BRAND STRATEGY
DEFINING YOUR WHY
To build a brand, first you need to know its “why”—why it exists, why it’s unique, and why the world should care. Then you need to express it in words and images people understand, and remember. Catchword has guided brands old, new, and reborn to greater clarity and more meaningful connections with customers. We’ll help position your brand with authentic messaging that cuts through the noise and sticks like super glue.
Brand Positioning
Branding professionals define positioning in different ways. It’s the space your brand holds in the market. It’s the place your brand occupies in the mind of your customers. It’s the unique value proposition your brand provides to them. However it’s defined, positioning is the essence of your brand, the foundation upon which all brand communication—every campaign, design, and brand touchpoint—should be built. At Catchword, we’ll help you discover your essence—what makes you, you—and build a positioning that expresses it with flair and originality.
Brand Architecture
Is your home cluttered and messy? Do guests have trouble finding their way around? If so, and we’re not judging, you’re probably in need of some organizing help. Companies are the same. A clear, consistent, and logical Brand Architecture cleans up the confusion and ensures guests (er, customers) can find what they need. Depending on your needs, we can assess brand hierarchy and architecture, conduct an audit of internal and competitor names, and create product naming protocols to provide structure and clarity to your portfolio and establish logical relationships between your brands.
Brand Messaging
So, you’ve nailed your positioning, conceived the perfect brand name, and brought it all to life with a stunning visual identity. Congratulations, and nice work! But wait, your job’s not done, friend. You still have to help the world understand your unique contribution. And that’s where Brand Messaging comes in. At Catchword, we’ll flesh out your messaging, add context to your brand, and ensure it’s embraced by your new global fanbase.
Taglines
Taglines (aka slogans) are those catchy phrases typically used to help contextualize a brand or introduce key messaging about the product or company. They range in style—from informative and practical to simply amusing and memorable—and can often achieve a level of recall equivalent to the brand itself (think “Just Do It” from Nike, “What’s in your wallet?” from Capital One, and “Eat fresh” from Subway).
Selected Work
Fullsight
Indeed
Lumerate
When you love what you do, it shows in the work.And people notice.
Clutch | 2019–2022
#1 Branding Agency Worldwide
X3
MUSE Creative Awards | 2020–2022
Corporate Brand Identity
X5
Transform Awards | 2018–2020
Excellence in Naming Strategy
X3
London International Awards (LIA) | 2016
Verbal Identity
X1
FAQ
Defining your most fundamental attributes can be incredibly challenging. (It’s no coincidence that “Who am I?” is the psychological, philosophical, and spiritual question for the ages.) Our 2+ decades working and thinking about branding have yielded some wisdom, which we share below and in our Insights & Resources. If you don’t find what you’re looking for, reach out. We’re happy to chat.
Our clients want to build relationships, build businesses, build brands that impact their world. If you just want to hang up your shingle and sell some stuff, you might be able to get by with a name and logo, but how will you know what those assets should communicate if you haven’t examined why you’re in business and for whom? Brand strategy services can be scoped up or down, but every naming or visual identity process should start with brand strategy.
Brand strategy is often part of a complete branding package including naming and visual identity. It’s the first, crucial step and includes:
- Discovery (brand immersion through interviews and review of materials)
- Positioning (defining the pillars that capture the brand essence and placing a brand stake in the competitive ground)
- Messaging (crafting a brand story, an internal narrative that ties the positioning work together, plus optional other branding copy such as a tagline or slogan)
- Architecture (optional step appropriate for brands with complex portfolios of offerings)
Although timelines vary with scope and complexity, we typically allot about 8 weeks for the brand strategy phase of the process.
Cost varies greatly depending on the scope and complexity of the work. Consider the difference between a three-person startup launching a new app and a multibillion dollar tech firm rebranding after acquiring a diverse stable of sub-brands. Let’s talk about what you need and figure it out.
We recommend that every business have a rock-solid understanding of its brand, including what they do, for whom, and why as well as how their offering is unique and noteworthy. If you already know all that, and you’ve articulated it with clear and compelling messages, then you might not need our brand strategy support. We’re happy to audit your existing brand work and see whether we can help you build more meaningful connections with your customers. Contact Us to learn more.
Brand architecture is the way the brands in your portfolio are organized. An effective brand architecture structures all of your company’s brands so they make sense in relation to each other and allow customers to clearly identify and find what they need. It also provides rules and recommendations for determining what kinds of new products and services (or companies and subsidiaries) get branded, and how.
Like a well-designed house, brand architecture should be welcoming and intuitive. Too often though, when companies have many long-standing brands (especially from acquisitions), their portfolio becomes a maze of names and sub-brands that’s off-putting to potential customers and confusing to internal audiences.
That’s where we come in. After detailed research, we will develop a range of architectural options and then create guidelines for determining when new brands/names are warranted and a protocol for how they’re developed. The result is a flexible yet consistent structure for all your offerings that clarifies the relationships between different brands, maximizes your budget (by eliminating unnecessary proprietary brands that require expensive marketing), and simplifies the process of adding offerings in the future.
Is your product portfolio messy and confusing? Is it hard for customers to find and buy the right products? Is it unclear where new products will live within the portfolio? Does it feel like the products in your portfolio come from different companies and represent different brands? If you can answer yes to any of these questions, your company might be a good candidate for brand architecture services. Let’s talk.
A small project, involving a portfolio of fewer than 10 offerings, could take as little as 3 weeks. A more expansive project, covering a portfolio of dozens or even hundreds of offerings—with many stakeholders and decision-makers—might take months.
Taglines, or straplines (and their cousins, slogans and descriptors) are types of copy that help express your brand. Sometimes they are paired with your logo. Sometimes they are embedded into your advertising.
Taglines help customers remember the brand and emotionally connect but don’t overtly tell customers about what you do or why they should choose your brand. Nike’s “Just Do It” is probably the most famous tagline of all time. The Motel 6 tagline “We’ll leave the light on for you” conveys welcoming homeyness. Capital One makes customers reevaluate how they pay for things with “What’s in your wallet?” A tagline can help a fairly descriptive brand name evoke more emotion and customer engagement.
Slogans express brand positioning and can be adapted to changing marketing goals. They can be long and sound more like headlines, “There are some things money can’t buy. For everything else, there’s MasterCard” or jingle lyrics, “The best part of waking up is Folgers in your cup!”
Descriptors communicate what the brand does, how it does it, where it does it, or who it does it for. Descriptors frequently are paired with more abstract brand names. E.g., Red Bull Energy Drink, without “Energy Drink,” the name could work for almost any brand characterized by power and passion.
We recommend companies develop a tagline, slogan, or descriptor with their new company name and logo to flesh out brand communication. Products and services generally don’t need a tagline but might need a slogan or descriptor, depending on the sector, type of name, and marketing plan.
Like a great name, great branding copy succinctly communicates your brand and supports your marketing objectives. Successful copy knows its message, audience (and how to speak their language), and desired outcome. Great writing of any kind is the art of reduction, distilling lived experience into words on a page–or screen–that stick with your audience.
