Why Start with a Brand?

Having an understanding of your brand helps you tell your story to the world, and it gives you a north star from which to make marketing and business decisions. You would be surprised how many companies operate without a firm understanding of their brand. After having helped develop dozens of global brands, and having run my own retail business for three years, I know how important it is. The day-to-day operations of running a business has no equal. We often get stuck in our own heads. And being stuck in your head is no place from which to make decisions.

At Deadreckoning Brands, we emphasize setting the brand first. That means not just telling the world who you are, but why you do what you do. Once you know who you are and what you stand for, the marketing and business decisions become a lot easier, and will put you ahead of 90% of the companies out there. (But have no fear, we can also help you with the marketing programs too under a separate piece of work once the brand is established.)

The Process

  1. The First Meeting — Always complimentary; generally about 30 minutes in-person or via phone/videoconference. We chat in order to level set on what you’re looking for and what we do at Deadreckoning Brands. We will usually investigate why you started, or why you want to start your business, and what you want to achieve as a business and in your marketing efforts.

  2. The Research — In this stage, Deadreckoning Brands will investigate your company’s landscape, your target audience(s). It might involve me spending time observing your work or your customers’ work, or spending time talking to some of your valued customers or prospects. The research phase is custom to each project, but will always involve us talking to real people about the real world of the business you work in. In addition to that research, we’ll study your organization’s landscape, looking at competitors and aspirational brands in order to position your company in the blue waters, rather than in the busy infested waters of your competition. The output of research is destined to bring you insights that help you distill your industry from a marketing perspective.

  3. The Workshop — Expect about four hours of working time. In this session, we will cover

    • A summary of the research

    • A deeper dive on your organization’s ‘why’

    • An archetype exercise — this brings humanity to your company and will help us understand your company’s personality (note, it will likely be different from your own)

  4. The Ideation — We take the learnings from the workshop back and interrogate, work out, and develop the articulation of your brand and your brand strategy. This is meant to be an iterative process where we’ll look for you to put your ownership on the description we develop. Think of this as a co-creation phase where Deadreckoning Brands does the heavy lifting.

  5. The Brand Architecture — While our normal process is to provide the following outputs, this part of the process is customizable to your needs.

    • Custom Archetype — A bespoke definition of the personality of you brand. Mostly for internal purposes to your organization, this will help you make decisions based on the artistic side of your brand, the tone of voice to use in social media and other marketing programs.

    • Brand Strategy — Gives you a unique position in your market, articulating your ‘why’, giving your stakeholders a reason to believe your brand. Your brand strategy grounds you and helps you understand which marketing and business decisions to pursue as a brand.

    • Brand Narrative — Tells the story of your brand. Think of this as the “about us” section of your website, or the pitch you give to people about why to buy from you, listen to you or engage with you. You will probably find you use this the most in publicly facing communications.

Timeframe

We work at your speed. Depending on the complexity of your brand and your availability, the work can take from a minimum of four weeks, up to a few months.

What’s My Why?

In other words, why do I do this work? Two reasons, I believe I was put on this earth to help others find fresh opportunities so that they can reach new levels. And secondly, because I wish there was someone to help me when I started my businesses.