There’s some confusion over the terms ‘creative strategy’ and ‘brand strategy’, and we’ve heard many people raise questions about what they are and whether they’re simply synonyms for each other. Spoiler, they’re not synonyms.

What’s a creative strategy?

Firstly, let’s clear something up. There’s a difference between a creative strategy and a brand strategy. The terms ‘creative’ and ‘brand’ are sometimes used interchangeably, but they shouldn’t be because they serve different purposes.

A creative strategy is how your brand expresses itself — it’s about how you tell your story. Whereas the brand strategy is about the bigger picture stuff. When building a brand strategy, you ask yourself where in the market your brand sits — aligning it with your business goals. The creative strategy helps you bring your brand to life by helping you understand who your audience is, what they’re looking for, how you can deliver it to them — all while supporting your business goals.

Although they serve different purposes, the two go hand in hand. You need a clear idea of where your brand is headed (brand strategy) then you need to figure out how you’re going to get there (creative strategy).

Why you need a creative strategy

A creative strategy helps your brand achieve strategic business growth. Without it, you have no direction, and your marketing efforts just float out into the ether. A creative strategy can give you the structure required to achieve the goals and KPIs set out in your brand strategy. Without a creative strategy, it’ll be difficult for you to measure return on investment (ROI) because you have nothing to measure your progress against and no clear idea where you’re heading.

When building your creative strategy, you’ll learn all about your target audience, the actions you want them to take, and, ultimately, the tactics you’re going to implement to make sure the actions are completed, helping you get closer to reaching your business goals.

Pinpointing the separate elements that make up a creative strategy can be tricky; for many organisations, the task seems unimportant; they’d rather just jump straight into marketing their product or service. But taking the time to build a creative strategy is time well-spent. If you don’t create one, you risk wasting time, resources, and budget because you don’t have a clear idea of your value proposition, you don’t have consistent branding assets or a tone of voice, and you’re not 100% sure that you’re targeting the best audience.

If you’re struggling to build your creative strategy, we can help you. We love coming up with new creative strategies for all our clients; it’s what we’re good at.