Brand consulting has not been a profession for very long, and there is still no clear perception of what it is or what benefit it offers.
Brand Consulting Optimizes
The most fundamental benefit of a brand-consulting service is that it optimizes branding processes and marketing activities. This optimization takes shape when several dimensions work together. Because the resources of brands — and of the companies that own them — are not infinite, spending those resources so as to achieve the most productive result is the most basic benefit of this work. That is also why brand consulting requires producing results that are specific to the brand and suited to the brand’s own world.
1. Setting the Right Brand Strategy
A brand grows stronger in the light of — and by giving direction to — the business strategies of the company that owns it. Making the right decisions for a strong brand, and keeping those decisions consistent, is not a matter unrelated to strategy. What brands choose matters as much as what they choose to give up. Determining the right strategy across every area — product strategy, pricing strategy, channel strategy, and communication strategy above all — also creates efficiency inside the company. R&D, for example, can focus on design rather than sheer efficiency, and spend more of its energy and money there.
For instance, the strategy we created for a food brand we worked with defined exactly what should be on the menu — and what could never be on it. In time this became a guide for the company’s employees as well: people could turn down alternatives or opportunities that came their way simply by saying, “This isn’t right for our brand.” That is a big advantage.
2. Finding the Right Business Partner
The second most important benefit of brand consulting is finding, among the hundreds or thousands of business partners in the marketing ecosystem, the one that fits the brand best. Every brand and every brand’s needs create different truths. For this reason, a brand consultant evaluates a partner’s work not by personal taste but within the framework of the strategy — and the agency, in turn, is more confident that its work will be judged correctly.
3. Giving the Right Brief and Reading the Result Correctly
For example, in a brief we once gave to one of the best-known corporate-identity design studios for a brand we were about to create, there was a statement like this:
“The logo needs to be orange. Because no competitor in the market uses this color — and at the same time it fits the brand’s strategy and personality very well.”
In the end the studio produced six alternative corporate-identity designs, and every one of them was orange. The studio focused its creativity on the logo’s other elements and offered different shades of orange as the alternatives. The logo that was chosen — and the brand that was created — is this one.
4. Making the Right Investment
In the end, every decision made and every piece of work done for a brand is an investment, and that investment draws on many limited resources — money, effort, and time above all. A brand-consulting service ensures this investment is made in the most correct way. Ideal consulting in any field, in essence, protects people from risks and unnecessary costs; and a good brand consultant returns far more than the fee they are paid.
One Condition
There is a single condition here. Brand owners taking on a service that might be considered a “luxury,” like brand consulting, should not treat it the way they would service at a restaurant. Brand owners and everyone working for the brand must be aware that they are one team — they should feel as though they are building a wall together. Because a brand consultant can guide you with their ideas and experience, but they can never know your brand better than you do, nor manage it better than you can. In other words, it is simply not possible for them to know your business better than you do.
