Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Strategy
Canvas
SURYO PRABANDONO M.Si.
“I must have a prodigious amount
of mind; it takes me as much as a
week, sometimes, to make it up!”
- MARK T WAIN
Background Overview
Creating a powerful branding strategy involves multiple steps,
including:
• Different types of research
• Investigating how that information fits together
• Creatively exploring the most meaningful way to communicate
those insights
For many, the strategy development process seems messy and difficult
to repeat, and even the top creatives themselves have trouble
articulating the specific steps to arriving at a clear strategy.
So how can people without formal training expect to develop and
implement effective strategies?
Brand Strategy Canvas
On a single page, the canvas converts the abstract strategy development process into a
clear set of steps.
Don’t let the brevity of the single page fool you. It’s simple, but not easy. The layout of the
canvas is based on the intuitive process followed by professional creative teams. During
that process, the team explores broad and often divergent concepts of where the brand
might go and what it could represent, then edits down the ideas into something powerful
and relevant.
As you work through the canvas, you’ll do that kind of exploration too, going broad then
going deep. And that’s great: expansive exploration is an important step during the early
phases of strategy development.
But ultimately, the kernel of a strategy comes from making hard decisions about what
your brand will and will not become. And that’s what the Brand Strategy Canvas is all
about: guiding you through a series of choices to discover and refine your brand
strategy. It will direct you through a process of distilling the essence of your brand.
Figure 2-1
Audience Insight
◦ In the Audience Insight box, you’ll capture key truths about your audience. What are
their needs and desires, what are the conceptions of your market?
◦ In the Competitive Environment box, you should list key aspects of the competitive
situation, including key themes of the category as well as a characterization of key
competitors.
◦ Finally, your Company/Product Features box will unpack the aspects of your offering
that address the needs of your audience and the gaps in the market.
When you overlay truth about your audience, competitive situation, and product features,
you should have a clear picture of the strategic opportunity you’re going after. It’s why you’ve
launched a company in the first place.
These areas represent the springboard into the rest of your brand strategy. Regardless of the
decisions you make later about positioning or personality, the market opportunity will stay
the same.
After all, this section represents the state of affairs from which your opportunity arose. As a
result, when you iterate over your Brand Strategy Canvas, you likely won’t see much change
in this area.
Figure 2-2
Rational & Emotional Benefits
Rational benefits speak to how a user experiences your brand. It’s one
step beyond the straightforward description of what the thing does and
begins moving toward why it matters.
They serve a powerful function, however. Once your team has aligned on
your values, they will serve as guide rails of your brand choices. In
others, your values will help determine what your brand will and will not
do and say.
Figure 2-7
Best Practices & Quick Start Tips
Now that you understand the parts of the Brand Strategy Canvas, let’s explore how to maximize the return on your
effort as you work through each section. As with any tool, technique matters. And while this tool is a lot more complex
than a hammer, it’s also a lot more powerful. Let’s look now at some time-tested methods for getting the most out of the
Brand Strategy Canvas.
Make Choices
The benefit of a tool like the Brand Strategy Canvas is in reducing the universe of possibilities down to a handful of the most
relevant truths about your brand. Start broadly with the first five boxes. Then, when you begin writing your positioning
statement, start making choices about which direction you should take. Use a pen along the way. They don’t have erasers, and
that encourages commitment
Best Practices & Quick Start Tips
Garbage in, Garbage out
Like any process, the tool itself is useless without deliberate and thoughtful effort. Done casually, the canvas could be completed
in as little as 5 minutes. But it’s not a race. If you want results that are true and actionable, you and your team must be willing to
ask hard questions, push your assumptions, and move past the obvious.
Don’t Rush It
An important step of the creative process is the simple act of waiting. Walk around any ad agency creative space and you’re likely to
see art directors brushing up on their ping-pong serves, or overhear writers talking about the recent episodes of Black Mirror. To
start, give yourself and the team a few hours to work alone; then reconvene as a group 2 or 3 days later to combine everyone’s
thinking into a single canvas. Then come together again 3 days later to discuss any refinements, and make your final decisions.
You’ll get the best results, though, when you provide yourself and your team with time to walk away and let your subconscious do
the work.
Best Practices & Quick Start Tips
Iterate
The canvas is meant to be printed, reworked, and reprinted. Try different angles in the positioning statement, and explore how the
various elements interact. Hang prior versions on the wall to gain an understanding of how your thinking has evolved and become
increasingly focused. As you iterate, you’ll see how your thinking clarifies and how previously rough and weak positions become
increasingly refined.
by Patrick Woods