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Brand Strategy Is All About The Journey

by Stu Jolley on 09/10/2020 | 6 Minute Read

We live in a world where we are spoiled for choice when it comes to what we buy. Which is great for consumers, but a challenge for many brands, particularly those that rely on a traditional retail distribution model. But increasingly, as consumers seek out more authentic experiences, many larger companies are looking to smaller, niche brands for blueprints to get their branding strategy right.

But it can’t just be a copy-paste job—look at Revlon’s recent lackluster attempt to gain a share of Rihanna’s Fenty market or Aldi’s stab at sweeping up BrewDog drinkers. To genuinely meet consumer needs in the here and now, brands have to be willing to turn away from their comfortable, predictable models and create a strategy that puts the customer—not the retailer—at the core.

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The Others Beauty Co, which I co-founded with Robot Food owner, Simon Forster, was created based on this principle of meeting customer needs and putting strategy at the heart of every business decision we make, from product formulation through to brand activation. And when we relaunched our first brand into the DTC market this summer, strategy played a significant role in this shift, not just as a framework within which to do it, but as the navigating principle behind the decision in the first place, a springboard for where we could take the brand.

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Editorial photograph

Meet a Need

When Simon and I launched our first products in 2016—a range of long-term skincare items for tattooed skin—it was in response to a need that that wasn’t getting met. Despite the acceptance of tattoos in mainstream culture, the products available felt limited to direct aftercare and nappy creams repurposed as a repair lotion. Amid a revolution about the importance of skincare from beauty brands that saw many bespoke products for different skin types, why weren’t tattooed folks catered to? 

With that question in mind, we set out to formulate, develop, and launch a range of skincare products created specifically for people with tattooed skin—one that wouldn’t just respond to direct aftercare needs, but nourish tattooed skin for life as part of a daily routine. 

To signal the product’s relevance to inked users, Simon and the Robot Food team designed a visual identity and packaging that would stand out on the shelf and appeal directly to tattooed people. By using traditional illustrated tattoo visuals as cues, we drew the eye of the right crowd—people with tattoos, letting them know this product was for them and their needs, specifically.

The range was a success on pharmacy and lifestyle retail shelves and is a testament to the impact that strategic brand thinking can have on a product when implemented from the earliest stages. By creating something based on a genuine need, we were able to communicate with the end-user in a targeted way.

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Know Your Customer

Strategic thinking doesn’t mean taking years to get a product out of the gate, which tends to be the case with many corporate brands that rely on eons of market research to launch a product that’s already out of date by the time it comes to market. 

What strategy comes down to is knowing your customer, confidently setting out to design your product, and, eventually, your entire brand to meet their real needs on their terms. It’s about making care and intention from a branding perspective part of your initial product formulation, long before concept and design are on the table. And it means ensuring that the same care and intention are present along every step of the development, and later, every step of the customer journey.

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Having worked with brands of all sizes and across different sectors, Simon was able to apply his expertise in strategy to the earliest days of our partnership, carrying that through to pack, while I brought my knowledge of the formulation and development stage to the table. 

It worked because we were able to feed off of each other’s familiarity in a way that ensured the product and the brand aligned from the outset; we had a 360-degree view of where we were and where we wanted to go from square one.

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The result, Electric Ink, delivered both as a product and as a brand, proving to me how important it is to marry product formulation and branding. We set out to create a product that was made specifically for tattooed people, and spoke directly to them, and through the right natural, active ingredients and the right design cues on the pack, we did just that.

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Keep Iterating

Still, brands have to work to stay relevant. 

Tattoo culture continues to grow, but the way people engage with brands changes as the world around them do—and only by having a good strategy in place can companies hope to adjust authentically to shifting demands and new modes of connection between customer and brand.

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A lot of brands make multiple compromises for retail because the product and packaging design have to do so many things to hit a target retail price point and communicate everything about that brand from the shelf. For us, it became clear over time that the largest opportunity for growth was online, and transitioning to a DTC strategy would mean that we wouldn’t need to shout to get heard from the shelf. Instead, the pack design could take a more stripped-back efficacious approach—as part of a richer and full brand world with many consumer touchpoints. By taking our product online, our packaging no longer has to shout that we are the skincare brand for tattoos, but we did have to find a way to announce that we are the right brand for our target consumer.

Our original brand proposition still stood strong, but we worked on rebuilding a brand strategy that positioned our consumers, one that struck a more profound chord.

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As a result, the name Stories & Ink was born. It reflects our new mission to facilitate meaningful conversations around tattoos while encouraging tattoo enthusiasts to share their personal stories. The illustration from the original design features on the inside of the packaging for an engaging brand experience, and we considered every brand touchpoint on the consumer journey. From a bespoke Shopify web platform to the images and tone of voice that populate it and our social accounts, we’re in total control of how consumers experience the brand.

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Editorial photograph

When we launched the original range four years ago, it was based on a strategy of creating a product that met a genuine need and communicating that through a brand that authentically engaged with the end customer. Our new DTC focussed model cuts out the middleman, giving us the control we need to meaningfully connect with the consumer base we built the product for. 

Better still, it’s a further iteration of our purpose, and the kind of strategy an agency needs to design from the get-go.

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