The Journey to Becoming a Brand Consultant
These days, being a brand strategist is trendy. They’re everywhere. And, of course, you’ll find most of them on LinkedIn. Some of them manage social media, but if needed, they’ll also take on brand positioning. Some are copywriters, but they have no problem tackling brand architecture either. Because you don’t need any special education to be a brand strategist. Anyone can do it. Or can they?
When I joined Brandoctor, Croatia’s first specialized branding agency, at the age of twenty-four, I knew absolutely nothing about branding. So, as aJunior Brand Consultant, I went through an intense drill. I was lucky enough to learn about branding from Anja Bauer, a pioneer of branding in Croatia, who earned a master’s degree in marketing communications from Bournemouth University in the UK and brought her professional branding expertise back to Croatia. At the time, in 2007, branding was only just beginning to make its way into Croatia. There was exactly one brand strategist in the country, Anja, and Brandoctor’s clients were mostly international companies and large corporations such as Podravka, TDR, and Eurobev. Their brand managers were the first to recognize that they needed an expert to structure their portfolios and strategically position their brands.
Clients knew they needed a new name or a more modern design, but they didn’t fully understand why they also needed all the steps that came before that: brand and market analysis, brand positioning, the brand story, brand image, and target audiences. It took years and years of educating clients and the market to get across the idea that branding isn’t just about designing a logo. The most important part of building a brand is the ‘invisible’ part, the meaning that the brand will come to occupy in the consumer’s mind.
For many years, we used the iceberg metaphor to explain what branding is (I still use that visual in my Branding Masterclass courses). Below the surface is everything we can’t see, the brand’s associations, differentiation, self-expression, and so on, while above the surface is what we can see: the name, visual identity, communication, and the brand’s financial value.
Learning brand strategy is anything but improvisation. In my case, alongside Anja’s mentorship, it was a true “mini university” that lasted several years, with a very precise curriculum: market analysis, qualitative vs. quantitative research, defining target audiences, identifying a brand’s competitive advantage, brand positioning, defining the brand essence, promise, and personality, brand awareness, brand image, brand equity, brand architecture models, brand endorsement, and five senses branding. On top of that came the daily reading of carefully selected professional literature, studying every available Interbrand report, following Brand Channel, Brand Week, and Branding Strategy Insider, as well as studying the models and practices of some of the world’s leading brand consultants, such as Brad VanAuken and Derrick Daye.
Becoming a true brand strategist takes years of experience, but also years of continuous learning. It requires in-depth analysis and identifying what makes a brand distinctive, something no one else can claim. It means precisely identifying the “sweet spot” between the brand’s strengths, competitors’ weaknesses, and consumers’ desires. Refining the brand essence until it captures the competitive advantage without a single unnecessary word. Carefully designing the brand architecture to unlock the full financial potential of the entire portfolio. This isn’t something you do on the side while simultaneously working on performance marketing or an e-commerce strategy.
Over what is now almost 20 years, we have developed brand strategies for hotels and hotel chains, IT companies, olive oil, motor oil, premium wine, beer, healthy snacks, cosmetics, tomatoes, NLP experts, children’s shoes, islands and cities, hospitals and clinics, car dealerships, pet food, composite material manufacturers, universities, amusement parks, air conditioning companies, designer furniture, and manufacturers of automotive headrests. We have the most beautiful job in the world because every project means learning about a new industry, going deep, identifying niches no one else has claimed, and taking part in creating a new and unique story. As brand consultants, we can breathe life into a brand, but at the same time, we carry responsibility for its positioning and growth in the market.
When my daughter is asked what her mom does for a living, her answer is: “Mom makes presentations.” What she doesn’t know yet is that each of those presentations contains a deeply considered strategy that will give a hotel, a wine, or an IT company meaning and make it distinctive, recognizable, and stronger than its competitors.
