Brand strategy consultant: what one does, what it costs, when you need one

Brand strategy consultant: what one does, what it costs, when you need one

A brand strategy consultant works out what a company stands for, who it is for, and how it should be described, before any logo or website is designed. The engagement is priced on senior time, runs 7 to 9 weeks before design at BrandBuddy, and a founder-run company needs one when growth has outrun the story the company tells.

What a brand strategy consultant does

A brand strategy consultant is an outside advisor who defines what a company stands for, whom it serves, how it differs from its alternatives, and how that should be said in every place the company speaks. The output is a set of decisions: a positioning, a story the staff can repeat, a set of messages by audience, and a plan for putting them into the market. Design comes after.

The work starts with listening. The consultant interviews the founder, the leadership team, a sample of customers, and often the staff who talk to customers every day. Sales decks, pitch documents, reviews and lost-deal notes get read. The point is to find the gap between what the company believes about itself and what customers actually pay it for. That gap is usually where the strategy lives.

Then the consultant writes. A good strategist produces one page that says what the company is, in language the founder would use at dinner and the sales team would use on a call. From that page come the positioning statement, the message hierarchy, the naming decisions if any, and a brief for whoever does the design. The page on brand story covers what that single page has to contain and what it has to leave out.

What a brand strategy consultant does not do

They do not draw the logo. They do not build the website. They do not run the ads. Some consultancies, BrandBuddy among them, take the work through design and launch, but the strategy is a separate step with its own output, and it is finished before a designer opens a file. If a proposal for “brand strategy” leads with mood boards, it is a design proposal wearing a different label. A brand consultant, a branding agency and a design studio each have a place; the question is which one you need first.

When a founder-run company needs one

A company between USD 3M and 60M in revenue does not usually have a brand problem. It has a growth problem that shows up as a brand problem. The signs are consistent.

The sales team describes the company five different ways. The founder can explain the business in twenty minutes but nobody else can do it in two. A second generation joins and asks why things are done this way, and nobody has an answer that is not “because we always have”. A new market or a new product line does not fit under the old name. A funding round is coming and the deck reads like a product specification. A category that was empty five years ago now has eleven players who all say the same things.

Any one of these is a reason to call a strategist. Two or more is a reason to call one this quarter. The common thread is that the company has customers and cash flow, and the story has not kept up with the business. A founder story that once carried the company now has to carry a team, and that is a different piece of writing.

The wrong time is before the company has customers. Strategy built on a founder’s intent alone is a guess. It needs paying customers to interview, and a real pattern in why they bought.

Consultant, agency or studio

Founders often ask a strategist for something an agency should do, or ask an agency for something a strategist should do. The table below sets out the difference.

What a brand strategy engagement costs

We do not publish fees on this page, and a consultant who quotes a price before a conversation is quoting a template. What we can do is explain what moves the number, so you can read a proposal properly.

The largest driver is senior time. Strategy is done by the person with the experience, not by a junior with a workbook. The number of weeks that person spends on your account is most of the cost. The second driver is the number of interviews. Ten founder and leadership conversations plus fifteen customer interviews is a different job from four conversations and a survey. The third is research beyond interviews: category audits, competitor reads, pricing work, staff surveys. The fourth is scope. If design (name, identity, website, brand book) is included, the fee rises substantially and the calendar extends by months, because design is done by different people at a different pace.

Three engagement shapes

A fixed-scope project is the most common. It has a defined set of steps, a defined output, a fixed fee and a fixed calendar. At BrandBuddy this is the 4R method, and the strategy portion runs 7 to 9 weeks before design begins. This shape suits a company at a clear turn: a launch, a round, a succession.

A monthly retainer keeps the strategist in the room after the project. It is a set number of days per month for counsel, for reviewing work from agencies, and for holding the line on the story as the company hires and grows. It suits a company that has the strategy and now has to live it.

A fractional CMO is the largest shape. The consultant acts as head of marketing for part of the week, owns the plan and the agencies, and reports to the founder. It suits a company with no senior marketer and no wish to hire one yet. It costs more per month than a retainer and less per year than a full-time hire at the same level.

What a proposal should itemise

Read the proposal for these lines. Who does the work, by name, and how many of their days. How many interviews, with whom, and who recruits the customers. What research is done beyond interviews. What documents are delivered at each step, and what “step complete” looks like. Whether design is in scope, and if it is, what is included and what is priced separately. How many rounds of revision. What happens after delivery: is there a handover, and for how long is the consultant available. A proposal that cannot answer these is a proposal that will grow in the middle.

How to judge a brand strategy consultant

Ask to see one page of strategy from past work, with names removed. If it reads like a poster, keep looking. Ask who will conduct the customer interviews. If the answer is a research vendor the strategist has never met, keep looking. Ask what they would do if the founder’s view of the company and the customers’ view turned out to disagree. The right answer involves the founder hearing it directly, early, and in plain words.

Ask about sector. Method transfers across sectors, but a strategist who has worked in healthcare or financial services knows what a regulator allows you to say, and one who has worked in industrial categories knows a procurement manager buys differently from a consumer. Ask whether they have worked with family-run companies. The politics of a second generation joining are not the same as the politics of a venture-backed board, and the strategist will be standing in the middle of them.

Finally, ask what happens if the answer is that the company should not rebrand. A strategist who cannot say “your brand is fine, your sales process is the problem” is selling a rebrand, not strategy. Brand purpose is the usual place this goes wrong, because a purpose statement is easy to write and hard to earn.

How BrandBuddy does it

BrandBuddy runs brand strategy as the first two steps of the 4R method: Roots and Routes. Roots is brand discovery. Over 2 to 4 weeks we interview the founder, the leadership team and customers, and read what the company has already said about itself. The output is a one-page read of what the company stands for and where it is out of line with itself.

Routes is the brand framework. We write two directions the company could take, choose one with the founder, and test it with customers and staff over 3 weeks. The output is the story, the positioning and the marketing plan. Together, Roots and Routes take 7 to 9 weeks, and that is the strategy engagement.

Represent, the design step, comes third: name, identity, brand book, website and content system, from 2 weeks and on. Rollout puts the brand in market with a launch plan, agency briefs and the first 90 days, with counsel after. Most agencies sell design as step one. It is step three. The full method is set out on the 4R method page, and the practice is described on the BrandBuddy page.

Questions people ask

How long does a brand strategy engagement take?

At BrandBuddy the strategy work runs 7 to 9 weeks: 2 to 4 weeks of discovery interviews, then 3 weeks to write, choose and test a direction. Design starts after that and takes 2 weeks and on; the scope sets the length. A shorter timeline usually means fewer customer interviews, which weakens the result.

Do we need a brand strategy consultant if we already have a marketing agency?

Often, yes. An agency executes a brief. If the brief is unclear, the agency fills the gap with its own assumptions, and the work drifts. A strategist writes the brief the agency should be working from, and can review the agency’s output against it. The two roles are complementary and rarely done well by the same team.

What is the difference between brand strategy and brand identity?

Brand strategy is the set of decisions about what the company stands for, whom it serves and how it is described. Brand identity is the visual and verbal system that expresses those decisions: name, logo, colour, type, tone of voice. Strategy is written; identity is designed. Identity built without strategy is decoration.

Can a brand strategy consultant work with a family-run company where the founder is still in charge?

Yes, and this is the most common client at BrandBuddy. The consultant interviews the founder and the next generation separately, then puts both views next to what customers say. The strategy that comes out is one the founder can recognise and the successors can carry, which is the point of doing it before the handover.

Send one paragraph about your company to sg@c4e.in. We reply with the first question we would ask you in the room.