Brand Platforms: your Key to Uniqueness, Relevance, and Inspiration.

In a previous article we explored the importance of a clear marketing vocabulary. In a similar vein and rather than rushing into the frenzy of AI or Influencers’ fads, we take the time to define what?a Brand Platform is and ensure we have answered all the right questions before pressing on the creative button. Or rushing into an influencers campaign… If you like things well-organized and clear, this article is for you.

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WHAT IS A BRAND PLATFORM?

A brand platform is the structure that defines and organises all the components of a Brand. This system in turn guides all the brand expressions. It includes:

• Brand Promise, i.e. the most important emotional benefit a Brand can credibly offer;
• Identity and Product Benefits that underpin the Emotional Benefits and Values;
• Brand Architecture which assign a clear role to each variant for rich and cohesive offer.

Some Brands have Promises focused on consumption motivations & occasions, while others integrate a social and/or environmental vocation, a.k.a Brand Social Purpose.

WHY BRAND PLATFORMS MATTER?

In a saturated market, price and quality are no longer enough to stand out. Brand Platforms makes a Brand offer more unique and appealing.

A good brand platform is:

• Simple, i.e. easy to understand for everyone;
• Relevant, i.e. it must resonate with its audience;
• Inspiring, i.e. must guide creative ideas in the right direction;
• Motivational, i.e. it creates buy-in and excitement in the company.

WHEN DO WE NEED A BRAND PLATFORM?

Whether a Brand is new or old, large or small, 6 symptoms indicate the need for a Platform. If the answer the questions below is YES, then your Brand needs a Platform revision.

• "Our brand struggles to differentiate itself from the competition";
• "We find it difficult to explain our brand with simplicity (do the “gran ma” test)";
• "Brand messages change all the time and are not coherent";
• "Our Brand is losing market share";
• "Our Brand feels out of touch with market expectations";
• "Our current platform does not allow to develop exciting tools".

HOW TO CREATE A GREAT BRAND PLATFORM?

Defining or refreshing a brand platform requires touching its core components. This responsibility falls to the marketing department, in collaboration with the Brand's stakeholders.

We can with this team effort, especially when day-to-day urgencies prevent from stepping back and looking at things from new perspectives or internal barriers need to be smoothed out.

At the heart of the Brand Reveal / Megusta approach lies the active, guided and stimulated participation of an internal team made up of the brand's stakeholders including management, production, finance and sales.

Every Brand Platform refresh is articulated in 3 main phases:

1. BRAND ANALYSIS

Everything starts with a comprehensive diagnosis of the Brand, its competition and target audience with:

• Analysis of available market data and consumer studies;
• Competition study (packaging, discourse, communication);
• In-depth interviews with stakeholders from various backgrounds.

This later step also allows to grasp the management and motivation dynamics behind a Brand and informs the style of the second phase.

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2. BRAND PLATFORM CONSTRUCTION

The next phase sees the actual construction of the platform with 2 days of an in-depth workshop. Each Brand Platform component is explored and discussed in a structured multidisciplinary workshop held at the Brand premises. A typical agenda includes :

• Recapping on the big learning from the brand analysis and implications
• Identifying the natural Brand Motivational territory;
• Expanding the product characteristics into emotional semantics;
• Drafting emotional and emotional attributes, identity, personality and core values;
• Building a variants' architecture for current and future SKUs;
• Formulating several Brand Promise formulations;
• Summarising outputs and preparing elements for possible consumer validation.

3. BRAND PLATFORM EXPRESSION

The third phase of a Brand Platform construction is the most delicate and exciting one at the same time as it sees the expression of the Platform into packaging and/or communication. This phase requires to keep fresh creative ideas and a discipline to make sure they express the platform. Some marketeers call this “to stay in strategy”. In his phase:

• We create a brand book, a true guide to the visual, tonal, and strategic identity, and ensure total coherence across all media, both internal and external.
• We ensure that every aspect of the Brand remain aligned with the platform, optimizing packaging and communication briefs to better resonate with the target audience;
• We work on the redesign of packaging, brand discourse, or communication by adjusting the visual and verbal identity to strengthen the coherence and impact of your brand.

At Brand Reveal / Megusta, we leverage over 50 years of cumulative expertise across more than 100 brands in the beverage sector to help yours shine .

We are not neutral, but independent, with a unique background and proven know-how in management and project leadership.

Each platform project brings organizational comfort, intellectual richness, and management dynamics to the marketing department.

What we do, works.

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