THE MINI BRAND STRATEGY PLAYBOOK
5 MIN READ. PUBLISHED 6 DEC 2024. UPDATED 14 FEB 2025.
CREATIVE COMMONS CC BY ELECTRO STRATEGY STUDIO. WRITTEN BY ADRIAN JARVIS.
TL;DR This mini playbook offers a practical guide to brand growth — encouraging brands to create lasting value by understanding consumer behaviour and culture. Brands succeed by staying attuned to these shifts, refreshing their foundations, and designing products that are both useful and beautiful. By focusing on what matters most, brands can adapt and thrive in ever-changing markets. This playbook aims to be the start of those conversations.
A BLUEPRINT FOR EMBRACING AND ENCOURAGING MARKET CHANGE.
In fast-moving markets, brands cannot afford to coast. Growth requires deliberate, bold action that challenges convention to focus on sources of future value. And while each brand is specific, this playbook describes how brands can effectively embrace and even encourage market change:
Break away from established norms.
Actively define your place in culture.
Create value by designing to unmet needs.
The examples described purposefully focus on consumer packaged goods and apparel, as these categories provide strong insight into survival and thriving in highly dynamic markets. So, perhaps the real opportunity is how we adapt these tenets into other sectors; from banking to engineering, which now face significant disruption?
Growth comes from moving beyond incremental changes to challenge categories and reposition brands in the spaces that will drive most future value. And while advertising narratives and choices of media are critical, they both depend on the foundations brands lay — guiding how they go to market. Growth for the Future, Jan 2023
1. CATEGORY Reframe.
The first step is to reframe the category. What are the major threats and opportunities? Are you losing ground to scale brands, or are entrants disrupting the space? Commercial success lies in identifying these pressures to reframe your view of the category.
Bold Bean Co is a great example, emerging as a serious category contender. They’re redefining the canned food category — moving it from low-cost essentials to a premium, culturally re-invented proposition. By prioritising high-quality ingredients and a compelling narrative, they’re reimagining a slow-growth commodity — while commanding 5X the price of private label.
Find trends that are creating white space in the category.
Explore needs that are not being met by other brands.
Be selective and intentional about where you choose to act.
2. COMMON MINDSET.
Growth starts with understanding how people think about and behave in your category. This isn’t about broad demographic personas, rather attitudinally how people engage with the category — the uniting, common mindset and values.
Uniqlo demonstrates this well. They don’t just segment their audience by demographics, rather focusing on a common mindset of functional simplicity meets everyday innovation. By understanding the unifying need for versatile, accessible fashion, they’ve created a dynamic portfolio that connects across different lifestyles and life stages.
Define your audiences based on category engagement.
Identify unifying needs through a common mindset.
Explore design narratives for key modes and moments.
3. FRESH FOUNDATIONS.
Brands need to constantly demonstrate momentum. Refreshing brand foundations ensures they stay valued and meaningful to consumers.
Lacoste revitalised its identity by updating its iconic crocodile logo under Louise Trotter, while launching bold collaborations like Golf le Fleur. These moves blended its sporting heritage with contemporary cultural trends to reach with younger, fashion-forward audiences. By balancing nostalgia with modernity, Lacoste ensured its continued premiumisation in a shifting market.
Why — Ensure the brand purpose is valued and motivating.
How — Create brand ideas that connect emotionally with the audience.
What — Align the product story with emerging needs and cultural shifts.
4. ETHOS IN ACTION.
To stay competitive, brands must act with agility and intent. Even for established brands, this means connecting with clear cultural territories and building ecosystems of collaborators.
Fiskars, a 300-year-old brand, embedded itself in the global craft movement. It hosted maker festivals, progressed on their environmental impact, and partnered with artisans to inspire creativity. Through digital tutorials and rich content, Fiskars turned their tools into a route to self-expression — evolving from functional equipment to a cultural icon.
Claim a space in culture through what the brand both says and does.
Build partnerships that enhance key capabilities and the value chain.
Leverage technology to innovate, deliver service and improve sustainability.
5. VALUE BY DESIGN.
To grow, products must do more than compete — they must create sustainable, long-term value. The best brands don’t wait to react to challenges — they innovate and intentionally design.
Adidas demonstrates its focus on innovation and long-term value through projects like Futurecraft Loop, STRUNG and even the failed Speedfactory. These initiatives reflect the brand’s wider transformation — combining data, design and sustainability to meet evolving market demand. By amplifying design across its range, Adidas is reclaiming their leadership.
Explore future scenarios to inspire innovation.
Optimise the portfolio to meet emerging demand.
Design for superior function, aesthetics and value.
HOW TO GET STARTED.
To kickstart a better brand strategy, look at the actionable steps that will build cross-functional collaboration. Here is a practical checklist (coined ‘3PM’) that is useful for structuring further discussions and commercially evaluating the brand vision:
POSITION — Understand the gaps, threats and opportunities in the category.
PRIORITIES — Choose clear goals that best align with a potential for future growth.
PILOTS — Test ideas, partnerships, and innovations through structured pilots.
METRICS — Establish customer and commercial indicators to understand performance.
MECHANICS — Define the systems, processes, and workflows to bring the strategy to market.
MOMENTUM — Plan how to scale efforts and effectively react to ongoing change.
GET IN TOUCH TO DISCUSS BRAND STRATEGY…
This article was written by Adrian Jarvis, who founded Electro, an independent strategy studio based in East London. Adrian has 25 years experience of working with enterprises of all sizes. The principles discussed here are highly scalable from start-ups to multinationals, across a range of categories. Find out more.