Climbing the strategy mountain 🧗♀️
Recovering from knee surgery and realizing that I'm never going to be a pro-skateboarder was a painful journey. Being in recovery has given me some time to look back at the last year and what I've learned so far. I wanted to share a few thoughts that might help you in your journey of understanding brand strategy.
There's always a new mountain to climb: After learning graphic design, I started looking at identity design and eventually started looking at the complete brand experience. After that, I wanted to understand business and how markets work. Each time I thought I was reaching the end, a new mountain appeared in the mist. If you really want to understand brand strategy, never stop climbing.
New sights give new perspectives: As you climb higher up the ladder, you start seeing things differently. The place you started doesn't look the same anymore. I used to look at identity design differently, I wanted to create identities that were beautiful, clean, minimalistic. I wanted to create design that got praise from the design community. I designed for my ego (and passion). I see now that a lot of the things I was doing were not to create better, more distinctive brands, but for the love of design. That has changed.
Sometimes you got to move sideways to move up: My understanding of brand strategy has shifted. It's no longer about finding the 'essence' and writing a nice story. It's about understanding a complex and nuanced competitive environment and setting actionable goals to achieve brand growth. That means that just learning about 'differentiation' might not be enough, it might mean, learning about business theory, marketing science, behavioral economics, culture,...
You might be surprised how high you are already: It can be frustrating. The amounts of books, frameworks, new insights you need to process. Sometimes it feels like your only at the bottom of an endless mountain. But the power is in practice. Each strategy project you learn about your mistakes, your wins and how to improve. Each discussion or difficult moment with your client might be the next step. Now look back down, you've come a long way, friend!
How are you climbing the strategy mountain? What are you struggling with? Share your mountain-climbing tips!
