Learn brand strategy in 25 minutes

all right today we're going to talk

about brand strategy if you are a

creative or have some creative skill set

your early in your career and you want

to learn how to advance into management

make more money and develop the skills

and toolkit to freelance you need brand

strategy if you are in the middle of

your career or at the end of your career

and you're starting to realize hey I

don't quite have the full toolkit to get

where I want to go or I want to someday

be more entrepreneurial or I want to

have something that differentiates me

you need brand strategy and what I've

noticed for the people that follow me on

this platform is you are either younger

and pretty Savvy and you're trying to

learn or you're older and you're pretty

Savvy you're on YouTube and you're on

Tik Tok and reals and you're trying to

figure out those missing pieces and this

is the exact toolkit that will separate

that I'm going to talk a little bit

about how I discovered brand strategy

I'm going to go a bit into the cardinal

rule you need to have to differentiate

yourself as a branding person and

creative that you either have it and you

know how to do it or you don't and we'll

talk about developing the toolkit for it

we're going to go into the foundations

of strategy developing a perspective for

your brand your project Etc we're going

to talk about turning perspectives into

themes that can apply to campaigns and

projects individual things you do we're

going to talk about how you do examples

and kind of document and present things

to make them make sense and we're going

talk about how strategy and tactics play

a part in making ideas actionable inside

Brands then we're going to talk about

building your toolkit and like a

feedback loop to actually get good at

strategy over time and throughout I'll

sprinkle in a decent amount about how

you can approach this either

entrepreneurially or with the idea of

like making better choices to get you

somewhere in your career or making money

freelance if you noticed this week I

dropped my first Vlog and I'm going be

doing that once a week and tell a little

bit more of like here's what I'm doing

here's the things I'm working on but

these videos that I do every Sunday I'm

treating them essentially like summer

school for people that want to be

excellent at branding or their brand

that I want to give you a toolkit in

every video that you walk out with and

you go oh I have something I can use now

I can refer back to this I can make some

docs from it and this is going to help

me get where I want to go so let's do it

so first off I was a designer first ER

is IA and then in New York primarily

graphic design I stumbled into doing

things with a more luxury Bend one of

the first big thorough projects I had

was for a night club that was a super

luxury oriented gold flakes in the

drinks Ultra exclusive uh I was just as

likely to spend the night there and T

pay would be than Justin Bieber Lindsay

Lohan broke up with her Samantha Ronson

there there was a whole world revolving

around this luxury feel that was very

important to keep up I did the logos I

did the menus I did the website I did

all the flyers I really worked with the

owner who became a good friend of mine a

mentor to me over time uh into like what

it takes to conjure that level of

experience but that was a designer doing

what I was told from briefs and ideas

given to me by somebody I didn't make

much money as a designer in that era

where I started to make real money was

when I applied strategy to design that's

why I became a creative director at an

agency and then when I began to make

real real money corporate world was when

I was able to take that into branding

and sales and be not just like a young

person who can both design and do some

Basic Marketing tactics but someone who

could say here's a strategy idea for

what we should do for holiday or for

this product launch and then over time I

began to accumulate more money because I

could do strategy on the side that's

something where it's like hey I actually

need to go spend 40 hours designing

something I can have a network I can

work with existing team and I can help

them craft a strategy now it's you

becoming entrepreneurial where strategy

is a huge part of everyday life to today

where I kind of I have a strategy

understanding tactically of marketing

and I understand the internet and social

media so I'm in a constant flow of very

well-paid Consulting specifically to do

that and this could be you but what's

the most important skill set I'm

starting here with this image in this

video I'm going show a bunch of examples

of content here to help prove some

points so why are we watching a video of

women's wear being dropped up and down

I'm doing this to talk to you about

perspective there are marketers that are

good and there's marketers that are bad

and one thing that all the marketers

that are good have in common is the

ability to put themselves in their

customer shoes and recognize when they

are not their customer my first

experience is this when I was working in

the outdoors market and the customer I

was selling to was a very wealthy Hunter

as a young relatively Metropolitan guy

who's spending my free money on like

cameras and trying to go to ultra I did

not know anything about what those

people wanted but the ability to

submerge myself into what they do was a

huge differentiator in being able to

sell to them and this is a skill set

that you need to pick up and it starts

just with acknowledging it acknowledging

I am not my Target demographic and in

some cases you might be it's going to be

perfect and you are trying to sell the

people just like you but for the vast

majority of projects you are not the

person you're selling to and here's why

this is really important and here's why

I bring up these video ideas is because

on the internet everything is content

everything is being sold through content

it's being given to us on algorithms in

my algorithm that I see personally as

Orin guy into design and luxury goods

and life in Southern California is not

showing me this but it is showing the

Target customer for a brand consult I'm

working on this exact video and many

more like it and so for me to be

successful at understanding an audience

I understand the people in it if a bunch

of the audience follows Victoria Paris

it's worth it for me to understand why

Victor Victoria Paris is popular the

kind of content she makes and how her

influence Works to them and this is just

an example because I work on a bunch of

female focused Brands a lot mainly

because there's a whole strategy

component for these brands that seems to

be underserved from a very tactical

standpoint there's amazing creative for

them but there's a connecting of the

dots that I seem to have stumbled into a

nisse shop but the same goes for luxury

Brands Outdoors Brands Southern Brands

Wellness Brands whatever it is just

understanding your Target demographic

it's putting them in their shoes and

asking what would they do so as a

strategist that is your job to ask a Who

is the customer of this brand and then B

who do we want the customer to be cuz

sometimes those might be different every

project starts with that who is the

customer and is the current customer or

the customer that we want and then you

need to decide am I marketing the

current customer or I marketing the

customer we want is it a vent diagram

that's also a circle or are we doing

both and then you need to actually

submerge yourself into what that person

sees and wants and how they're sold and

in particular content that impacts them

brand strategy today is like 90% based

on content which there's G be a lot of

people that watch that and there go like