If you’re a marketing leader who’s looking to staff up your brand team’s capabilities in 2024, it can be hard to know where to start.
One of your first hires will likely be a brand strategist, whether they work directly for you or as a consultant.
But the title “brand strategist” has become so broad it’s almost meaningless.
A quick scan of LinkedIn turns up thousands of people with the title, but their skills and backgrounds range across a variety of business and creative disciplines.
The truth is—all brand strategists are not the same.
Hiring the wrong mix of strategy talent will give you a team of misfits with imbalanced capabilities. Worse, over time it can hurt your ability to protect and grow your brand.
Here are a few things to consider to help you get that hire right.
- Think about aptitude & skills. Corporate vs. Creative.
Corporate brand strategists want to deeply understand your business and culture in all its dimensions. They love to untangle complexity. They’re good at defining your brand’s strengths and organizing the entire product portfolio. Typically, they’re more logical, analytical, left-brained thinkers.
Creative brand strategists are focused on finding and communicating a big idea that creates a powerful emotional connection. They’re typically more right-brained, divergent thinkers who love to tell stories but get turned off by structure and process.
If you’re building a brand team, you need BOTH of these strategists.
Just don’t confuse the two—or put them in the same role.
Your brand building efforts will either be too corporate or too creative. That’s not good.
- Think about where they work. In-house vs Agency vs. Independent.
If there’s one thing both types of strategists often share, it’s a dislike for working in-house.
By design, strategists provide value by offering an outside perspective. If they’re trapped inside the company they’re working for, they can’t ‘read the label from inside the bottle,’ as the expression goes.
…and once they’re on the inside, it’s easy to get viewed as just another department vs. an expert partner who brings smart ideas to tough challenges.
If you do decide to build an in-house brand strategy team, your best bet is to find talent that is good at managing other strategists, which is a skill unto itself, and not one that strategists are often good at.
Agency brand strategists can provide a lot of value. They work in teams and can swarm a challenge with lots of resources and manpower. The watchout here is to make sure you’re getting quality, not quantity. A big team of junior strategists is not helpful if it can’t solve a problem.
Independent brand strategists are yet another option. If you find one that fits your need, you benefit from a partner who can ramp up quickly, share an outside POV and not be tied to big agency billing.
- Think about the role you want them to play. Behind-the-scenes vs. In front of C-suite.
Are you looking for corporate or creative brand strategy solutions that you will take to the C-suite yourself?
If so, you’ve got lots of options. You can choose from the many brand strategists. Seniority, experience and presence are not really relevant.
But, if you need someone to package up your recommendations and persuade your C-suite peers to make big, complex brand related decisions, look for someone who has experience leading facilitating these decisions. Framing and presentation is vital to gain buy-in.
