeed with branding and marketing efforts. And you might be thinking, well what about Business Strategy? Align the two, so that you know what the business needs to do to succeed and the brand/marketing strategy can be informed by the business version. Again, the brand and the business are two different things, but they influence each other and work together to achieve success and help one another grow.

BRIEFCASE No.5 A brand is more than your logo.

If you take away the logo of any brand (including your own) and customers can still recognise it by other distinctive qualities, then you have a brand. So if all you rely on is a logo currently, give your brand more distinctive assets.

Think of your logo and other distinctive assets like colour, sounds, mascots, product shape, and taglines like little balls of Play-Doh (I used this as an example once in an Instagram video). Now when you compare that small ball of Play-Doh that represents your logo, and say, you put it next to the massive size ball that represents the Nike brand as a mega global brand, your brand looks tiny, yeah? Essentially Nike has a tremendous amount more surface area to be seen, discovered and thought of, right? And that’s because they have more than just a logo.

Now, if you start combining more distinctive assets together with your logo, your ball of Play-Doh becomes a much bigger ball, right? It has more surface area to be discovered, recognised and remembered. If you then start putting out those distinctive assets the more as your business grows its physical presence, the bigger your brand will appear.

So the goal is to go well beyond just a logo, for customers to connect with and experience more than just a logo. As a logo and even your brand colours are the least effective distinctive asset there is, compared to something like a mascot or brand sound that are 7-8x more effective when it comes to distinctiveness. So give your brand a shot at greater success to win with more distinctive assets than just a logo.

BRIEFCASE No.6 A ‘brand identity’ or ‘branding’ is more than just the visuals.

This is another misconception that I think can help your brand win far more when your branding goes beyond just the visual look of your brand, like your logo and colours. Because if we think of our own identities as people, we’re not just defined by how we look, right?

So we can make this separate entity to our business, a brand that has its own identity. Which means defining how it sounds, how it speaks, what it says, what its personality is, what its purpose for existing or mission its working towards is, as well as what it values that can be shared values with those it engages with.

The most undervalued part of a brand identity in my view is you can define an internal and an external identity. The external being the visual look, the sounds and the messaging. While the internal parts can directly influence the internal team culture and who you bring into your team that aligns with the brand. As it’s you and your team that act as the brand custodians, or puppeteers if you will, that use a shared collective voice, personality, purpose and values to guide the external customer experience.

This identity when it comes to branding can also extend to mascots that personify the brand’s identity or even people that act as brand ambassadors that align well in the same ways with the brand and give the brand a face to the name if you or your team are not front and centre.

BRIEFCASE No.7 You will feel brand fatigue quicker than your consumers.

This one sounds like a load of bollocks but I’ve seen too many brands seeking change when change really wasn’t needed. Especially if the belief is that the branding needs to change because you and/or your team just don’t like it. And that can be a hard pill to swallow when you are the ones having to live and breathe the brand, seeing it every day. Because you want to be proud of it and be happy wearing it.

This is why an external opinion from a brand consultant can be beneficial, as it’s often really tough to, as they say, read the label from inside the jar. So having an external assessment can help provide an objective view. Though the same goes for brands that have never sought to evolve and are stuck in the past with an overly dated brand that hasn’t caught up. Sometimes you need an outsider to come in and provide that objective assessment to guide your brand away from a rash decision, or towards growth. 

But the thing is, we’re so quick to want to shake things up, to feel fresh, to feel new, and possibly because everyone else is doing it, you get that fear of missing out feeling. The point here is, if you can stick with your branding and marketing, it has a higher chance of becoming far more effective the longer you use it. This goes for a logo and this applies to an advertisement that you were only going to use once for a month or two but could have been used for 3 years to see the greater benefits instead of creating something new every few months.

Because here’s the biggest takeaway, your brand is made for them, your customers, not you. They might see it a thousand times less than you do, which means you have more chances to put your brand out there in its current state before a customer will ever become sick of your brand.

BRIEFCASE No.8 Short-term sales activation marketing only works in the short term. Long-term, brand-building marketing works in the long AND short term.

When you’re focused on customer acquisition or getting existing customers back into your sales/marketing funnel, which consists of 3 levels; awareness, consideration and conversion. There is this tussle between long-term and short-term marketing efforts. Short-term being sales activation marketing and the long term being brand-building marketing.

Most small businesses focus on the short-term sales because of course they need to get their business up to a point that can invest in longer-term marketing efforts that create greater brand awareness rather than solely focusing on the sale. Which is why most top of funnel marketing when it comes to short-term sales activation efforts is all about price and benefits to attract a specific target customer into the funnel, with something like a Facebook ad, and get them to further consider and convert. This effort sacrifices brand building at the cost of getting the sale. Which means you have these blips of up and down short-term sales spikes that peak and trough with each individual campaign effort.

The more interesting research in the last few years has been research from Les Binet and Peter Field that literally wrote the book on it in a study titled, 'The Long and Short of it'. They found that long-term, brand-building marketing, like an ad that’s about the brand and not a specific product for sale, works in both the short and long term. Meaning it drives sales in the short-term while also creating greater brand awareness and consideration in the long-term. And as a result, the comparison between short-term sales blips and a consistent growth bell curve of sales, starts to become a far more compelling and profitable exercise for brand and business growth.

The key thing to remember is that it requires BOTH. It’s the long AND short of it. The split will vary based on where your business is at. For instance, it might be 80% short-term and 20% long-term for a start up business. While a more established medium sized business could be 40% short-term and 60% long-term. The point here is that developing and marketing your brand is a tremendous value add when it comes to sales, as it becomes a sales multiplier when it’s the brand that is also marketed and not just the product/service.

BRIEFCASE No.9 Spending more than 5-10% of turnover on advertising is not ROI positive.

This came out of a research firm, Magic Works and its founder Dr Grace Kite. That a spend of more than 5-10% your annual turnover on advertising specifically is not ROI positive. Which means two things. The first is that you now have a target amount to set aside for promoting your business. And the second is that any more than that 5-10% is unnecessary.

However this is just advertising. Advertising is one part of marketing and brand management. The rule of thumb has been 5-15% of your annual turnover is an effective budget to work with to meet your strategy goals. The problem however is that it’s often the first thing off the chopping block if a business needs to tighten its belt, even though it acts as your passive sales team getting customers in the door. So the advice is to treat your branding and marketing efforts less like the expense it is on your balance sheet and more like an investment in both the short term and long term success you can achieve.

BRIEFCASE No.10 97% of consumers are NOT in the market to buy.

That’s pretty high, right? Another blow is realising customers may only buy every 1-3 years on average, or maybe only once. 

So you might be thinking, shit, well I guess I better only focus on the 3% who are looking for what we have to offer now, and create something they’d buy more often. I mean, yes, you could. But without getting drastic you don’t need to only capture the lowest hanging fruit now. 

If you also check out Briefcase No.7, the whole idea of branding and marketing is to capture the attention and convert customers over the short and long term. So when it comes to this 97% of consumers statistic, who could indeed be future customers, there’s a strong case to still cast a wide net with top of funnel marketing efforts that focus on building brand awareness. Not just what you offer, but the brand. To start creating those associations now, so that when it comes to that day a consumer who now needs the thing you offer, your brand comes to mind.

This is what we call Mental Availability. It’s a fancy marketing term for salience or simply, coming to mind when needed. This can be done in many ways, including physical availability. Like being on the supermarket aisle shelf where a potential customer will actually see your brand and product. They might not need you now, but at least there’s something there they can remember you by and if you keep showing up in other potential places they will see/hear you, then that adds to greater mental availability. Come to think of it, this also presents an even better case for getting your brand’s positioning right (See Briefcase No.4) so that potential customers remember you correctly and for the right reasons. So remain top of mind for long-term mental availability until that day that customer becomes one of the 3% in the market to buy...and again down the track when they need you again.

BRIEFCASE No.11 You have a 10% chance of being selected by a client if you're a B2B business and they don't already know about you. 

There’s this saying many branding people often use, that you develop a brand to be known, liked and trusted. This statistic backs it up, especially when most B2B offerings aren’t low-ticket purchases like a $3 can of Coca-Cola. Additionally the whole “it’s not what you know but who you know” is right on the money when it comes to B2B sales. But when you don’t have the network already established, what do you do so that you’re known before they do their research to decide on a vendor?

Long term brand awareness is a starting point for any business, but especially in a B2B market of service providers that obviously have the patience for realising long term growth. In the previous Briefcase No.10, I presented this other statistic of 97% of consumers are NOT in the market to buy. In B2B service businesses, it might be even higher, and this creates a greater reason for getting in the peripheral of potential customers you’ve identified in your targeting, to present your brand in any way possible that gets it in front of those people. It could be social media content or ads. It could be a podcast you create and invite your desired clients on as guests, especially if you focus on a specific industry. Or it could be hosting, joining or sponsoring industry events.

The point is not directly gunning for the sale. Instead it's to simply create awareness and a connection point between them and your brand, for a future need, for when the time comes and your brand is either the one that comes to mind, or you go in to pitch the sale. Either way, you’ve improved your chances of a sale if they already know you.

BRIEFCASE No.12 Create and show your distinctive assets early and often, as 85% of marketing isn’t.

In any form of communication from your brand, make it reasonably or bleedingly obvious that it’s your brand. If it’s dripping in your brand swagger, then all the better, but there is nuance to this point. However, there’s no point spending all that effort to put your brand out there for consumers to see or hear and it be mistaken for another brand that doesn’t make them think of you. 

85% of all marketing annually is being spent on assets that AREN'T truly distinctive. And when distinctive assets like logos are often the only distinctive part of that communication, it’s also often used more as a full stop at the end of a sentence, rather than the first bolded and large word. Meaning we need to ensure that consumers make the association between what they’re seeing/hearing and your brand. So it could be a logo, it could be a jingle, it could be a mascot. Whatever it is though, show it early in the communication you put out there for two reasons. 

The first is that it sets the scene better for consumers who are already aware of your brand to understand the communication easier. 

The second is that if a consumer doesn’t get to see/hear that communication the full way through and they just get a glimpse, then you’ve at least got your brand in there for them to remember.

I could even throw in a third reason here, that if 85% of marketing isn’t doing this, then lets say out of 4 other direct competitors, you could be standing head and shoulders above them with far more distinctive marketing if they represent the 85% that aren’t. Using that as your competitive advantage to stand out in your market.

BRIEFCASE No.13 Brand size is the biggest determining factor of marketing effectiveness and brand growth.

This tip comes from the book, ‘How Brands Grow’ by Byron Sharp, not as a direct quote but in three ways and this tip could be the biggest one of all to understand.

The first is market penetration (more buying customers) which is the primary driver of brand growth, rather than increasing loyalty among existing customers. 

To increase penetration, brands need to maximise the second thing, mental availability (being easily thought of in buying situations) and physical availability (being easy to buy). These two forms of availability are consistently presented as the key levers of long-term brand growth from those that are determined to be bigger brands.

The last is what Sharp calls the ‘Double Jeopardy Law’ in marketing. Where small brands suffer twice. They have fewer buyers, and those buyers are slightly less loyal than the buyers of larger brands. The key insight, however, is that the difference in loyalty is relatively small, while the difference in buyer numbers (penetration) is huge.

So the point here is that to become the bigger brand, you need to focus on your brand’s mental and physical availability as a key strategic goal. As they impact growth and increase the compounding effectiveness of your branding and marketing that, you guessed it, increases growth.

BRIEFCASE No.14 NO to Brand Personas, Brand Archetypes and Colour Psychology.

There’s a lot I’ve come to learn, lots of methods I’ve tried, and a lot has been effective when developing the foundations of a brand. But these three things, are a waste of time:

1. Brand Personas

Yes it’s nice to envisage a specific type of customer and invent their whole life story, their pain points and their needs. But the reality is that most customers buy for different reasons, at different times, from different places and from all different walks of life. Making one idyllic persona you can relate to will make you all warm and fuzzy, but in reality, is far from effective when targeting customers.

2. Brand Archetypes

It might be a good starting point to assume one of 12 personality archetypes from the list of Jungan personality types, especially if you have the personality of a wet cardboard box. In practice if you said your brand was an ‘Innocent’ or a ‘Lover’, or a combination of the two, an ‘Innocent Lover’ archetype to your customers or your team, you’re gonna be met with strange looks, right? In reality you or your team will likely have an inherent personality that can be embedded into your brand. This is what makes for a more ‘authentic’ brand that feels more human than manufactured, so that at the very least, it will actually feel natural if you’re going to be the face(s) of the brand that your customers engage with.

3. Colour Psychology

If you’re picking the colours of your brand based on what they make people apparently feel based on pre-conceived stereotypes like, Green means nature or Red means passion, you’re focused on the wrong thing. Instead you pick colours based on four reasons, in this order of importance:

1. Pick the colour(s) your direct competitors aren’t using. This also applies to the biggest competitors if they’re not direct already.

   
   

2. Pick the colour(s) that fit the personality of your brand.

   
   

3. Pick the colour(s) that stand out the most to get attention if that’s what you want to do most. So colours like bright and saturated yellow, orange, red or pink.

   
   

4. Pick the colour(s) you’re going to be happy to see and wear forever.
   

BRIEFCASE No.15 YES to Category Entry Point segmentation and targeting.

A category entry point (CEP) is a time, place or reason for buying. It’s the point at which a customer will think of the category and seek it out, or is likely to see and need it. This is how you can do effective segmentation and targeting, rather than dodgy personas you invent based on who you want to be your ideal customer.

So right now, think of your offer and why it’s needed. Then think about all the different times someone would need it. Then think about where they would go or be when they need it. This is a category entry point. And from this you can then determine your product, its placement, price and then how to promote that category entry point so that customers know when to think of your brand and/or where to find it when needed.

Using Cadbury as the best example I've seen for a category entry point:

Think of your offer and why it’s needed.

Cadbury sells chocolate. But people don’t just buy chocolate because they’re hungry. Sometimes they buy it because they want a simple, affordable gift.

Then think about all the different times someone would need it.

Birthdays. Thank you gifts. Congratulations. Thinking of you. Christmas stocking fillers. Any occasion where a personalised gift would make someone smile.

Then think about where they would go or be when they need it.

Many people buying a greeting card are also looking for a small gift to go with it. So Cadbury placed personalised Dairy Milk blocks alongside greeting cards in UK retailers, displayed on rotating wire stands where shoppers could browse for a friend’s or family member’s name.

This is a category entry point.

Cadbury didn’t just compete for people wanting chocolate. It created a stronger association with the moment people wanted an affordable, personalised gift.

From this, you can determine your product, placement, price and promotion.

The product became personalised chocolate. The placement was beside greeting cards, where gifting decisions were already being made. The price remained affordable enough to be an easy add-on purchase. And the promotion reinforced the idea that if you needed a small personalised gift, Cadbury was the brand to think of.

These are tactical decisions for your branding and marketing that are informed by strategic insights that help you ever grow your brand into new places that your brand is physically available but also creates mental availability for the future to think of your brand when needed.

BRIEFCASE No.16 Positioning is a means to an end.

I mentioned this MiniMBA teacher and brand consultant, Mark Ritson in Briefcase No.4 and I’ve heard him say a number of times, “Positioning is a means to an end”. And I totally get why you’d think positioning is an end in and of itself when you essentially are trying to get consumers to think of one thing. 

However, what it means is that it’s not the final objective of branding and/or marketing. Positioning is a means by which it helps you get to your end goal. Which could mean that the brand comes to mind and things like business growth, an increase in sales, greater market share, whatever comes as a result. The means by which you get there is how you might position the brand so that people think of it and choose it based on a few things we want them to think. The problem is that brands are treating positioning as owning the end goal. As in, "we’re going to own ‘innovation’ in our category", or "we want to be known as the only premium brand in our market".

Positioning is only useful if it helps people recognise your brand, remember it in buying situations (category entry points - see Briefcase No.15), and find it when they’re ready to purchase.

As an example, imagine two coffee brands.

Brand A: Positions itself as “the premium coffee roasters, only for coffee lovers.”

Brand B: Focuses on being consistently linked to moments like “meeting a friend”.

Brand A may have a clear idea of who they want to be, but if it doesn’t increase buying, it hasn’t achieved much.

Brand B may have a less sophisticated sounding positioning strategy, but if more people think of this situation when they need coffee, and they develop a product suited perfectly to that moment, it has a greater potential to grow as people are thinking about Brand B.

The most simple example of positioning is KitKat's as their positioning is ‘breaks are good’. This creates a category entry point by aligning KitKat with taking a break from work, study, travel, etc. Materialised literally by their product literally breaking as a feature and accompanying this by promoting the tagline “Have a break, have a Kit Kat’. 

Now it’s not to say you need to create a category entry point, but it’s simply giving consumers something to remember your brand for at that time of need that you can deliver or promise, more than a competitor can. So it could be 2-4 really simple things to occupy in the mind of a consumer to easily think of (mental availability) and find (physical availability) - eg. fast food, french fries packaging, red and yellow colour, and golden arches = McDonald's. These are the associations that create memorable brands.

BRIEFCASE No.17 A plan is NOT a strategy.

“A strategy is an integrative set of choices that positions you on a playing field of your choice in a way that you win. It’s a theory you have that is both coherent and doable” - Roger L Martin.

If you’ve ever wanted an awesome couple of sentences to define what strategy is, there it is. You can apply it to business, to a brand, to a sport, whatever. I just wanted to leave you with that little gem I discovered a few years ago and here’s the accompanying youtube video to go with it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuYlGRnC7J8&t=75s

Because, as Roger points out and what I’ve put in Briefcase No.4, is that strategy is not the plan. Strategy is the strategy, it’s the theory you have to say this is what we believe will help us win and even outmaneuver the competition. How we do that is the tactical plan of steps that is the execution of the strategy.

BRIEFCASE No.18 Kill off the sub-brands to focus on growing one brand.

This was another one I’ve come to learn from MiniMBA teacher, Mark Ritson, AND later experience with a handful of brands I’ve worked with since. We’re stretched thin enough in business to have the audacity to think adding another brand is a good idea. Of course it’s not to say it can’t be done or that it shouldn’t be done.

The point is, especially for sub-brands that exist in the same overarching category, eg. FMCG, homewares, tradesman, etc, and you’re already stretched too thin trying to manage multiple brands under one business roof, kill the sub-brands. Put them all under one brand if that makes it easier, or kill off the brand offering entirely that is performing the least and is less profitable, for at least three reasons:

1. Greater marketing budget, time and effort to one brand only.

2. Customers only need to remember one brand.

3. Cross-category brand awareness means customers can be aware of you in one category and learn about your offerings in other categories.

Additionally, if you’re creating sub-brands and thus, separate businesses for financial reasons. You can instead split the offerings into different businesses and license the brand to each business to trade under the same brand name.

There are many legitimate reasons for creating sub-brands or entirely separate brands. But if they could fit under one name appropriately and that brand can be positioned effectively, then just stick to the one and make your life easier.

BRIEFCASE No.19 One brand concept.

I’m a firm believer in one concept only being delivered for your branding, for a combination of reasons. As more time is spent on one concept rather than spreading it out over multiple, or you need to wait longer for multiple. It’s also less money than requesting multiple concepts. And from experience it either creates decision paralysis, or a frankenstein of multiple concepts that were never intended to be combined and align with different parts of your strategy.

You’re choosing someone or an agency for a particular reason, so there needs to be a level of trust they’ll produce the result they believe will be the most effective, rather than producing multiple just to meet the quota. Because they’ll 100% have a favourite they believe is the best. So why not trust that objective belief from the person/agency you’ve engaged with. And look, by all means, if the concept doesn’t align with what you were hoping for, most branding people/agencies provide revision opportunities.

On the other hand, some branding people are more than happy to provide multiple branding concepts for you to choose from. However, from my own experience and from others who attest to this one concept branding method, it has provided a more fruitful outcome with less angst. It’s simply to suggest that one concept is all that should be needed, especially if there’s a clear strategy in place to direct the branding decisions.

BRIEFCASE No.20 Keep it simple.

It’s such a naff way to end but in all seriousness, simple branding works, and I’m not talking about bland, boring branding either. See, the less information customers have to take in, process and remember, the more likelihood your brand is remembered when combined with many of the other tips in the other briefcases. The same goes for how you and your team implement that branding and marketing, it becomes far easier for you to communicate because you remember it all easier and can use it more effectively.

If you have a simple name, not some concoction of 4 words the length of which could be turned into a Mary Poppins song, it’s going to be remembered, spelled and recognised far easier. It’s also easier for you and your team to say.

If you have a simple logo and colour scheme, it’s going to stand out amongst the raft of clutter out there and again be easily remembered and recognised.

If you have uncomplicated packaging, again that makes the user experience easier and less likely to create a negative impression towards the brand when they see, hear, or think of you.

If you decide to choose a set of values for your brand, pick no more than 3.

If you want to have some useful brand messaging, pick 2-3 short phrases at most that you can use to sell your offer, encourage a purchase and help them easily remember your brand.

When you develop your strategy, keep the objectives to 4 at most. When you develop your brand positioning, the less words the better to be able to understand and implement.

All these things amount to branding and marketing that is “simple but significant” as the character Don Draper in that TV series, Mad Men said.

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So which briefcase did you pick?...Or did you pick multiple? All good if you did and remember, you can always come back for more, as I believe each of them will help you produce better branding and marketing for better business success.