Brand Fundamentals

All good brand strategies start here! Defining your brand fundamentals means getting very clear about what your business stands for: Your purpose, vision, mission and values.

No - these are not the kind of statements you’d see stuck on an office kitchen wall in the 1990s. My process integrates your why, how and what to reveal inspiring statements that will motivate customers, staff and investors.

• Belief / Purpose: Why does your business exist? What big problem are you solving? What do you believe in? Why are you doing this? The core motivation that makes this all worth doing. Your ‘why’.

• Dream / Vision: The big goal you want to achieve. The future state of the world you want to contribute to. The lofty, ambitious stuff that generates goosebumps and inspires people to join you.

• Action / Mission: The actions you’re going to take to achieve your vision and fulfil your purpose. How you’re going to get there.

• Conduct / Values: The behaviours and ethics that your business and your team will uphold as you conduct your business. The qualities that are non-negotiable.

Why do this work?

No more dull answers to ‘So what do you do?’.

By defining your brand fundamentals, you’ll have powerful statements to help you to talk about why what you do is important - and what you’re aiming to achieve.

Expect curiosity, not glazed looks.

Years ago I worked with a tech company who said they existed ‘to make money’. Not the answer I was looking for!

But even with a very literal founding team like this, we dug deep only to discover that they were mavericks at heart who hated the chokehold their competitors had and wanted to create a better way of doing things.

There’s always an interesting reason behind a company’s existence!

Finding it and sharing it with customers is exciting and also creates tons of ideas for messaging and content.

One caveat - this has to be authentic. Customers see through purpose-washing very quickly.

In these workshops, expect to be asked ‘why?’ at toddler-levels of curiosity, until we truly get down to what makes your business tick.

You’ll be surprised how often you use your brand fundamentals statements - and how useful they are for describing your business.

Use them on your website’s About page, in proposal documents, in recruitment ads, in presentations, in internal communications to inspire your team, and more.

These are touchstones for all your communications. Constantly referencing them will help your brand to stay focused and inspiring.