10 Brand Strategy Examples To Inspire You

A brand strategy encompasses the core values of your business and focuses on how you want to represent your company to the outside world. 

The goal of a brand strategy is to shape the perceptions of your business in order to influence your audience.

A brand strategy, therefore, sets out the steps to achieving that perception both visually and verbally. 

A good brand strategy should be concise, adaptable, and purposeful. 

It’s important to remember that a brand strategy is different from a business strategy. A brand strategy focuses on how you make people feel, while a business strategy is based on growing your business and making money.

There are various benefits to creating a brand strategy, including helping to set you apart from your competition.

With so many options available to customers, a strong online brand can be just as important as the products you’re selling.

A good brand strategy will lead to a greater level of customer loyalty and can also result in achieving brand equity – where a customer is willing to pay more for a product that comes from your specific brand.

The best way to get to grips with what makes a good brand strategy is to learn from the professionals, which is why we’ve listed our 10 favorite brand strategy examples to help inspire you. 

No matter where in the world you are, we can bet you’ll find a Starbucks to get your caffeine fix. 

But when pounding the pavements looking for a morning cup of Joe, is it the name you’re looking for or that famous green logo?

Starbucks has positioned itself as the best coffee chain in the world right from the very start of its business. The mission statement has always been clear: “to be the premier purveyor of the finest coffee in the world.”

By creating a clear idea of where they wanted the brand to go in the future, the Starbucks team has been able to make clear and targeted decisions to get there.

Starbucks is a great example of using a mission statement to give the brand a clear goal which many would argue the coffee chain has now achieved. 

Another clever aspect of the Starbucks brand is the unique idea to write the customer’s name (often incorrectly!) on their coffee cup. 

This has become embedded in the Starbucks culture and has led to an array of social media posts, helping to further boost the Starbucks brand.

Few could imagine when Apple first burst onto the tech scene way back in the 1970s that it would be the cornerstone of daily life that it is today.

The simple and instantly recognizable Apple branding has hardly changed over the decades and despite the brand’s popularity, the focus has always been on the products themselves. 

Apple’s brand strategy is incredibly clever. The tech giant has always wanted to be innovative and an industry leader, and it has extended this to its customer base as well, encouraging them to “think different.”

Apple wanted its brand to be innovative and engaging, so worked on it from the inside out. 

By creating innovative products, it was able to implement a branding strategy that showcased its team as the front runners of the tech world. 

By focusing its branding and marketing on six core values, Apple has ensured that people remember it in a noisy online world. 

The key to creating a successful brand strategy is to find something that sets your brand apart and then center your brand around this. 

When you think of Amazon what’s the first thing you think of? The vast range of products on offer? Or maybe the fast delivery you know you can expect?

If so, then the branding team at Amazon will be jumping for joy. Why? Because the brand’s whole positioning has been centered around offering the largest array of products online with quick delivery.

Amazon’s branding has always been about innovation and customer experience and by focusing on one key offering – any item available at any time – the brand has managed to stay leaps and bounds ahead of its competition. 

You should never focus your branding on just one product or service, but Amazon is a prime example (see what we did there?) of the benefits of focusing your branding on one idea.

Tesla is a brand that has managed to appeal to a wide audience despite having a somewhat niche offering. 

By noticing a gap in the market, Tesla has been able to position itself as the leading provider of luxury electronic automobiles. 

Offering such an innovative product can come with branding challenges and it’s important to portray the why behind your brand. Why do people need your product? Why is there a need for your brand to exist?

Tesla is the perfect example of a purpose-driven brand. Founded back in 2003 when electric cars were about as common on the roads as aliens, it set out to prove that electric cars didn’t need to compromize on driving quality.

By having a clear purpose, to disrupt the car industry and offer planet-saving benefits, Tesla has been able to inspire a generation to make the switch to electric cars. 

From the start, Tesla’s mission statement has been about something much bigger than cars, it’s been about saving the planet. 

Perhaps nobody could have predicted just how important that would become in 2023.

A key step in creating a brand strategy is often coming up with a brand tagline.

A brand tagline should convey the spirit of the brand in a snappy and catchy way. 

There is perhaps no more popular or instantly recognizable brand tagline than Nike’s “just do it.”

Combine the tagline (which was created over 30 years ago and is still part of the core Nike branding) with the famous swoosh logo and Nike has created a brand that’s instantly recognizable, even without the name.

The just do it tagline has always been a way to unite Nike customers into one community and ensure the brand is remembered long after customers have taken off their trainers. 

Nike is the perfect example of brand continuity. Its logo and tagline have hardly changed in 30 years, ensuring the branding is firmly positioned in people’s subconscious for decades to come.

Dollar Shave Club is a great example of a brand that opted to challenge and disrupt the common branding archetypes of its industry.

Traditionally men’s grooming products have been advertised by ruggedly handsome models that, let’s be honest, probably aren’t an accurate representation of the customer base.

Then came Dollar Shave Club. From the get-go, it positioned itself as different from its competition and more in line with its target audience. 

Its marketing and advertising images featured a more realistic representation of the men using its products, while its original launch video was simply founder Mike explaining why Dollar Shave Club razors were the best, with not a sales pitch in sight.

Dollar Shave Club has successfully based its brand strategy around the customers it targets. 

Simple, straight-talking, and not afraid to make a joke about itself, the brand appealed to men everywhere.

Airbnb is one of the best brand strategy examples when it comes to using stories to power your brand. 

The short-term holiday rental site has pivoted in recent years to now offer experiences and long-term lets too. 

The focus, however, has always been on the people behind these experiences and accommodations. 

Airbnb keeps its messaging simple and instead focuses on the interesting and engaging stories behind its service offering. 

The brand knows that hotels and other lettings services simply can’t compete with the sense of belonging and community that these stories invoke.

Airbnb is a great example of how when using storytelling to power your brand, it should be about individuals and people and not about the business. You can see more storybrand examples here.

When you think of iconic jewelry brands we can bet that Tiffany comes to mind.

Tiffany is an excellent example of creating a synonymous brand. Tiffany blue is now an actual, recognized color and the iconic little blue boxes are the dream of women worldwide.

The fact is, people are much more likely to spend more money on an item from Tiffany than they would for the same item from elsewhere. 

This brand equity isn’t just down to a nice blue color palette, however. 

Tiffany has succeeded in creating a consistent brand tone of voice across its business that’s elegant, classy, and witty. 

Combine this verbal branding with the instantly recognizable visual branding and you’re on to a winner, making Tiffany the perfect example of the importance of ensuring your brand is consistent across all touchpoints.

Men’s toiletry brand Old Spice is a great example of how a new brand strategy can totally transform an existing brand. 

Old Spice has been on the market for decades and is a brand that’s steeped in tradition and history. The problem was, however, that it had also become known as the “old man” aftershave and was struggling to attract a wider audience. 

Then came some clever brand strategy tweaks.

The brand stepped away from focusing on the history and traditions of the brand and instead launched two new brand campaigns, “Swagger” and “The Man Your Man Can Smell Like.”

What these campaigns did was inject personality and humor into a slightly stale brand, helping to bring it into the 21st Century and attract new customers.

Old Spice perfectly highlights the importance of not being afraid to try something new with your brand strategy and that just because your current branding worked in the past, doesn’t mean it will work in the future.

Harley Davidson is an all-American brand that uses its unique brand tone of voice to position itself as an industry frontrunner. 

Harley Davidson is a great example of a brand that accurately gauged the persona of its target audience and matched the brand to these personalities.

Rugged, rough around the edges, and rebels at heart, Harley positioned itself as the gang leader that everyone else wanted to follow.

Harley Davidson has created a brand personality that’s rebellious and flawed and is something that customers can connect to. This brand personality is found across all touchpoints and is fundamental to the success of the business. 

As you can see from these 10 examples, creating a solid brand strategy can help to position your business in front of the right people and ensure your brand leads a lasting impression. 

From portraying brand ethos and purpose to creating a brand tone of voice that a target market can relate to, and using storytelling to build a brand identity, these brands have all won the brand strategy game.

The best part is, so can you. By following the lead of these brands, you can create a brand strategy that builds customer loyalty, increases brand awareness, and even leads to brand equity. 

If you’ve found this article useful be sure to check out our top tips on creating a social media strategy too! We also have other example lists, like this one on “About us” pages, or this one on great startup websites.