The purpose of the brand guide is to ensure content and communication consistency across all audiences and channels, both internal and external. The brand guide is more than a set of rules and standards, more than a simple style guide, however – by strictly adhering to brand guidelines, one can promote a uniquely recognizable brand identity, stand out from competitors, build brand equity, and establish consumer trust.
What Is Included In The Brand Strategy Guide?
A comprehensive brand style guide outlines everything from the brand’s typography and color palette to the brand’s tone of voice and mission statement. Begin by answering the following questions:
- What is the business’s “big idea”?
- What is the business’s vision?
- What is the business’s mission?
- What are the business’s core values?
- What are the business’s primary value propositions?
- What are the business’s differentiators?
- What is the business’s unique competitive advantage?
- What is the business’s positioning?
- What is the business’s tagline?
- What is the ONE word the business wishes to dominate?
The Big Idea
The “big idea” in a brand style guide refers to the central, overarching concept that defines what the business fundamentally stands for and aims to achieve in the world. It’s the core purpose or transformative vision that drives everything the company does, essentially answering the question “Why does this business exist beyond making money?” This is typically expressed as a bold, aspirational statement about the change or impact the business wants to create, representing the underlying belief or insight that sparked the company’s creation. It embodies the problem-solution paradigm that makes the business meaningful and captures the emotional or rational truth that resonates with customers.
The big idea differs from a mission statement, which is more operational, or a vision statement, which is more future-focused. Instead, it serves as the foundational concept that inspires both internal culture and external perception, acting as the north star for all brand decisions.
The Vision
A business’s vision is a forward-looking statement that describes what the company aspires to become or achieve in the future. It’s an inspirational declaration of the desired long-term future state of the organization, painting a picture of what success looks like at its highest level. The vision serves as a guiding star that motivates employees, attracts customers, and provides direction for strategic planning.
Unlike the “big idea” which captures the fundamental purpose or belief system, the vision specifically articulates where the business wants to be in the future—typically looking 5, 10, or even 20 years ahead. It answers questions like “What will we have accomplished when we’re successful?” and “What does our ideal future look like?”
A strong vision statement is ambitious yet achievable, specific enough to provide direction but broad enough to allow for evolution, and emotionally compelling to inspire stakeholders. The vision should be memorable, concise, and future-oriented – serving as a rallying cry that unites everyone in the organization around a common destination, helping inform strategic decisions by providing a clear picture of what the business is working toward, and ensuring that short-term actions align with long-term aspirations.
The Mission
The mission statement helps align internal teams, communicate the company’s purpose to external stakeholders, and ensure that all business activities support the core purpose. It’s typically more detailed than a vision statement, but still succinct enough to be memorable and actionable – a clear, concise statement that defines the company’s current purpose and primary objectives, essentially explaining what the business does, who it serves, and how it creates value today. While the vision looks to the future, the mission grounds the organization in the present, describing its core activities and the fundamental reason for its day-to-day operations. It answers the questions “What do we do?”, “Who do we do it for?”, and “How do we do it differently?”
The mission statement serves as an operational compass, guiding daily decisions and helping employees understand how their work contributes to the company’s overall purpose. It’s more action-oriented and practical than a vision statement, focusing on the business’s current identity rather than its future aspirations. A well-crafted mission statement typically includes the company’s primary function or service, its target audience or market, and its key approach or differentiator. It should be specific enough to distinguish the business from competitors while remaining flexible enough to accommodate growth and evolution.
The Core Values
A business’s core values are the fundamental beliefs and guiding principles that shape the company’s culture, behavior, and decision-making processes. They represent the deeply held convictions about what is right, important, and non-negotiable within the organization, serving as the ethical and operational foundation for how the business conducts itself both internally and externally. Core values answer the question “What do we stand for?” and define the character of the organization regardless of market conditions, leadership changes, or strategic pivots.
These values act as a behavioral compass for employees at all levels, informing how they interact with each other, serve customers, engage with partners, and make choices when faced with difficult decisions. Unlike strategies or goals that may evolve over time, core values remain constant and unwavering, representing the bedrock principles that the company will not compromise. They should be authentic to the organization’s identity, actionable in daily operations, and distinctive enough to differentiate the company’s culture from others in the marketplace.
These aren’t just inspirational posters on the wall—they directly influence hiring decisions, performance evaluations, strategic choices, and daily interactions. Strong core values help attract like-minded employees and customers, guide behavior when rules don’t exist for specific situations, and create a cohesive culture that can scale as the business grows. They should be limited in number (typically 3-7), clearly defined with specific behaviors that demonstrate each value, and genuinely lived by leadership and employees alike.
The Primary Value Proposition
A business’s primary value propositions are the specific benefits and advantages that customers receive from purchasing the company’s products, services, or solutions. These propositions articulate the tangible and intangible value that the business delivers to its target market, answering the critical question “Why should customers choose us over alternatives?” Value propositions form the core of the business’s promise to customers and directly connect what the company offers to what customers actually need or desire.
There are five primary categories of value proposition that businesses typically deliver:
Productivity value propositions help customers accomplish more, work faster, or achieve better results with less effort—such as project management software that streamlines workflows or automation tools that eliminate repetitive tasks.
Profitability value propositions directly impact the customer’s bottom line by helping them make more money, reduce costs, or improve their return on investment—like consulting services that optimize operations or wholesale platforms that offer better margins.
Image value propositions enhance how customers are perceived by others or how they perceive themselves—luxury brands, professional certifications, or premium services that confer status or credibility fall into this category.
Experience value propositions focus on how customers feel during and after their interaction with the product or service—this could include exceptional customer service, user-friendly interfaces, or emotionally rewarding interactions.
Convenience value propositions save customers time, reduce complexity, or make their lives easier—think of one-click ordering, same-day delivery, or all-in-one solutions that eliminate multiple vendors.
When defining your primary value propositions, consider which categories align most closely with your target customers’ needs and your business’s unique strengths, ensuring that your chosen propositions are both deliverable and differentiated from competitors. Most successful businesses deliver on multiple value proposition categories simultaneously, though they typically excel in one or two primary areas that become their competitive advantage.
The Differentiators
A business’s differentiators are the unique attributes, features, capabilities, or characteristics that set the company apart from its competitors in meaningful ways. These are the specific elements that make the business distinctive in the marketplace and give customers compelling reasons to choose it over other options. Differentiators answer the question “What makes us different and better?” and represent the concrete ways the business stands out in a crowded market.
Differentiators can manifest across various aspects of the business, including product features, service delivery methods, technology, expertise, processes, relationships, geographic presence, or business model innovations. They might include proprietary technology that competitors can’t replicate, exclusive partnerships that provide unique access or capabilities, superior quality standards that exceed industry norms, exceptional expertise or specialization in a niche area, innovative business models that disrupt traditional approaches, or unique company culture that translates into superior customer experiences. The key is that these differentiators must be perceivable and valuable to customers, not just internal distinctions that don’t impact the customer experience.
Effective differentiators share several characteristics: they’re relevant to customer needs and decision-making criteria, difficult for competitors to copy or match quickly, sustainable over time rather than temporary advantages, and aligned with the company’s overall strategy and capabilities. When identifying your business’s differentiators, focus on what customers actually care about, what you can genuinely deliver better than anyone else, and what creates real competitive barriers. These differentiators should be specific and provable rather than generic claims like “best quality” or “superior service” that any competitor could make.
The Unique Competitive Advantage
A business’s unique competitive advantage is the sustainable edge that allows the company to outperform competitors and defend its market position over time. It represents the combination of factors that enable the business to create superior value for customers while maintaining profitability, and most importantly, it’s something competitors cannot easily replicate or overcome. This advantage answers the question “Why will we win in the marketplace long-term?” and goes beyond temporary differentiators to identify the fundamental strategic position that ensures ongoing success.
Typically, brands define their competitive edge in one of three ways:
Cost leadership involves becoming the lowest-cost producer in the industry, allowing the business to offer lower prices than competitors while maintaining healthy margins—Walmart and Southwest Airlines exemplify this approach through operational efficiency and economies of scale.
Differentiation means offering unique products, services, or experiences that customers perceive as superior and are willing to pay premium prices for—think of brands like Tesla with innovative technology or Ritz-Carlton with exceptional service standards.
Focused (or niche) strategies involve specializing in serving specific market segments better than anyone else, whether through focused cost leadership or focused differentiation—companies like Whole Foods (focused on health-conscious consumers) or Rolex (focused on luxury watch buyers) demonstrate this approach.
The key distinction between differentiators and competitive advantage is sustainability and defensibility. While differentiators might be individual features or attributes that set you apart today, your competitive advantage is the underlying capability, resource, or market position that allows you to maintain superiority over time. This could include proprietary technology with strong patents, exclusive access to resources or distribution channels, network effects that grow stronger with scale, brand reputation built over decades, or unique organizational capabilities that took years to develop. Your competitive advantage should be deeply rooted in your business model and difficult for competitors to duplicate, even if they understand exactly what makes you successful.
The Positioning
A business’s positioning refers to the strategic place the brand occupies in the minds of its target customers relative to competitors. It’s the deliberate effort to create a distinct and valued perception of the company, establishing how the business wants to be thought of within its competitive landscape. Positioning answers the question “Where do we fit in the market and in our customers’ minds?” and determines how the brand is categorized, compared, and remembered by its audience.
A brand positioning statement is an internal positioning summary that companies use to promote the value their brand brings to a target market and their customers. It is used as a way to establish brand identity and to articulate a brand’s value proposition in a succinct way, answering questions such as: “What is the greatest benefit and impact of the product or service?” This statement typically follows a structured format that includes the target audience, the market category or frame of reference, the key benefit or point of differentiation, and the reason to believe or proof points that support the positioning claim.
Effective positioning requires making strategic choices about which customer segments to target, which competitors to position against, which benefits to emphasize, and which attributes to downplay. The positioning should be credible based on actual capabilities, relevant to what target customers care about, distinctive from competitor positions, and simple enough to be easily understood and remembered. It serves as the north star for all marketing communications and brand decisions, ensuring consistency in how the brand presents itself across all touchpoints while guiding product development, pricing strategies, and customer experience design to reinforce the desired market position.
The Tagline
A business’s tagline is a concise, memorable phrase that encapsulates the essence of the brand and communicates its core promise to customers in just a few words. It serves as a slogan, clarifier, mantra, company statement, or guiding principle that describes, synthesizes, or helps create interest in the brand; a form of shorthand for what a brand delivers; a powerful tool, not just for building brands, but for building organizations, as well. The tagline distills the brand’s value proposition, personality, and promise into a phrase that becomes synonymous with the company itself, acting as a rallying cry internally and as the verbal equivalent of a logo that sticks in customers’ minds and reinforces the brand’s positioning. Deceptively simple, a tagline must accomplish multiple objectives simultaneously: be short enough to remember easily, unique enough to differentiate from competitors, capture the brand essence and positioning, evoke an emotional response, and focus efforts on the owning of a single word or concept.
The best, most long-lived brand taglines fall into one of five categories:
Imperative taglines command action or inspire behavior, like Nike’s “Just Do It” or Apple’s “Think Different.”
Descriptive taglines explain what the company does or delivers, such as Walmart’s “Save Money. Live Better.”
Superlative taglines position the brand as the best or leader, like BMW’s “The Ultimate Driving Machine.”
Provocative taglines challenge thinking or spark curiosity, such as Capital One’s “What’s in Your Wallet?”
Specific taglines make concrete claims or promises, like FedEx’s former “When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight.”
An effective tagline becomes an invaluable brand asset that can last for decades, transcending individual campaigns while maintaining relevance across changing markets. It should work across all media and contexts, from business cards to billboards, and resonate with both internal employees and external customers.
The One Word
The ONE word a business wishes to dominate refers to the single concept, attribute, or idea that the brand aims to own completely in the minds of consumers. This is the ultimate distillation of the brand’s positioning strategy – when customers think of this word, the goal is for them to immediately and automatically think of your brand, and vice versa. It’s about achieving such strong mental association that your brand becomes synonymous with that particular concept, effectively “owning” that word in the marketplace and in cultural consciousness.
This strategic focus on word ownership is rooted in the understanding that consumers have limited mental space for brands, and the most successful companies are those that can claim definitive ownership of a powerful concept. For example, Volvo owns “safety,” Google owns “search,” FedEx owns “overnight,” Disney owns “magic,” and Kleenex has become so dominant that it owns “tissue” to the point where the brand name replaced the generic term. This word becomes the lens through which all brand decisions are filtered and the foundation upon which competitive advantage is built.
Selecting and dominating a single word requires extraordinary discipline and consistency. The chosen word must be valuable to customers, credible for the brand to claim, and defensible against competitors who might try to claim the same territory. Every aspect of the business—from product development to marketing communications, from customer service to corporate culture—must reinforce this word ownership. It’s not enough to simply declare ownership; the brand must earn it through consistent delivery and communication over time. This singular focus helps cut through market noise, simplifies decision-making, and creates a clear competitive moat.
When successfully executed, this word ownership becomes one of the brand’s most valuable assets, making it nearly impossible for competitors to dislodge the association once it’s firmly established in consumers’ minds.
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