Your Brand Plan Is Also Not Your Business Strategy

In my last note I wrote about a Series C company running on its pitch deck. There's a close cousin to that problem I see just as often, especially in consumer-facing businesses: the brand plan that has quietly become the strategy.

I like firms that invest in brand work. A good rebrand is energizing. It brings a new website, a sharper story, and a team that's proud of how the company shows up. It also has a finish line, which strategy work rarely does. That's exactly why it's tempting to point to it when someone asks, "What's our strategy?"

But brand answers a different question. Business Strategy decides where you compete and how you win. Brand Strategy decides how that choice is seen and felt in the market. Roger Martin makes the point that any functional strategy, such a marketing one, should explain how that function helps the company win.

Brand serves the business strategy. It can't stand in for it.

When the order gets reversed, I tend to see one of two things. Either the brand speaks to a buyer the business isn't built to serve, for example, messaging aimed at practitioners while the sales plan depends on the C-suite. Or the company makes a real shift, upmarket or into a new segment, and the brand keeps telling the old story. Customers, employees, and investors end up hearing two messages, and they believe the louder one.

Some brand thinkers argue that brand strategy is business strategy now. I'd put it this way: brand becomes strategic only when it's anchored in real choices. Good brand work often sharpens strategy, because it forces the question, "What do we stand for, and for whom?"

But it still needs a business strategy to answer to.

Here's a simple test I'd suggest to any CEO: ask your leadership team to describe your strategy without using your tagline. If the room goes quiet, your brand is doing a job it wasn't built for.

A strong brand makes a strategy visible. It can't make one exist. Do you have a business strategy that leads your brand strategy?

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Perspectives referenced from Roger Martin and A.G. Lafley's Playing to Win, Richard Rumelt's Good Strategy Bad Strategy, and The Starr Conspiracy's work on business and brand strategy alignment.

Shantini is CEO of Stratwell Partners, a strategy consulting firm serving mid-market private companies at critical inflection points. Through the STRATWELL FUTURESCAPE™ framework, we help CEOs and boards align growth strategy, competitive positioning, and governance into a single system — so the next curve of success is intentional, not accidental. Let's talk.