USPs (Unique Selling Propositions) are an outdated concept for modern brand strategy. They originated in the 1940s to emphasize functional product benefits in advertising. While this made sense when brands had unique functional differences, today's market is crowded, and most functional differentiators are easily copied.

Today, brands need to focus more on emotional connections and bigger promises beyond mere functionality. While the concept of differentiation is still crucial - and you need to identify a brand's relative strengths vs. competition - using the term "USP" may date your work, be too difficult to articulate and misses the broader emotional narrative essential for modern brand building.

Read on for what a unique selling proposition is, USP examples, and advice from some of the world's most successful business leaders on why this is not enough to build a strong brand today.

What USPs mean and why they are outdated 

So you've got to understand where this term has come fro...

What to do if your client doesn't like the brand strategy options you've presented

If a brand strategy doesn’t land with a client, don’t panic — in this video and blog we help you navigate the moment by digging into why it missed.  Common issues include:

• the idea being too ambitious (or not enough)
• personal bias from a dominant stakeholder
• misunderstanding what a brand strategy is
• misjudging whose voice really matters.

Ultimately, it’s about listening, adjusting, and supporting the client’s direction — it’s their brand, not yours.

Here's a transcript of this video:

Question:
"I'm curious, what happens if a proposition doesn't land well with the client? Not necessarily that they hate it, but that they're not sold on the proposition or they don't particularly like it. How would you navigate that?"

The first thing to say is that the 'navigate' word is exactly it. How do you navigate what happens next? Because it's not usually about blowing everything up and starting ag...

A brand strategy is a bridge between the goals of a business and why anyone is going to care. Trends give you a source of insight into things that matter, or are going to increasingly matter to those people you need to influence: your potential buyers.  Knowing what matters to them is important for two reasons. Firstly, it helps to ensure your brand strategy is relevant. Secondly it helps to ensure you're creating a strategy that will last for the long-term. 

Read on for the two different types of trends, which one you need to pay attention to, case studies of brands that used trends to improve their brand strategy and business growth and where to find the right trend sources.

What trends are and how to use them in brand strategy

What are we talking about when we refer to trends?

Trends: A general development or change in the way something is moving or people are behaving (Cambridge Dictionary). 

There are different sorts of trends.  Some are more long-term – signifying a bi...

“Begin with the end in mind.”  

One of the ‘Seven Habits of Highly Effective People’, and common sense, you might say. 

But very unhelpful if you’re trying to learn how to do brand strategy.

Because here’s what happens.

When people try and learn how to do brand strategy they start by researching models and frameworks - the end deliverable for a client.

But then they get stuck.

They get stuck in the muddy world of different models, frameworks and jargon promoted by different people and agencies trying to differentiate themselves with their brand strategy deliverables.  It’s understandable, but it’s not helpful if you’re trying to learn how to do brand strategy.

(I know this, because I’ve polled the 348 people who’ve taken Brand Strategy Academy and it’s where they were stuck before they took the course). 

The truth is - it doesn’t really matter what model you use, as long as your deliverable answers the fundamental questions you need to answer in a brand strategy to help to move...

What does it take to build a successful brand?

People have been taking about this decades, but now neuroscience, marketing science and behavioural economics have added another level of understanding.

But what does it all say...simply??

I have you covered.

Read on for all the latest on how to build a strategic brand.

Written for people who are not neuroscientists.

Strategic Brand Building - The Scientific Approach

Decades ago, Walter Landor, the founder of one of the world’s largest and oldest brand consulting firms (where I cut my teeth on brand strategy) said:

“Products are made in the factory, but brands are created in the mind.”

Neuroscience now proves this out: brands exist in our minds as a complex network of nodes that hold pieces of information.  

Michael Platt at Wharton calls this the 'Brand Connectome'.

He calls it this to reflect the efforts to build the ‘Human Connectome’ - a “complete map of the neural connections in a brain.”

Brand connectomes are just a s...

Brand strategy jargon.  It’s everywhere. It stops smart people learning how to do brand strategy, and it prevents great ideas from becoming drivers of business growth.

It’s a barrier to clarity and simplicity – key elements of an effective strategy.

Positioning, value propositions and purpose are three of those phrases that can trip people up. 

If you don’t know what they are, and how to use them, they can put you off delivering something a business really needs.

If you’re used to using just one of them, it can lead to unnecessary battles with a client, where you’re fighting for the use of one over another without really knowing why you’re doing so.

Using all three together can create confusion.

But so can duplicating the same one too much across different parts of a business.

So let me help you get more clarity. 

I’ll address what positioning, value propositions and purpose are – but most importantly what they DO.  How they HELP an organization and how and when to use them....

What are the best brand strategy examples to learn from?   

Here's a great place to start.

There's a set of ‘superbrands’ that top the charts.  

34 of them in total.

Read on to find out who they are, with examples that highlight what to focus on when creating brand strategies for your clients or business. 

What are the best brands to study? 

There are three global brand valuation studies (Kantar's BRANDZ, Brand Finance and Interbrand) that identify the world's most valuable brands, producing a top 100 list every year. (Brand Finance do a top 500).

They use different approaches to assess brand value, but some brands successfully appear on every one of these lists. 

There are 34 in total - and while they are very different businesses, when it comes to brand strategy, they have some things in common. 

There are common questions they answer to define what their brands are all about.

And there are some valuable lessons to be learned from their brand strategy stories.  

Here's wh...

Do you ever need to convince clients of the value of brand strategy?

Are you wondering whether it's worth adding brand strategy to your skillset?

It helps to have some hard proof on why brand strategy is worth investing in.

Fortunately, there's a lot of research available now to help.  What it shows is:

1. Brands account for up to 50% of the value of a business - so it pays to know what yours is about.
2. Strong brands generate superior shareholder returns. 
3. Brand strategy helps increase revenue by increasing perceived value.

The answers to the questions in a strong brand strategy have been shown to:

4. Help businesses outperform competition.
5. Increase sales – and make it easier and more motivating for salespeople to sell.
6. Improve talent acquisition and retention.  
7. Attract investors and shareholders.
8. Improve business transformation efforts.
9. Improve customer acquisition costs.
10. Enable brands to command a price premium. 

Read on for all the detail…

Why Brand Strategy Is Imp...

There’s some pretty bad advice out there when it comes to creating values.

It tends to go like this:

1. Here are some examples of good values: Innovative, Honest, Open, Customer-Focused, Teamwork, Integrity, Accountability.
2. Now just sit down with your leadership team and decide what yours should be.
3. Then share them with everyone in your business.
4. Oh - and make sure they are brought to life every day by everyone.

This doesn't work well.  

It produces a top-down list of generic words that doesn't engage employees or the talent you are looking to attract.  

It's a poor springboard for any cultural engagement program, because the words are so generic, no one knows what they are supposed to do to bring them to life.  

At best you get business as usual.  At worst it creates cynical, dispirited employees who leave to join a competitor with a more compelling culture, expressed in values they share and believe in.

The hard reality is that most employees don't even understand the cult...