How to Build a Brand Strategy

A great brand strategy gives your business clarity, purpose, and a plan for how to show up in the world. It’s the foundation that makes everything else work. And before you get anywhere near a colour palette or logo, you need to build what we call the brand DNA.

This is the lifeblood of a brand. It’s where we define the stuff that actually matters:

• Your proposition

• Your mission

• Your vision

• Your values

• Your tone of voice

Without this, you’re not going anywhere. With it, you’re building something that lasts. Something strategic. Something that connects.

This guide breaks down what goes into a proper brand strategy, what to avoid, and when it’s time to bring in a team like co&co. It doesn’t matter if you're building something from scratch or only just realising your current brand strategy is off. This is your roadmap to getting it right.

Define Who You Are

You’ve got one shot to make a first impression. You’ve heard it before … 7 seconds is all it takes. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but you don’t actually choose what your brand is – other people do. That’s why you need a clear brand strategy – to guide that perception before it runs away from you. If you’re not intentional about how you show up, people will fill in the blanks for you. And those blanks? They might paint you as basic, forgettable, or just another version of what they’ve seen before.

Perception moves fast. So you need to be faster, sharper, clearer, and in control of the narrative from day one.

Mission, Vision, Values and Proposition

Your mission is why you exist. Your vision? That’s where you’re headed – or as we like to say, what do you wanna be famous for? Your values are what shape your day-to-day decisions, culture, and voice. And your proposition? That’s the, no-bullsh*t answer to why should anyone choose you?

Together, these form the core of your brand DNA. When your in-house team and your customers are on the same page about what you stand for, that’s when everything clicks. But if you think you’re one thing and your audience thinks another? That’s when it goes to sh*t.

And remember – they decide who you are. Your job is to make sure you’re influencing that decision every step of the way.

Understanding Your Audience

Know Who You’re Really Talking To

You can’t be everything to everyone. Nor should you try. Brands that try to appeal to everyone usually end up standing for nothing. A strong brand knows exactly who it’s talking to – what they care about, what they value, what keeps them up at night. And more importantly, how to speak their language without sounding like everyone else.

Trying to please the masses means watering everything down. Your message gets vague, your tone gets bland, and your audience scrolls right past. Instead, double down on your niche. That’s where the power is – in specificity, in honesty, in showing up exactly as you are.

We always say: know what you are, own your sh*t, and lean into it. Being unique and authentic isn’t just a branding buzzword you hear all the time. It’s how people connect. It’s how they remember you. And it’s what makes your brand not just seen, but felt.

Think Beyond Your Category

We don’t just look at your direct competitors – we look beyond your category. Because your audience is engaging with brands in totally different industries too. Fashion, tech, wellness, food – whatever’s influencing their taste and attention, we want to know about it.

That kind of cross-industry research gives your brand a wider perspective. It helps you spot cultural trends, tone shifts, and design cues that resonate with your people.

It’s how to keep your brand relevant, relatable, and ahead instead of just echoing the same tired sh*t as everyone else in your sector.

The Cost of Getting It Wrong

It’s way more expensive to fix a brand than to build it right the first time. We’ve seen too many businesses spend months perfecting their product, only to realise their brand doesn’t connect. Then all hell breaks loose and suddenly it’s a full rebrand: new messaging, new visuals, new budget.

Take Found. Earlier this year, we were brought in by FEC UK to create a brand for their new in-house operator – from absolute zero. No name. No branding. No footprint. Just a very neat structural diagram and a clear ambition to shake sh*t up.

It was the dream brief — a blank canvas and a client ready to be bold. Together, we built everything from the ground up: naming, proposition, tone of voice, visual identity, brand world, guidelines — the full works.

The result? Found — the UK’s first 360 lifestyle operator, activating experiences across residential and commercial spaces in multiple neighbourhoods. Experience-led strategy at its best. Brave, fresh, and built to scale.

This is exactly why getting brand strategy right early matters. No backtracking. No identity crisis. Just a strong foundation that’s already making noise. This is the perfect example of how we work and why getting it right early pays off.

Build a Strategy That Goes Beyond Just a Logo

Your logo is just one part of this huge puzzle. We’d regard it as the minimum viable expression of your brand – the starting point, not the full story. Your brand is everything that shapes how people perceive and experience your business. So, this includes what you say, how you say it, how you look, and how people feel when they interact with you. Without a proper brand strategy, you’re just winging it.

A full brand strategy brings all the moving parts together so they work as a system. Here’s what that includes:

• Messaging hierarchy – What you say, in what order, and to who.

• Visual identity system – The complete visual toolkit, not just a logo.

• Positioning – What makes you different (and better) than the competition.

• Consistency across platforms – From your website to your social media to your sales decks.

• Customer experience – How your brand is felt at every touchpoint.
  
  
  

Where Businesses Typically Get Stuck

A common mistake? Investing in design without a strategy to back it up. That’s how you end up with a nice-looking logo with absolutely 0 brand clarity.

We often step in when businesses hit this wall. The tone is off. The website doesn’t reflect what they stand for, the customer experience feels disconnected. It’s not that they need better design – they need alignment. That’s where our strategy-first approach changes the game.

The Brand Ecosystem Table

Don’t DIY Your Brand Strategy – You’ll Regret It

When you’re deep in your own business, it’s easy to lose perspective. You know it inside out – but that’s also the problem. You’re too close to it. Bias creeps in. You assume too much. You fill in the blanks because you know what you meant, not what others actually see.

That’s where sh*t starts to fall apart – and where we often step in to clean up the mess.

We’ve seen it too many times: internal teams try to shape the brand in-house, only to realise (too late) that nothing quite aligns. Messaging doesn’t land. The brand feels flat. The direction isn’t clear. And suddenly, it’s a full rework – with extra time, budget, and team headaches.

A proper brand strategy needs objectivity. It needs a challenge. It needs someone who can cut through the noise and get to the heart of what actually makes your brand different.

That’s what we do at co&co. No fluff. No bias. Just straight-talking brand strategy that works – because it’s built from the outside in, with your audience in mind, not just your internal opinions.

When It’s Time to Bring in Brand Strategy Experts

You’ll know it when the cracks start to show. The messaging isn’t landing. The visuals don’t reflect where you’re going. The team’s got five different answers to “what do we stand for?” and none of them stick.

Truth is, most of these problems could’ve been avoided with the right strategy – right from the start. That’s why bringing in experts early is you best bet and will stop you from wasting time, money, and energy fixing what should’ve been nailed from day one.

Here’s when to bring in a team like co&co:

• Your messaging and visuals aren’t working together

• You’re rebranding or launching something new

• You’ve become a ‘us too’ brand and lost your edge
  
  

• No one in the business can clearly explain your proposition

• You’re not cutting through in your market

• You want to attract a new audience but don’t know how

• Your team can’t agree on what the brand actually stands for
  

Get it right from the start, and everything else gets easier. That’s what we do. Strategy-first branding that works.

The co&co Difference

1. We start with strategy, not just design

2. We map clear milestones so you always know what’s next

3. We cover voice, visuals, research, and rollout

4. We’re a no fluff, no bull agency

5. We build brands that grow with you, not ones you outgrow
   

How co&co supports brand creation:

We don’t jump straight into visuals. First, we build the brand DNA — the core foundations that shape everything else.

Here’s what brand creation looks like at co&co:

• Brand DNA – We start by defining your proposition, mission, vision, values, and tone of voice. This is the strategic core your brand is built on.

• Competitor & industry research – Deep dives into your sector and audience to make sure your brand is positioned to stand out, not blend in.

• Full brand voice development – We craft a tone that’s unique, flexible, and actually sounds like you — not just another brand you like.

• Logo and visual identity systems – From logos and colour palettes to typography and art direction — all built off that core strategy.

• Brand guidelines and application packs – Everything you need to roll out your brand consistently, across every channel and touchpoint.

• Ongoing support post-launch – Because we don’t just drop the assets and disappear. We stick around to help you grow with it.

This is how we create brands that don’t just look the part — they mean something.

Branding for Longevity – Making It Stick

A strong brand connects on more than just a visual level. It creates trust. It feels familiar. And over time, it becomes something people actively choose. They influence decisions. Big ones. The kind that shape what people buy, where they go, and who they trust.

Take Vita Student. They’ve built such a solid, standout brand that students now choose their university based on whether there’s a Vita Student in the city. That’s wild when you think about it. Choosing where you study – one of the biggest life decisions you’ll make — is being influenced by a brand. It’s supposed to work the other way round: pick the uni, then find somewhere to live.

When your brand becomes part of the decision-making process, you’ve gone beyond recognition — you’re shaping behaviour. That’s the level we build for.

Community and Advocacy

When people feel like they’re part of your brand, they talk about it. They share it. They stick with you. We help businesses build that sense of community and belonging – by aligning brand values with customer values and creating platforms for real engagement. That’s how loyalty is built, and why advocacy follows.

Measuring Brand Success

If you’re not measuring your brand’s performance, you’re making decisions in the dark. We always say If you aren’t measuring, you aren’t marketing. You’re gambling.

At co&co, we always tie brand strategy to clear outcomes. Whether it’s awareness, engagement, or loyalty – if we can’t track it, we don’t do it.

Here are a few metrics worth watching:

• Brand recall

• Customer loyalty and NPS

• Engagement consistency across platforms

In marketing, there’s this myth that brand identity is just about visuals. The logo. The colours. The nice typography. But real brand identity goes way deeper than aesthetics. It’s less about how things look – it’s about how they work.

A strong brand identity aligns every part of your business. Externally, it makes you recognisable. Emotionally, it makes you matter. Commercially, it makes you money. Because when your messaging, tone, visuals and experience are all working together? That’s when you start building traction.

Sure, there are parts you can DIY. Pull together a Pinterest board. Write down your values. Dabble with Canva. But building a brand that actually lasts – that people connect with, believe in, and buy from – takes more than guesswork.

It takes research. Strategy. Testing. Tough decisions. And execution that’s bang-on every time.

That’s where we come in. co&co helps brands figure out who they are.

Your brand shouldn’t just look the part. It should deliver. Let’s work together.