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Branding often gets a bad rap in business. While some see a brand as simply a collection of colors and a logo, others view brand work as a “nice-to-have” that’s too touchy-feely to deliver tangible value. Yet as consumers, we are far less dubious about the impact of quality, strategic branding. We need only to look to household names like Apple, CocaCola, and Amazon for evidence that The Brand has real power. 

It’s true that The Brand is an abstract concept intended to elicit emotion and connection (which can certainly feel difficult to measure). However, done properly—like the iconic brands we love—brand work is the most strategic, differentiating, and valuable investment you can make in your business. In fact, The Brand is your business. Building it well provides the solid foundation every business needs to successfully define and grow their product and service portfolio, customer experience, company culture, and of course, bottom line. 

In this article, The Label Collective’s brand strategist partner Andrea Lindzey of WAXX Creative shares why complete and robust Brand Architecture is critical to the success of your business, what engaging in brand work looks like, and what results you can expect from the process. But first, let’s start by defining exactly what Brand Architecture is.

What is Brand Architecture?

Brand Architecture is a framework for defining and differentiating your business. It takes abstract (but fundamental) building blocks of a business and systematically makes them real. These building blocks come together to create what we call The Brand.

Simply put, Brand Architecture codifies the essential components of a business: 

  • Who we are
  • Why we exist 
  • What we do
  • How we do it

When fully constructed, Brand Architecture provides an objective, formally documented source of truth to guide all company activity. It’s your company’s general strategic playbook for communications, product development, design, and service delivery. And critically, it remains consistent across time, audiences, products, channels, assets, departments/business units, campaigns and content. 

It’s helpful to think of Brand Architecture as, well, architecture. You would never expect a house to stand the test of time, provide warmth and safety, or even look presentable without a solid foundation. Similarly, Brand Architecture lays the foundation for your business to move toward market leadership, fulfill customer needs, and create the emotional connections that drive equity.

Why do I need a formal Brand Architecture?

If you’re running a business that has not yet deeply invested in brand work, you may be wondering just how important it really is. In reality, companies don’t always have the luxury of building their Brand Architecture exactly when they start building their business. Often, products are launched in market before a business is able to develop a cohesive, differentiated brand. But it’s essential to double back as soon as possible to lock in your unique Brand Architecture if you want your business to establish equity and rapport with customers–and ultimately find stability and growth in the market. 

Here are the top five reasons why Brand Architecture should matter to you:

Competitive differentiation:

In a crowded marketplace, products and services always reach a point of parity. What lies underneath your products and services, including brand purpose, persona, and values (and how you express these through design, communication, and experiences) is what keeps customers coming back to your doorstep.

“While every for-profit and nonprofit organization is crystal clear on the product or service they make, do, or sell, very few are as clear on why they exist beyond those products or services, limiting their ability to distinguish themselves beyond the practical. Typically, leadership misses or actively avoids the proactive, introspective work of defining a core, unifying belief to which the enterprise could meaningfully align both inside and out.”
Chief Executive

Consistency:

Brand Architecture is your internal North Star for everything from business strategy to marketing asset design. As such, it can help keep your brand looking and feeling consistent across all touchpoints. This is an important factor in establishing trust with customers and employees alike.

“Brand personality fulfills a psychological function. It allows consumers to either identify with it or project themselves into it. Brand personality is also the main source of tone and style of advertising.”
–Branding expert Jean-Noël Kapferer, The Branding Journal

Reduced churn & faster decision-making:

Being able to leverage a single source of truth for roadmapping, messaging, and design gives your team a reliable shortcut for making decisions. Because everything from your purpose and mission down to layout standards for your logo is documented, reaching strategic alignment and asset approvals is rapid and painless.

“Purpose, while seemingly natural and self-evident in the most disruptive and altruistic of companies, is accessible to any company willing to be intentional enough to extract and define it. From which point, any company can commit to it, transmit it internally and bring it to life so that every decision, experiment and experience is organically aligned with the reason they exist, with product merely an expression of that purpose.” 
Chief Executive

Culture:

Modern workers not only crave purpose in their work, but they also want their values to align with their workplace. Brand Architecture galvanizes the business and its teams around a single purpose and sets out agreements for operations and relationships that help employees connect to their work and teammates.

“Introspection is not a navel-gazing exercise, but rather a logical undertaking that yields proven tangible rewards. Not only because 87% of today’s customers desire a more meaningful relationship with brands (with only 23% of customers able to find one), but also because the people within an organization desire that very same meaning when it comes to where they work.”
Chief Executive

Increased revenue and LTV:

Research shows that better branding equals better business. A strong, consistent brand can turn a one-time customer into a lifelong evangelist; customers are willing to spend more on premium brands; and it’s just easier to make a sale when your brand is on point.

‘Shared values’ accounts for 64% of consumer-brand relationships.”
Harvard Business Review

What happens when you deprioritize Brand Architecture?

Investing in The Brand is often shuffled to the bottom of the pile of endless competing priorities for many reasons: It’s a major strategic undertaking that requires time, focus, and budget; return on investment usually takes time and consistent followthrough to observe; and key stakeholders sometimes downplay or don’t fully understand the impact of the work. However, it’s easy to tell when a business is suffering from lack of foundational brand work. These are just some of the symptoms that can slow down productivity (and revenue) and even demoralize your team:

Business strategy seems to change with the wind; decisions are always reactive rather than planned and proactive because there’s no common thread and strategy tying all company activities back to a solid foundation.

There’s misalignment across stakeholders and teams with regard to business priorities, goal setting and measurement, messaging and communication, and product roadmapping.

Market-facing assets and information are inconsistent or conflicting, with the Sales team saying one thing, Marketing materials saying another, and the Product experience representing something else! 

Teams are unmotivated and unexcited about their work; they don’t feel a shared sense of purpose or values.

Building Brand Architecture

This is where the bricks, nails, plumbing, carpentry, and window dressings of a brand come together in layers that build upon each other, aligned from the ground up. Brand building experts may use different labels to name or categorize the components of Brand Architecture, but these frameworks always speak to a common set of concepts that comprise The Brand. These include Brand name, vision, mission, persona, culture, identity, position, and messaging. (And each of these breaks down into their own components and processes!) 

The magic happens in the research, creativity, and collaboration that come together to build, validate, and codify these components. In the end, Brand Architecture is the blueprint for your competitive advantage, and it takes the combined skills of Strategists, Designers, Writers, and Technical experts to construct.

1

Who We Are

This is the most foundational and permanent component of Brand Architecture––what you might consider your Brand DNA. The building blocks of this level include brand name, persona, identity, values, vision, operating principles, and culture.

2

Why We Exist

Building directly on top of ‘who we are’ is ‘why we exist.’ This level speaks to the core of your brand’s differentiation and source of connection with the audience. It comprises your market category, position (key value proposition), mission or customer promise, and brand messaging.

3

What We Do

The next level of brand architecture is one step closer to the market and begins to practically address what your company offers to customers. This encompasses your product messaging and roadmap.

4

How We Do It

Finally, ‘how we do it’ is where your brand most frequently touches the market. This building block includes all your audience segment-specific messaging.

What are the key deliverables (and payoff) of investing in Brand Architecture?

Rightfully so, most companies want to understand the tangible deliverables where they can expect all of this deep foundational work to show up. Because the nature of this work is highly customized to each client and where they are in their brand-building journey, the list can vary greatly. 

At a minimum, our Brand Architecture clients walk away with a package of competitive and market insights that reveal strategic positioning opportunities, a clear brand vision and mission, a fully constructed brand persona (which is used to create) a one-of-a-kind visual identity, and key brand messaging that’s aligned to the brand persona and can be applied to company websites, campaigns, product UX, and more. 

The extensibility of Brand Architecture is one of its most powerful (and invisible) returns on the investment, because it has a ripple effect. From a single source point––the codification of the brand––the impact spreads outward wider and wider. Not only does brand work result in tangible assets like communication guides, marketing content, and graphic design standards, it has the power to deliver outsized strategic value in your business. It smooths the path for decision-making, saves immeasurable time by keeping your team aligned, and brings your business to life.

In other words, we work with Brand Architecture clients to build their house (or Brand) from the ground up, then hand them a blueprint for maintaining, growing, and embellishing their new home. 

What holiday lights and Brand Architecture have in common

Envision a fully built house (or Brand). It stands on a steady foundation that marks its place in the neighborhood (or market). Adding to its curb appeal, it has a unique exterior and interior design that sets it apart from all other properties while enticing new guests to its doors. Congratulations, you’re the proud owner of a consistent, differentiated Brand that’s ready to run campaigns and build new assets! 

Think of all your campaigns and activities that leverage Brand Architecture like decorating for the seasons. You can orchestrate lights, wreaths, and yard ornaments (e.g. emails, social ads, and infographics) to make a statement, but all these decorations ultimately hang on one house. The roof, windows, and door they adorn remain unchanged. (That is, the brand persona, brand message, and brand values that underlie market activities stay constant.) Whether you repaint, redecorate, or rearrange the furniture, as long as you keep your Brand Architecture at the core of business activities, customers will always find their way back to your doorstep.

Brand Architecture never stops delivering value. When you’re done building your brand from the ground up, Brand Architecture provides a blueprint for growing your business and connecting with customers, while ensuring that all business activities are in line with your purpose and standards.

Ready to give your business a solid foundation?

Brand Architecture is a major investment, but if built well (and not overnight), it won’t blow over in a storm. It should stand the test of time and literally build equity for your business, just like a well-designed and constructed house.  

Because this is such an important, complex, and strategically vital process for building, maintaining, and growing your business, it’s a good idea to call in experts to help you…unless you want to pour concrete and install plumbing by yourself! Whether you need a “home inspection” to audit the state of your brand, are building a net new brand from scratch, or are ready to rebrand your business, we’re ready to help.

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