[Podcast] Bridging Strategy and Design with Richie Meldrum

Richie Meldrum, a renowned brand strategist, consultant, and educator with a unique ability to bridge strategy and design shares his journey from copywriting to leading transformative branding projects, revealing how aligning strategy with design creates impactful, cohesive brands.

We dive into his process, lessons learned, and real-world examples of success and challenges. Richie also offers invaluable advice for designers and strategists striving to collaborate effectively.

Plus, we discuss the future of branding and how emerging trends are shaping the industry. Tune in for an insightful and inspiring conversation!

Get 10% off Richie’s Brand Strategy Program Bare Brand Strat (email me for the coupon).

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Transcript (Auto-Generated)

Hello, and welcome to JUST Branding. Today, we’re thrilled to have Richie Meldrum on the show. Richie is a brand strategist, consultant and educator with extensive experience in bridging the worlds of strategy and design.

From his beginnings in creative agencies as a copywriter to his current role, Richie’s work has consistently emphasized how thoughtful strategy and inspired design can combine to create cohesive, impactful brands. I’ve personally followed Richie for a number of years. I’ve recently met him up in Brisbane and Australia at the Design Conference.

And subsequently, I invited him to be a speaker at the first Brand Build Summit held back in August. And I’ve also just finished his BEAR Brand Strat program, which is a program that teaches all about brand strategy. It’s a live learning experience.

And it’s all about Richie’s approach to brand strategy. The point here is that Richie’s awesome and that you’re in an info treat for this episode. So welcome, welcome Richie.

Thanks guys. Thanks. Nice to be here.

Long time listener, first time caller.

Good to have you on Richie.

Cool man. Well, let’s start from the beginning. Well, not all the way in the beginning, but a little bit about your journey, like how you got into brand in strategy and what drew you to these fields.

Yeah. Well, it’s like a typical swervy path into brand strategy or the world of brand strategy, which I think is kind of typical of a lot of brand strategists, to be honest. It’s not like a linear career, really, is it?

It’s not like you kind of go come out of uni and come out of school and go, I want to be a brand strategist, study brand strategy, junior brand strategist, senior brand strategist. It’s kind of like can start anywhere and go anywhere, involve like a whole range of different stuff. So mine was probably words, like words and writing was probably like the first kind of, I don’t know, jumping off point, I reckon.

It was like the only thing that I was semi decent at at school or the one thing that was kind of really into at school. So creative writing, short stories, that kind of stuff. Poems sometimes.

I was, so I studied English lit at uni. So again, like more words, not so much writing, but books and literature, all the classics, Shakespeare, Chaucer, Milton, Wordsworth, all of that kind of stuff. And then when I left uni, one of the first jobs I had was journalism, so freelance journalism.

So I was writing for publications, mostly doing music stuff, to be honest, like music reviews, gig reviews, features on artists, that kind of stuff. And then carrying on that writing kind of vein, I had, well, there was a chance in carrying on. When I moved out to Australia, my girlfriend at the time was working in a shop.

And I was doing the typical, like, you know, newly arrived in Australia, bar work, landscape gardening, like anything I could to kind of fund my escapades up and down the coast. But she met this woman in a shop that she was working in that said that they were looking for a copywriter. And my girlfriend at the time, being the legend that she was, she was like, oh, my boyfriend’s a copywriter.

Never done any copywriting in my life at all, but she just kind of bullshitted my way into a job. So I landed a job as a copywriter. That was probably my first, I don’t know, introduction into the world of studios, agencies, marketing, design, brand, that kind of stuff.

And I stayed there for a while, a long time, like kind of three or four years, like being a copywriter. So like long copy, short copy, web copy, digital messaging, all that kind of stuff. And gradually that kind of moved into more, I don’t know, like maybe conceptual writing, scripts, concepts, that kind of stuff.

And I moved from being a copywriter eventually to a creative director. So I worked in a brand and digital design studio as a creative director, like leading a design team, building brands, doing a lot of campaigns, websites, that kind of stuff. But because I hadn’t come from a design background, like no skills or ability in design, I wasn’t one of those creative directors that was able to jump on the tools or kind of talk to the design team about the basic fundamentals of design, like grids, layouts, types, all that kind of stuff.

I had an opinion on it, obviously, but my contribution to those projects was much more from a messaging background, I suppose. Like what’s the story? What’s the message?

How are we going to write the narratives behind these brands? And I guess eventually it was more like, well, then you start questioning, how do you come up with those stories and that messaging? Why is it this messaging?

Why should it be that way that we articulate this brand? Which kind of led me naturally into strategy. And I’ve been running my own strategy consultancy since 2002.

So I work with a whole range of different businesses and organizations, really everything from like philanthropy to finance to fashion to technology, kind of doing strategies and narratives for them that span brand business and communication. And then as you said as well, I obviously I run their brand strap, which is the online brand strategy learning program. So four week, well actually six weeks, but there’s one at the end.

So I live four week online brand strategy learning program, really trying to kind of teach a very practical hands-on approach to brand strategy, how to sell it, how to pitch it, how to do it, how to kind of pick it up and put it into whatever it is that you’re doing. So yeah, it’s only been running for a year. We’ve had three cohorts, I suppose, the last one of which, as you said, you were on.

We’ve had like about 120 people go through it and I love doing those. I’ve always done workshops like for many, many years. They normally were just like kind of in-person hour-long workshops.

And then like, yeah, last year I decided to, or I was asked to kind of build it out into something more substantial. And that’s where Bare Brand Strat was born.

Yeah, so Bare Brand Strat, just for our listeners, I’ve taken over a dozen different branding and brand strategy courses. And I love learning from different people and different perspectives. And for this course, you can see where your previous background, the copyright and the messaging, it shines through.

Whereas you compare that to other courses, and some come from a brand design background, some come from a corporate background. And there’s always different approaches, and that’s why I love learning from different people. But I think it was fascinating how you said about because you didn’t have a design background, you had to learn how to bridge that gap, which is the topic of this session.

It’s like, were there any key moments or lessons at a particular time that actually helped you with this approach?

I was trying to think back on where I had those, not epiphanies, but recollections of that gap between strategy and design. I wouldn’t say it’s like any key moments, not that my crappy memory can remember, but I guess it’s just more like a kind of gradual realisation, that if you are creating design or brand identities without doing a strategy behind it, you’re just kind of winging it or you’re actually leaving a lot on the table that you could help brands do. You’re leaving a lot on the table, like not covering a lot of the areas that can achieve impact for a business or an organisation.

I’ve always kind of worked with like a high, I think, like a high caliber quality of designer. So there’s always been that kind of appreciation for like high quality design. I remember like one of my first bosses, like in that copywriting gig, he would like, he just had a really strong eye for design.

And I’d like all of the work would be brought out and he’d be there just like zoning in on the things within the concept or the identity work, whatever that were like needed work or needed lifted up or needed changes. And I was just there like kind of soaking up that appreciation for design that I hadn’t had because I hadn’t had a design background. So yeah, the appreciation for like quality design was always there from the start.

But yeah, I think in my roles as a CD in the early days, leading a design team, creating brand identities, we got a lot away with a lot, I feel because the quality of design was really good. But looking back, it was probably quite one dimensional. Creating brand identities on concept, they looked really good.

But I wasn’t doing a lot of the stuff that I do now. I wasn’t coming with the research, I wasn’t coming with the understanding of the business. It was just like on paper, it looked really good, but it was lacking any insights and therefore, it was lacking any kind of real strategy.

In the presentations of the concepts we’re doing, we might show the creative concept for it. It would be like, we saw this beautiful image, this picture outside of, this view outside of your building that’s like the landscape, like the sky, the sea, the beach, the land. So we took that picture and then we flattened the colors and then we pulled the logo out.

So there was creative rationale, I suppose, but it wasn’t coming, like I said, it wasn’t coming with a lot of knowledge of who their customers were, who their competitors were, what the people were like in the business. It was just kind of like the design, but we got away with it because the design was good. So I think gradually I started to say like, you know, I don’t want to leave it or I wasn’t wanting to leave the presentations to be liked or disliked by the client.

I didn’t want it to be this kind of like subjective thing. So I would then start kind of pre-building the presentations with story, with message, with like writing the words for what this brand was about, writing the line that kind of encapsulated the story and then get them like loving that, you know, because like when you describe somebody’s brand in a good way to them in words, they’re kind of like, they feel it, you know. So before they’ve seen any design work, they’re nodding, they’re ready to love it.

I always aim for like first time sign off. I was a big one for like, you want to walk out of there with like, we love it. No changes, what’s next?

So yeah, I started kind of like building in this kind of like pre-work to make sure that they were primed and ready to sign off or to love the design work when it came in. So that was kind of like where I, it was like almost like a gradual thing. I was like, this design work that we’re doing is good, but it’s not substantial enough.

It’s not insightful enough. And therefore, like, what do we need to do to like have more knowledge to create the kind of the thinking that went behind the design?

You have a rather catchy slogan, which got my attention when I saw your presentation up in Brisbane, which is, strategy gives the assist, design scores the goal, which I love. Can you define what you mean by this?

Yeah, that’s kind of emerged as like an unofficial mantra.

You got merged with it. It’s definitely a mantra.

I had a t-shirt. I had t-shirts made up. I mean, it’s kind of like a football, I suppose, adaptation of that kind of famous quote, which is…

Hang on, hang on, hang on.

There’s Americans on. So let me just explain. This is soccer, right?

For those, you know, up to speed. Just carry on. Carry on.

Just start. It’s Matt, by the way. I’d come in and just, you know, make myself useful.

Keep going, Richie. I’m excited.

Soccer or any sport, I suppose, where there’s kind of like goals involved. You know, without strategy, execution is aimless. Without execution, strategy is pointless.

I can’t remember, like, where that came from. But yeah, in football or in soccer, you know, goals are made because somebody got set up. Like, it’s that perfectly weighted cross or that lovely little, like, through ball flick on.

And if they don’t get that, they’re not going to have that scoring opportunity. And then similarly, if a really beautiful cross comes in, but the striker or the forward, like, shanks it into row Z, you know, you’re not going to get a goal. So I think, like, they’re kind of like, they rely on each other.

So that was the kind of idea behind strategy gives a goal, design, source, assist. A lot of what I feel I do as a strategist or brand consultant, it remains hidden unless it’s brought to life. You know, it needs a vehicle to be brought out into the world.

It needs to be moved off of thinking in a workshop or writing in a document or narrative on a page. You know, it needs to come to life. And I feel like design is one of the vehicles that brings the strategy work through.

So, yeah, strategy gives the assist, design scores the goal was the kind of the way that I like to think about it. This seems to kind of had made made sense to people or like resonate with people, really.

Yeah, definitely. It definitely resonates with me. And I was curious about that gap, right?

Are there any common gaps that you’ve observed between these two when they’re like not in sync? That you often come across?

I mean, I think the common gaps are that you can establish, like brands are about perception to me. And I know for a lot of people, you know, yourself as well, Matt, it’s like, like the sum of, it’s a sum of the perceptions that are held about you. So if you need to create a brand that creates a perception, an identity for a brand that creates a perception, then you first of all, you can’t just kind of like go into it, designing it based on what you like or what looks cool, or what your client likes.

You have to kind of establish, right? What perceptions do we want to create? And in order to do that, you have to know what perceptions you should create.

And in order to know what you should create, you have to understand like why they need to be created. So why is that relevant to this audience? Like why do we need to be perceived as like high value to this audience or budget to this audience or trustworthy to this audience?

You have to know what those perceptions are. And in order to do that, you have to get under the hood of the brand. And if you’re leaping forward and just designing based on assumptions of what those perceptions are, you can wing it sometimes, and you might be right.

And sometimes designers are really good for using their intuition and understanding about what kind of visuals or what kind of identity style resonates or creates a certain perception for a customer. But you shouldn’t really do it just on an assumption. You should do it based on a proper understanding about why it needs to be perceived in this way.

And for what reasons? 100%.

I think that’s such a great point, Richie. And we talk about this podcast, people have heard this before. Like my definition of a brand is the meaning that people attach to you and your offer.

And the game we’re in is the game of branding, right? Which is the attempt to manage that meaning. And you cannot do that unless, as you rightly say, you have a strategic angle here, right?

And if I was to say to you, well, what should that strategy focus on? What would you say? My kind of view to that is, it should be focused on the value that you want your audience to perceive in you, ideally unique value that they can’t get anywhere else.

What are your thoughts on that? If I was to say, what is it, that perception? What should business owners, brand builders focus on in terms of that?

Any thoughts on that?

Yeah, I agree. I think it’s very much in line with that. I always talk about the idea of why should people care?

Why are you craving this brand? If you want it to resonate, people are always like, well, what’s in it for me? Naturally, so why should you care?

I think a lot of brands, I have this structure that I go through in one of the workshop exercises whereby we fill out a certain questions about the brand. It’s like the problem you solve, the need you fulfill, the solution you provide, the benefit that brings and the impact that has. And I think a lot of the times brands very much focus on the solution you provide.

They talk about their product or their services. We’re smoother, we’re faster, we’re stronger, whatever. Just that ER at the end.

So I think a lot of the time they don’t go a little bit further. They don’t talk about the benefit that your brand will bring or the impact that that has on somebody, either personally or professionally. So I try to steer people when I’m creating strategies to really focus on the impact and the benefit that the brand has on businesses or individuals, rather than looking too inwardly and talking about what they do about themselves, you know, like introspectively.

So yeah, it’s value, it’s benefit, it’s impact. And yeah, ideally, it would be unique. I also try to be quite single minded in it as well.

People don’t have a lot of headspace to remember you. So if you go out there with like this whole plethora of different things, like they just can’t place you, you know, they positioning is like as you know, it’s about like, like occupying that certain space. And people don’t have a lot of space in their heads, not because they’re thick or anything, just because like it’s busy, it’s a busy world.

So you’ve got to be quite like kind of single minded, you know, like you’ve got to be like quite kind of focused on what that positioning is. And if you can match it to like the impact or the benefit that somebody has, I feel like you’re more likely to get into it. You know, like it’s like, I see that as a good way to kind of go about it.

That’s kind of similar to what you’re meaning in value, Matt, yeah? Like, is it like what value can bring, the benefit you can have?

Yeah, I like that kind of approach of like, well, why should anyone care? Like, what’s the, you know, businesses and brands can get so much in their own heads of why they’re so amazing, you know, what’s going on that frankly, they forget about what really their customers need to see in them. And I think you made a good point, well, earlier on about, you know, it’s not just about the perception as well, there’s also an internal reflection that needs to take place, right?

Because if you can get your team aligned and rallied around that thing, then also the whole branding process of this attempt to define what it is that we stand for, why should anyone care about us, can kind of really galvanize teams. And I find like there’s a huge amount of value, particularly in businesses that might be, you know, 10 years plus down the road from when they were founded, to kind of just get everybody in a room, like who’s, you know, in a leadership position, and really focus on, you know, what the value is that they’re going to offer the markets. What are your thoughts about the internal value of this, as well as the marketing value external out into the customer, into the customer as well?

Yeah, super important and something that, I don’t know, has like kind of become more and more on my radar. Again, like earlier on, I don’t think that we were paying attention to like what this brand was doing for people with inside the business. No, I think it’s like, and it’s natural, you know, like I feel like it’s like, the more you get into something, the more you realize like where it is actually beneficial and like where it can have the most amount of impact.

I don’t work with like many kind of like big, big brands, you know, like a lot of the brands I work with are kind of like founder based businesses. They range from like 50 to like, I don’t know, a couple of hundred people or something like national, but like international a little bit as well. So yeah, like the team and the staff and the employees and the culture and the leadership, like it’s very much like if you don’t get them on board with the brand, then you know, you can express yourself really well to your customers or your clients or your audiences, but it’s kind of going to fall down quite quickly unless you’ve got buy-in from people internally.

So like, yeah, bringing them along. And then there’s obviously like that kind of shift in terms of, brands have multiple audiences and a lot of the time, people just look at external audiences. They don’t go like, well, what about our team?

What about the people that we want to come and join our team? And so I think there is a difference I feel in like how you articulate a brand to an external audiences versus an internal ones, because internal ones are looking at this place going, do I want to want to come and work there? Is it somewhere I’m going to enjoy?

Is it going to be good for me and my career? So there’s different kind of things that you need to like flag for employer branding or internal branding that people care about, the external audiences wouldn’t. But I feel like there’s a lot of overlap as well.

Sometimes I think if you’re doing a project on a brand, you really need to have whoever it is that’s responsible for internal stuff, be it like head of people and culture or head of HR or something, you need them to be working hand in foot with the external stuff, the brand team, the marketing team. If you don’t have the internal buy-in, you’re missing half of the story almost. You’re missing half of the impact that you can have.

When you’re doing projects, who tends to be the point of contact? Do you have that dual thing like internal culture, people and culture person and marketing brand person as well? Or do you find that you work more with one side or the other?

Yeah, I mean, that’s a really interesting question. I tend to try. I’d love to say 100% it’s always CEO, right?

But it’s never quite that. Usually, it’s CMO, like Chief Marketing Officers. But I always try and get to the CEO because, ultimately, it’s their job to execute, right?

So all parts of the business need to be connected to the CEO. Or if you’re in the UK, we’d say the Managing Director, right? So what I try and do is, even if the CMO reaches out or someone in the marketing team, depends on the size of the company, some big companies, you might be talking to someone three or four levels down, I would always try and get to the leadership team with the strategic work for exactly the reasons that you’ve said because this isn’t just a marketing thing, right?

The brand belongs to all parts of an organization because they all need to understand it, connect to it, be passionately involved in it because whether you’re talking to operations, product, even finance, right? Like making decisions based on the long term future of the business, all of that has to be connected to the brand in my view. And so if you do brand in the way that you’ve suggested Richie, then you won’t just tuck it down into marketing like it can’t just be a veneer, it has to be something deeper.

Otherwise people will find you out, right?

You contrast that with what you were saying before Richie around like you got away with it because you had excellent designers, but that didn’t necessarily translate to culture or the leadership team. But it looked like the gut instinct you had worked, but you got away with it, but didn’t necessarily translate to everything else.

The truth is, who owns brand in an organization, right? Traditionally, it’s been perceived as a marketing thing because of brand identity, which is the design piece that you’re speaking to. But a brand isn’t just an identity, it is the whole, some of all parts, as you put it earlier, of the organization.

So it can’t belong to marketing. It has to be a shared owned thing across the C-suite, in my opinion. And that’s why it’s so important to get brand into the boardroom, up there, at the top, being discussed and getting everyone rallied around.

But anyway, I’m getting on my high horse now. What are your thoughts, Richie?

No, I agree. Do you think that that’s becoming more or less apparent within businesses? Do you think like brand…

Because I was talking about this idea of like start up stream, stay up stream. So, you know, like when you’re going into an organization or a business, like, yes, you’re not like you say, like you, you need to like get in the room with like the biggest person, the most senior person you can can because like you need to be perceived as like kind of bringing the most amount of value. And so because, yeah, and I think that the higher up you can go, the more sway you have to kind of do stuff.

But do you see that that is that brand is like, I don’t know, the role of brand as a seat at the boardroom table. Do you think it’s becoming more prevalent or less prevalent?

I mean, my particular view on this is that, and this is what I see, but I can’t answer for all businesses, right? Every business is like, caveats, caveats. Every business is different.

And I’d love to get your thoughts on this. I mean, my personal view is that startup brand is really, really strong. I think startup founders, founder led organizations, they understand that they need to make sure that they carve out position in the marketplace.

They understand why they’re different to the competition. And that often, that kind of drive and that knowledge and that idea often exists in the heart and the mind of the founder, who then influences everybody around them and then builds the business off the back of that. So I definitely think brand has a place early stage in business, but often it’s owned by the founder.

So there’s little or no need for a sort of strategist, because the founder is kind of playing that role. Where I really see the drop off, though, is as the business scales and grows, and I mentioned like 10 years in, particularly if the founder becomes uninvolved for whatever reason, in the business, sells out, becomes disinterested, starts a new business or whatever, builds a new team around them, and then sort of takes a back seat. That is where I see the beginning of the end from the brand’s perspective, because what happens is people sort of all start pulling in their own directions.

There’s no one there to sort of rally them. Even though there might be another CEO or a CEO, you might get two or three CEOs down the road, then each CEO has their own idea, and then they last for four years and another one comes in. So it can become a little bit schizophrenic.

Also, it’s often placed in the mind if the CEO is brand-orientated in their kind of remit. But that doesn’t necessarily mean everybody else is on board. So I sort of see it get a little bit murky, and then when you get right up to big organizations, I definitely see brand is kind of just almost like not a thing.

Like it’s tucked down into marketing, it keeps getting pushed down as a kind of a big kind of more of a marketing initiative. So that’s what I see. I can’t answer for every business, of course.

What do you see, Richie, from your perspective, how do you see it working out?

I mean, I think it depends on the person that’s in that like lead that senior, like top of the tree leadership role, you know, whether like they come from a background of, you know, business and operations and finance, or whether they come from a, I don’t know, like tech and product, or whether like, because everybody like kind of, again, like it’s kind of like, there’s no linear pathway to like being the CEO or the boss of an organization. And everybody kind of enters into it from their own kind of stream. I think, I feel like, you know, the value of brand is probably like increasing, but whether or not that translates to the willingness or the appreciation or the openness for CEOs and leadership teams to kind of bring brand right at that top level, I’m not sure.

I think probably it still sits a little bit there, but it depends also on the role of that kind of, I don’t know, the champion for brand within the business, you know, like, and their relationship with that, with their board or their senior level, senior leadership team or whatever. So I think it’s probably quite variable. I’d like to think that it’s becoming more important, but maybe that’s just me.

I’d like to say that as well. Just one other thought on that one before, you know, Jacob moves us on, but just a quick one. I also think that when you get a leader or an organization that knows that there is a growth opportunity ahead, and for whatever reason, the organization is not taking advantage of that, that’s when I see them think, our brand is not strong enough, right?

And that’s when they sort of start to think more strategically around, how do we orientate ourselves in terms of our positioning in the market? Like, I definitely think that therefore the market, you know, comes to play to kind of influence whether or not somebody’s switched on for the brand side of things or not.

Yeah, interesting.

The reason why they’re there in the first place and understanding where that’s come from is important for the context of the next steps.

Yeah.

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Well, this is going to be a challenge because I know you have a four to six week course on this, but it’s all about the process, right? Integrating strategy and design. You talk about your process, discovery, workshops and the whole smorgasbord.

So, we’re going to challenge you, let’s say in 10 minutes or so, just to give a high level overview of this process and maybe like what your discovery phase looks like, how you lead workshops. But yeah, just a high level understanding of the process, strategy and translating into design.

I mean, I think all brand projects are different. They’re all, they’re always like influenced by the unique circumstances of what you’re trying to do, the people you’re trying to work with, the existing skill sets within that business, what your desired outcome is. So, the process I feel should always be open to change.

You know, it shouldn’t be so rigid that you’re just like, this is how we do it and this is exactly how we’re going to do it every single time. But I do think that there should be like a kind of spine. And one of the things that I feel a lot of, because I got a lot of designers coming to the program, to the course that, you know, rightly are looking to, you know, like move upstream, you know, like to use strategy to like move upstream, to inform their design work more, to have more influence in the early stages of a design project.

And so one of the things I feel that they are often lacking is just like having a recyclable process of like what a brand strategy project looks like. They’re kind of making it up on the fly every time that they go into a project. So one of the things that I try to kind of not drill in, but like kind of impart to them is like have a process and like put it forward as your process.

No, don’t just have like brand strategy as a line item on your approach to creating identities and then just not expand on that. No, have it as a line item and then have all of the stages of that underneath. So the first like, I mean, it’s not a revolutionary approach to doing brand strategy.

The first is like a discovery, a research phase, like audits, interviews are the most important thing, analysis of data, analysis of competitors, analysis of the industry, site visits, watching, AI assisted research if you need to, for when that’s useful. It’s just really about like turning over as many possible stones as you can, because at some point you’re going to have to stand up in front of people and go, your brand is this, you need to start doing this, you need to stop doing that. And so one of the best things about being a brand strategist, I feel, or a consultant is you get to be dropped into all of these different industries that you might know a little about, but generally you don’t know that much about it.

So you’ve got to upskill, up your knowledge very, very quickly.

Yeah, Richie, you said something important before about the pricing and selling through brand strategy and in particular designers, right? So it’s one thing to have all this knowledge, but to sell it through and structure it in a way that it makes sense for the client, that’s a big challenge, right? And how to talk about it all and not just have that line item.

So maybe we could jump into that a little bit more because I think that was one of the most fascinating things I’ve shared. Well, feedback to you when you asked for feedback was like that particular section because you went into detail about the phases, the pricing and basically selling through strategy and why it’s important and why it’s valuable and explaining your process and how it all works. I think that is such a topic that’s not discussed as often as it should be.

Yeah, yeah. So do you mean like how to like sell it in to people that are kind of dubious on it or like what the…

Yeah, kind of like that in your phase approach because I know how you structure with your pricing tiers and talking about the value and why each section is done like that. I thought that would be good.

Yeah, so it’s kind of like a seven phase which is like research, workshop, playback, narrative, strategy handover, messaging deck and brand book. Like those are kind of the seven different phases.

Not one line item.

Not one line item. And obviously under those phases, you’re listing out what you’re going to be doing in the research phase, like how many interviews you’re doing, how many places you’re visiting, what material you’re auditing, like what industries you’re going into. So you’re expanding it out.

The workshops I always do after I’ve done all the research. I know a lot of people say, we’ll do a workshop and where we’ll establish your positioning, your values, your bit. There’s no way that you can just have a client walk into a workshop with them and leave with the strategy, the values, the narrative.

It’s just not the situation to be doing that. I’m not massive on brainstorming in that way. The workshop to me is just like a discussion point.

It’s a point to extract information, to test ideas, to align the room and to impress the people that you’re going to be eventually like going up for. So, yeah, I always do the strategy workshop after I’ve done all the research, also because I use a lot of the material from the research phase to custom design the activities that I’m creating in the workshop. I’m not a massive one for these kind of templated activities.

Like if your brand was a car, what kind of car would it be? It’s like just so generic. So I think that your workshop should be custom designed around the actual problems or issues that you’ve identified for this brand.

But you’re not trying to leave with the answers. It’s just really a discussion point. Then the phase three is the playback.

It’s that kind of the checkpoint where before you go on to kind of develop what the strategy should be or what the narrative should be or what the elements of the framework that you’re going to kind of wrap it all up in are, you need to kind of like bring everybody on board in what’s been done. So you’re documenting all of the research you’ve done. You’re presenting back all of the insights.

You’re showing them quotes that you’ve pulled from all of the interviews and like what you feel this means. And then I feel you’re making a whole series of like strategic recommendations on what they should be doing with the brand. Some of them are about what you’re going to do.

Some of them about what they should be doing more long term. And I also use the playback to propose, to put forward an initial proposition of what their positioning should be. Like build the story of your brand around a X positioning.

Because I want them to be on board with that. And I want to discuss that with them before I then go on and do it. I don’t want to like just kind of leap ahead, write the strategy, write the framework and go, boom, there it is.

I want to sense check it. So I use that playback. And I think a lot of the time, creators or designers or people in communication, they don’t have a deliverable to give to clients, you know.

So I think the playback document is this time where, where you’re talking to the team that you’ve been working with about all of this stuff that you’ve learned, what that means for them, what that means for the direction of the strategy. And that playback is like an actual deliverable. It’s like a lot of the strategic thinking, but just not finalized yet.

And so in terms of a costing, like a lot of the time, you know, because you don’t know what you need to do for a strategy for a brand or a business from a strategic perspective before you’ve properly understood, how can you then cost what that looks like? So what I do is I give a definitive cost for phases one to three. So I know what research I’ll do.

I know how many people I’m going to speak to, how many workshops I’m going to run. I know that what the playback consists of. So I’ll give a locked in price for that.

And then only after I’ve completed phase three, will I then be able to give a definitive scope and cost for the rest of the stuff. Because, yeah, like I said, you don’t know what you need to do for a strategy project until you’ve actually learned what to do it. So definitive cost for phases one to three, ballpark cost, because you don’t want to come in like miles out of line with what their expectation was, ballpark cost for what you think that the phases four to seven will be.

And that to me, like it stops you from presenting this kind of templated approach. It allows you to kind of spot new opportunities for you as a strategist or a consultant to go, hey, you know what, we need to work on this employer brand thing, or you know what, these products really need to be worked on, or we need to do way more in the strategy handover than I initially thought, or we need to rename that I never knew that we were going to work on the names of these sub-brands or whatever. So whatever springs forward is needing to be done.

Leave off the table until it’s on the table and then you can cost it.

All right. And then with phase five we’re up to? You said there was a couple more.

Phase five. So phase five would be a lot of the strategic thinking. So I always split it like strategy into thinking and writing.

So your thinking would be like your audiences, your landscape, stuff like architecture or portfolio strategy, your positioning strategy. So based on your audiences, your competitors and that differentiator, your positioning strategy. So that’s the kind of thinking stuff and then the narrative, the writing stuff.

So whatever you want to call it. Like I know people kind of get really hung up on what they call the different elements of a framework or such or the different parts of the story. I tend to call them like a positioning statement or a foundation or attributes, but you can call them whatever you want.

But it’s that writing part. It’s the narrative. It’s the naming, the story, the manifesto, the master brand line.

And I guess some strategists, they do all the thinking stuff and then they have to, I suppose, brief in writers to write that narrative part. I guess my background as a writer means that that’s my favorite bit to do. I work really hard on that to make sure all of the words and the appreciation of the power of language and words as a tool in brand creation are really there.

So that would be phase four. Phase five is the messaging deck. So that’s when I take the narrative.

Obviously, this kind of leads into this idea of transitioning into design. I think a lot of presence of strategy within an identity is in the words. So when I write the narrative, the narrative I view as the well.

You can’t just give the narrative to a design team or a design agency or an internal design team and go, they can’t just plonk all of this stuff all over their assets or the material or the touch points for the brand. So I try to give them a really like practical way to use the language that I’ve written in the narrative as a tool in the creation of the brand. So I’ll go into the narrative, I’ll cut it, I’ll splice it, I’ll dice it, I’ll re-edit it, and I’ll end up giving them this conceptual messaging deck which is born from the well, but it’s actually the water.

So they can then pick and drop and like distribute all of this language right across their visual concepts and so you end up with a really like verbally rich identity that’s got all that messaging, all that wording because I see so many identities and that’s the other thing that we were doing back then was, they’re just void of language. No, they just don’t have or they have even worse, they have bloody Laura Mipson like smashed everywhere. It’s like, how can you have a brand that’s telling a story when you’re not actually having any story in that brand?

So yeah, I always bemoan or I feel kind of sad when I see all this beautiful design work. It’s just so void of language. But I’ve tried to make it really easy for designers and they love it.

The designers and design teams I work with, they’re like, wow, this messaging deck, this drag and drop copy of different lengths of paragraphs. And a lot of time, you’re just taking the stuff that you said in your narrative and you’re clipping it. You’re making it a standalone sentence or making it a standalone paragraph or making it a standalone three words.

So when they’re creating stuff, they’ve got different lengths and spaces and usages for it. And they always love it. So that’s the messaging deck.

The strategy handover is that point where I transition, because often I’m brought in on projects when a design agency or a design team or a studio hasn’t been appointed yet. You know, like they’re bringing me in to do the strategy and whether that’s like business thinking about architectural portfolio or positioning or whether it’s writing the story, they haven’t yet decided who they’re going to appoint to kind of bring this to life, you know, who’s going to be the score the goal. So if you bring a design team in late into the game, you know, like I view my job as to be the smooth transition between all the work that’s been done in the strategy and then all the work that’s going to be done in the creation of this brand.

So you kind of really need to bring them up to speed. You know, I don’t want to chuck this strategy doc at them and be like, there it is and just vanish off into the distance because they’re like, who the hell was that dude? What the hell is this?

And what does it mean for me, my design team, when we’re creating this brand? So yeah, I’ll spend a lot of time just filling the gap, bringing them up to speed, giving them the research, giving them the recordings of the interviews, presenting the playback to them in the same way as I presented the playback to the client, giving them this messaging deck, focusing on the things that I feel have got a really strong design execution in them, and trying not to overwhelm them with information, but giving them, there’s that quote, give me the freedom of a tight brief from, I think it’s Ogilvy. It’s like, try not to overwhelm the designers or the design teams with all of this research that you’ve done, but distill it down into what that means for them and how they’re going to translate the perceptions that you now know you need to create based on your understanding, how they’re going to create those perceptions in the way that they go about creating the identity, the creative, the visual, all of that kind of stuff.

So I’m curious from this well, right? You have all the words and the message in there. Are you getting involved with any mood boards or stylescapes or anything at that point, or are you just handing off the message and they handle that, the designers?

No, I don’t really get involved in any mood boarding or anything like that. I leave that skill set I don’t have. So I leave them.

And it’s one of the favorite parts of my job, to be honest, like seeing, working with really strong designers and design teams and seeing them take the work that I’ve done and just bring it to life, you know, like bring it and sometimes it’s like, you just never imagined that they would take it in that kind of direction. Obviously, like there’s an expectation that it needs to create these kind of perceptions. And so you know when it’s on or off, but like, yeah, I don’t even get involved in mood boarding.

Sometimes I stay involved in the project as, you know, I’ll just be there as a kind of, you know, not like a silent person in the projects anymore, but just like helping them being in on presentations of those initial concepts and just working with them. Sometimes I like, it’s a bit of a back and forth. So, you know, like rather than just giving them the message deck, sometimes they might be like, Richie, we’ve got this idea to do, I don’t know, like an outdoor campaign.

And we really want it to focus on the parents of the students at this school or the technology of this platform. Do you have like, is there like a line within the language that you’ve got there? And I might kind of go back and forth a little bit with like taking out pits of languages from there and say, maybe this or try this or sometimes I’ll tweak it.

But generally, I’m not involved in any decisions on direction of creative anymore. I used to be, but not anymore. And I quite like that, to be honest.

So would you be sharing competitors or reference material as part of that handover as well?

Yeah, definitely. So obviously, like when you’re looking at competitors, like you can understand your competitors from a business sense, you know, like, who are they? How big are they?

What’s their market share? What’s their product offering? What’s their services?

What’s their positioning in the market? So you’ve got that kind of understanding of them from a documented business or organization sense, how are they articulating themselves at the moment? But then when I’m doing it, I’m also like grabbing in the visual representation of those brands.

You know, I’m going to where their brand is present, whether that’s like their site or their products or their venues or whatever. And I tend to pull in the visual representations of the competitors as well as the information. I use those, I call them like competitor mood boards, I suppose.

Obviously, they’re not the brand, they’re just a representation of the brand in visual format. But I feel like that helps designers kind of go like, right, I understand this competitor from a business perspective, and now I’m looking at them from a visual perspective as well. So when they’ve got like, I don’t know how many is six or seven or different people, they can see like, okay, they’re in that space, they’re in that space, they’re going for this positioning.

Richie’s saying that we’re now going for this positioning. And this is how we echo our little space in the jungle, you know, our kind of little beam of light in the jungle. That’s our beam of light, our own one.

Awesome.

Please excuse the interruption to your scheduled podcast. It’s Matt Davies here. It can be lonely out there when we’re building brands and having a support network around us can be very valuable.

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I’ll see you there.

Matt, did you have any questions? I have some more for you.

No, but I’d be kind of interested in, and appreciate that this might be a big question. So feel free to sort of gently tiptoe around it. But when you brief a design team in, what do you think the key things are that they truly understand when you distill things down?

You mentioned the competitors, the positioning, but what does that really look like in real life?

Well, I tried to focus on three things. So the first is one that’s like, well, who? Like, who are we creating this for?

So I’ll give them whatever ways I’ve used to document the different audiences. And that changes sometimes, you know, like sometimes I’ll do what you might call slightly more like, I don’t know, creative characteristics of the different types of people. Like I did one for a women’s fashion, a footwear brand.

And, you know, I’m not a massive one for going like really deep into these like demographics of like here’s Suzy, she’s 34, shops online, eats cereal, has a cat. Like, I just don’t think that like that really lends itself that well. It does have different uses maybe further down the line for marketing.

But I think for a designer, you’re really trying to understand like the motivation, like what do these people care about? What are they motivated by? What do they want?

And so I’ll document different audiences sometimes by like kind of, yeah, like kind of core characteristics. Sometimes I’ll document by if it’s a B2B business, which I kind of prefer, I find it easier to document audiences when I’m basing them on their profession and their role within the kind of buying pattern. So I might document who they are.

This is what their kind of makeup is. This is what they care about. This is what they’re motivated by.

Often I’ll use visual references, so I’ll get an image of somebody that I feel personifies that different group, that specific audience group, and I’ll really focus on who it is that we’re designing for, and I’ll have a discussion in that handover session about what I’ve learned about these different types of people. Because don’t forget, I’ve obviously spoken to all of these different types of people in the interviews that I’ve done. So I’ve got in my mind at least the kind of summation of what type of person this builder is or this architect is or this parent or this teacher.

Like I’ve got kind of something in my head that I know that they care about and that our brand is going to meet in terms of the value that is bringing them. Going back to your point before, Matt, about value. So the audience is the nexus competitors, as we’ve said, you know, like if you’re going to create a brand that stands out, you kind of need to know what you’re standing out against.

And you don’t have to stand out just for the sake of it. You know, like you don’t have to be like, they’re all like this. So we need to be completely different, but you need to know like what your slot in the line up looks like and how you can be something that is like different or more interesting or more appealing to the certain audience group that you’re going for.

So audiences, competitors. And then the last thing, which I think is the most important thing is I call it the peg. It’s like, what’s the idea?

When you’re at primary school and you had run in on the first day of primary school and your teacher would be like, like go and put your coats and jackets on your peg. And you’d run into the cloakroom, there’d be a peg with like your name on it, Richie on it. And that’s your peg.

That’s nobody else’s peg. You put your hat, your jacket, your bag. And so I think it’s kind of similar for brands.

You want to find that peg, that thing that is your story, your idea. What are you building the story of this brand around? And so in the narrative work or the strategy narrative, I always try to boil down every single business or organization down to one word.

Like, what’s this thing that we’re going to build the story of this brand around? And I really focus on the design with the design team or the design agency and what that thing is. And so whether it’s like connection or equity or efficacy or tradition, like, you know, I feel like what like you can by honing in on that one thing, then the designer, like they can then just like have that little nut, that little that little nodule, nodules, no word is it.

But then they can take that and then they can boom out like creatively from that. So like if I said to a designer, like this brand is about connection, there’s so many like ways that you can execute creatively to create a brand that has perceptions about connection. Now obviously, you know, there’s different ways that you would communicate through the language, through the experience that you provide your team, through the way that you hire, like all of these different things that we talked about that brand can have an influence on.

But my role in transitioning it to designer is about trying to hone them in on audiences, competitors and what’s the hook, what’s the one peg that we’re going to build this brand around.

We actually had a whole episode on this, Matt, and I did a whole episode on the big idea, which is like the peg or all this called DNA.

It is so powerful, isn’t it? Because as you say, even, I know you’ve couched this in the context of a design team, but if we broaden that a little bit, even for sales teams, even for marketing teams, even for product development teams, like understanding the one thing that you’re going to stand for against the competitors out there, the core pillar of everything that your temple is built on, if you like, is crucial. So I love the peg idea.

I remember that from school, you know, you go in and you’re back in the car.

It’s the first time we’ve heard the peg. We’ve heard DNA and essences and soul, but peg. Just for listeners, season four, episode 15, Matt and I have a whole episode on the peg idea, or the big idea.

Oh, we didn’t call it the peg.

The big peg.

I’ll see you for that one. But yeah, no, it’s important, though, to simply… I think what I’m learning from what you’ve said, Richie, is this idea of simplification, right?

Particularly to allow other professionals to come in and do what they do best. As you rightly say, they don’t necessarily need to understand all the research and all the interviews that you’ve done and all of the shenanigans around that. All they need to understand is, okay, how do I take that and create something phenomenal from it, that it’s going to align with that strategic intent?

That’s what I’m learning from you. It’s like, how do you simplify that? To one thing, I think is, if you can do that, that’s powerful, right?

Yeah, it’s definitely about simplification. Then it’s about practicality. The messaging deck gives them the supporting tools to then bring in what that peg is and how that peg is explained and how that peg manifests itself through language.

So, they’ve got that single idea, but then they’ve got all of this writing and messaging that is that single idea in words and language. So, I kind of ideally like set them off with the best possible intentions, you know? And generally, it works.

Not always, but, you know, generally, it works.

Well, let’s talk about an example just to bring this all home. You know, what’s maybe a case study that comes to mind, where you’ve kind of seamlessly seen this strategy execute well with, like, the design phase and, you know, brought the whole brand together.

I mean, there was one that I worked with for an ag tech company based in the US. They’re based in Mystic, which I think is in Connecticut. They’re called ENCO.

So, they’re an ag tech startup. They’re a lot bigger than they were when I started with them, but they do, like, plant health and crop protection. So, they took all of these, kind of, the science of combatting human health and applied it to agriculture.

So, agriculture industry had been the same for ages. You have these big players, not innovating. So, ENCO came in, being like, no, you know, you can use less of your crop protection if you’re more strategic about it.

And if you’re using less, then you can have more, a more sustainable approach. And they were sponsored, they got, they were funded in, I think, round two by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. So, but they didn’t look like this or sound or feel or, or outwardly express this kind of like, you know, newer model of plant health and crop protection.

So, I worked with a design agency, I designed a brand studio called ED, who do a lot of work in Australia, but also the US. And, you know, we were like, you know, this brand has this, has the opportunity to be, to be quite out there in terms of like, what it’s standing for. So, we built this idea of change was the peg, you know, like that we’re gonna build it around, you know, like we are bringing new novel products in, we’re doing it, we’re doing machine learning, AI integrated, like a better way to do things, more sustainable, focusing on farmers and growers in developing countries.

So, it was like ripe for this brand that came out, there was like more rah rah, you know, like a little bit more like up with it about what they’re trying to do. So, I wrote this whole kind of like strategy that was based on that, spoke to all of their team and farmers and growers and all of the different audiences and kind of came up with this strategy that was based around this idea of change. It was like, you know, breaking rules, changing the games, pushing the limits, like bringing new to what was like previously a kind of like slightly kind of archaic and kind of slow moving industry.

And the way that this peg was articulated, because I always take the peg and then I think you can take the idea, but you need to express that idea in a different way. So the idea of change, I expressed as grow new, just like two words, like grow new. And then I worked with the design designers and the design agency from Ed, who I feel created this like really like striking bold out there, visual identity, lots of the language came through.

They used like this kind of like aerial photography of different farmlands and growing lands, but they did this like kind of cool visual representation of it. Everything about the perceptions that that brand was creating was creating the perceptions of a brand that was like about change, you know, that wasn’t about the old way of doing things, did things differently. So I think that that was a really successful one, you know, when they had that brand and they had that idea and then the visual that came into it, to me, it looks and feels like something completely different.

And the mark that the opportunity was there was right to be something completely different. So yeah, that’s definitely one that I feel ENCO and Agtech Starts Company based in the US was one that I feel that really like melded those two elements of strategy and design together really well.

Sounds amazing.

Thanks for sharing. All right, so I think we’re coming up on time, but let’s ask for your advice for number one, designers and number two, people like creative teams. Is there any advice you’d give them?

Well, just general advice.

Yeah, well, anyone that wants to strengthen their strategic approach.

Yeah, I mean, I think just like start doing it is one of the main things. I feel like a lot of designers and creators are doing strategy work in their projects already, but they’re just not putting a process around it. They’re not charging for it.

They’re not entering into discussions and conversations with clients pushing the value of strategy. They’re spending time researching, spending time looking at the different audiences, but they’re not really kind of formalizing the process. So go into your projects with an idea that the strategy phase isn’t just a one line and the workshop isn’t just this thing that you go into as a kind of fact finding exercise.

Detail the research that you’re going to do. Ask at least speak to people, like speak to like, I don’t know, ideally like even if it’s just five people internally, five people externally, like there’s a lot of times people like, oh, my clients are too small. They won’t have the budget for research.

It’s like, well, why would you embark on creating a brand for audiences without speaking to the audiences? If there’s a business owner, he’s like, no, we don’t need, why would you not speak to your team or your team part of this brand? Like we need to bring them into this.

So be like kind of slightly forceful, like this needs to happen in order for this brand to work. Detail the research. The most important thing I feel is like have that point where you play back your thinking.

Don’t take your thinking and just merge it straight into a strategy which merges straight into a design, which merges straight into a design presentation. Have the playback. Go, just list all of the stuff that you’ve done, pull out quotes from the people that you heard, organize them into buckets and reveal what you feel this means.

Propose a positioning before you then design. Put some formula, put a formula or put some formality around the strategy process and then repeat that. Just do it because I think that, like I said, a lot of designers are doing it already.

They’re just not formalizing the process.

Thank you, Richie. Wise words. I think we’ll wrap this up, but just before we do, can you let our audience know where they can connect with you?

Richie Meldrum on LinkedIn. I’m always bossing around LinkedIn, Instagram, at Richie Meldrum. The Bear Brands Strat is on there as well, so at Bear Brands Strat.

You can find me in all those places. So the next cohort or the next program of Bear Brands Strat is running in probably late February, early March, 2025. I’m actually doing two concurrently for this one.

So a lot of the time, I’ve had people from Europe or the US who want to join, but because I’m running them primarily on an Australian time zone, they’re in their beds. But we know Jacob now from after running the Brand Builders Summit, the importance of doing stuff late at night when you live in the future, like in Australia. I’ll be running two concurrently, one for an Australian-based or Asia PAC-based time zone, and then one which will be later in that day, which will be for Europe and US-based audiences.

Haven’t quite figured out the exact timing, but the wait list is now open, barebrandstrap.com. So if you sign up to that, I’ll give you all the details when the first pre-release slots open up.

You’re very brave doing two in one day, two time zones. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It’s like, I feel like somebody said you should just like record the one in the morning and then play the one in the afternoon. Like play that one in the afternoon.

Somebody asked a question, just blatantly ignore it. But no, I mean, I love doing them. I love doing them.

You know, like teaching and sharing information. I’m really open and honest and transparent with sharing a lot of my process, my work, the examples. So I don’t want to like gatekeep anything.

I really think that strategy can be used. And I think it’s more and more important for designers and creatives to move upstream. And because the transactional, I mean, Matt, you always talked about the head, be the head and not the hands.

I’ve always liked that idea. So yeah, I think strategy is a really good way for everybody to kind of be seen as, be value add and be paid as more of a head and not just the hands.

Yeah, so important. Richie, it’s been amazing having you on. Best of luck with the cohort and with all the work you’re doing.

Thank you for carving out some time for us on JUST Branding. You’ve been awesome.

No, it’s been great. I’ve really enjoyed it. Thank you so much, you guys, for having me on.

And yeah, it’s been good to chat.

Thank you, Rich.

Thanks, Jacob. Thanks, Matt.