Pivoting to Brand Strategy: You are Now Solving Bigger Problems
By Levina Kusumadjaja
Pivoting is scary.
When all you know is growing your creative skillsets, specializing, mastering your craft, pivoting to strategy can be scary. Imagine having graduated from design school, knowing everything that there is about proportions, layout, and colors, but having so little knowledge about business. At this point, you might be asking yourself: "How can someone like me do brand strategy?"
Moving to strategy seems like such a big leap of faith because changing the way you do your business and the way you would sell your skillsets as a creative will mean that you step out of your comfort zone. It will also mean that you need to broaden your knowledge and understanding about business to a higher level than just knowing how to design well, but to see the bigger picture.
It’s like changing from being a basketball player to a coach. You have to make the shift from becoming someone who play the game, to someone who creates a “plan of attack” for a team of players to win the game. When you make the pivot from just design to brand strategy, you are making the shift from being someone whose goal is to master your design skills, to someone who creates a “plan of attack” for designers and the rest of the team.
Brand strategists are hired to create the best “plan of attack”.
A brand strategist isn’t hired to guarantee a victory, they are hired to help clients figure out the best possible way, to get to where they want to go. The hope is that because this plan of attack is based on strategy workshops, careful studies and considerations over a period of time, it will bear favorable results. A plan of attack isn’t the victory itself, it is a plan. A plan is what we look to in order to get to our goal. This plan sheds light to how we can get to where our client wants to go. The role of a brand strategist is to come up with this best plan of attack.
Unfortunately, creatives who are moving towards brand strategy often experience this fear that everything rests on their shoulders as they help their client move towards the goals. They believe that the mark of their success solely lies in the client reaching their goals. There is this mindset that a brand strategist needs to guarantee a win for a brand. And this mindset cripples so many designers from making a pivot from design to brand strategy. However, is this fear legit?
“What if the strategy I propose fails?”
(To be continued…)
Cheers!
Levina
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About the author:
Levina is a writer based in Indonesia. Because of Melinda Livsey, she recognized the power of brand strategy for every creative. She is sharing about her learnings as she goes to help creatives have fun in their growth and journey of building brands. Connect with her on LinkedIn and say hi!