We dig deep to learn what you know & uncover opportunities

Every brand and every business model, even those within the same industry vertical has its’ unique culture, vision, approach and business driving factors. This is why Brand Labs begins every new client relationship with an immersive discovery process. Our focus is to understand your unique business model, your company culture, your brand vision and most importantly – your passionate believes. The end goal is gathering enough insight on your operation and business vision to effectively guide and inform our research and strategy stage. We begin by working closely with your team to satisfy our strategic brief documentation, collecting data points and proprietary information pertaining to your business goals. Our research, brand strategy, digital and engagement strategy team leaders work closely with your business leaders to

gather all available information to uncover potential channels and opportunities to generate business results.This process takes anywhere from a few hours to a few weeks depending on complexity of your ask, depth of historic activity and a number of other defining factors.Once we complete our discovery with your team, we regroup internally with our business analysts, brand strategy and digital engagement teams for an in-depth brainstorm and recap of the information gathered through our rigid discovery process. If any final clarifications are required, those are conveyed to the client and cleared up before the project moves forward. As a result, we establish a set of guiding principles that influence the direction of all our brand strategy, visual branding, digital and engagement strategy efforts.

We inform strategic paths through in depth analysis and hard data

Branding research is conducted with one goal – to uncover insights and opportunities to strengthen competitive position. We begin by gauging the competitive landscape, assessing our existing proprietary branding studies, as well as information gathered during the discovery process. We work with the client to conduct in-depth interviews with management, product and market facing teams to assess their pain points and their observation of consumer sentiment. At this point we are informed enough to speak to the intended audience; before moving to focus groups, we conduct small “think tank workshops” where representatives of the target audience are engaged in open discussion about their brand experience with brand at focus and well as competing brands. We gauge their emotional and qualitative response to the brand message, visual brand substance, brand support and of course the product to learn the decision making journey and key driving factors behind the selection process.

Armed with this information we work closely with the brand strategy and visual branding teams to develop potential engagement scenarios. These include visual branding and brand communications strategies as well as target audience segmentation, diversified branding approach, cultural and linguistic segmentation, behavior based emotional appeal and much more. We then move forward to apply these in series of focus groups spanning the entire spectrum of the intended target audience and any identified sub-groups known as segment within a segment.  The results are then packaged in a comprehensive report, providing hard data points around the overall branding program, including brand equity, brand positioning, visual branding and communications, consumer sentiment and product recommendations as well as a detailed analysis of the target audience and best performing communications strategies within each group.

We create consumer driven strategies that grow and evolve with the market

Your customer wants to identify with a brand they can grow with, a brand that will work hard to earn their trust and will value their opinions and aspirations. Working closely with our brand research team we identify the “low hanging fruit” – the group or groups of consumers with a potential to become the pioneers of your brand and drive early adoption. We begin the strategy development stage with the people; this usually involves an in-depth industry vertical expert, a creative, a social and a media strategist, supported a story teller (copy) and at least 1 or 2 representatives of the target audience.

Rooted in facts uncovered in the research stage, this team works as one to establish a number of concepts supported by visual and communication systems to see how we can best tell the brand story and test what set of messages will best resonate with the audience. Upon selecting one or two beta strategies we take these outside of our think tank and test them in the real world. At the end of the strategy development process we have a comprehensive brand communication vocabulary supported by strategic insight and successfully tested across all media touch points and brand communication channels.

We know what will resonate with the intended audience before you enter the race

The fact that we think an idea is good, or the fact that a client is ready to buy is does not guarantee its’ success in the live marketplace. As humans we tend to be emotional about concept, ideas and products that we incubate and as such – even the best experts can be bias when selecting a go to market strategy.

The one and only way to ensure that our strategy works is what we like to call the “touch test” – bringing your message and your product directly to your target audience. Through our TouchTest process we gather intel on the messages that resonate, receive real feedback on product and get to battle test our total positioning approach.

We create visual communications systems rooted in data and designed for business result

When you think of creative, the go to gauge is usually revolves around “like” or “dislike”. This is a personal opinion, and while we respect it fully – it has zero substance when it comes to business outcomes. Unlike most agencies we treat design and graphic arts as a communication tool to support the business strategy, rather than a visual experience that can be “sold”. The goal of our creative team on any project is to clearly understand the findings of our extensive process and “package”

them into a communications system that will clearly express the brand’s essence and more importantly will undeniably resonate with the target audience. As a result, ideas that resonate are adopted by the people that share the sentiment, and those people champion these ideas to the mass market, creating undeniable impact on the brand and tangible business result.

We guide and support you through and beyond the initial business success

We treat every client relationship as an invested business partnership. Our accounts and client services team works closely with our clients to integrate, understand their needs and guide the collaboration process to business success. Our account and project managers essentially become a part of your team and advocate for your business goals within our agency, providing leadership in every process and working hands on with every department involved in delivering your project. We believe that a branding agency is only as strong as the people who work in it. The stronger our team is, the more effective we are – and the more results we help our clients generate. We only hire team members who aren’t afraid of challenges, and look forward to them. Almost every single member of our branding firm, has run his/her own business at some point and time.

Most have consulted for major Fortune 500 brands. We believe in motivating our team, and growing with our clients. As our client grows in profitability, so do we – as a result of the increase in products, services, and market share – we help them expand into. The key to our agency’s success, is our culture of collaboration – and demand that our team members support each other and exchange expertise by working hand in hand. So whether the challenge is a corporate identity, web development, Mobile Apps, product Packaging, print media or retail engagement systems – the entire team is involved in the development cycle to ensure optimal result.