One of the privileges of being a long-in-the-tooth brand strategist is that occasionally people share their hopes and anxieties with me. Often, they are practising brand strategists who are haunted by the idea that they don’t fit the mould of a ‘classic’ brand strategist. Some started their careers in an adjacent field like graphic design, copywriting or client management and found they liked solving the unspoken strategic challenges lurking behind their clients’ briefs. Others made a conscious decision to move into brand strategy from an unrelated field, such as biochemistry, fieldwork management or charity fundraising.
All have a nagging sense that they are something of an impostor.
I hesitate to use the word ‘syndrome’ because this is a perfectly reasonable response to a situation in which many of us find ourselves. Nobody is born a brand strategist. There is no school for brand strategists and if such a school did exist, it would be of limited help. Brand strategy is learnt but it can’t be taught. It’s not like medicine or law or physics. It doesn’t adhere to laws. Its boundaries are fuzzy.
It’s an atypical job.
And it’s best practiced by atypical people.
Even better: the thing that makes you atypical is the thing that probably also makes you a good brand strategist (and maybe even a great one).
If you come from a client management background, the chances are you’re a skilled listener, a well-organised thinker and have a strong attention to detail. These are wonderful (and sometimes rare) qualities in a brand strategist. If you’re a copywriter, you’re probably great at researching and structuring an argument, as well as communicating your ideas. If you’re a biochemist then you’ve wrestled with more data and complexity than most brand strategy projects demand.
Like everyone else, I didn’t start out as a brand strategist. I studied economics and philosophy at university and then worked in brand valuation. I spent seven years building spreadsheets, fiddling with Profit & Loss forecasts and overlaying brand equity data to come up with educated guesses about how much a brand might be worth. I’m a geek. I love Microsoft Excel. That makes me different from a lot of other brand strategists. And that makes it easy for me to explain to potential clients what type of a brand strategist I am: the technical, analytical, plodding type. Not the super-creative, inspirational, guru type. I have more in common with Lisa Simpson and Carlton Banks than Marty Neumeier and Seth Godin.
This also makes it easy for me to figure out how I can get better.
Other strategists are more accomplished storytellers than I am. They are better able to charm great creative work out of designers and writers. They have a more thorough grounding in execution. They are more sensitive to the human element. They understand how to effect change in a client organisation. They understand Figma.
All of these are things I work on.
I read great stories. I hang out with designers and writers. I get involved in rollout.
I’m slowly working out Figma.
None of this will make me a perfect or complete brand strategist, because no such thing exists. But it will make me a better strategist. In future, I’d love to learn more about systems design, creative writing, and how CBT works. My hope is that as each year passes, I’m able to make new connections and think about brands in new ways.
So, if you’re a brand strategist (or thinking of becoming one) and you’re worried that you lack the necessary credentials: think again. Consider the uniqueness of your background and the latent brand strategy superpower hidden within. There are many different flavours of brand strategist and it’s helpful to be able to identify your own. Armed with this knowledge, you’ll be able to explain what makes you different from all the other brand strategists out there. And you’ll be able to list all the areas in which you’d like to improve.
Hopefully, you’ll find you spend less time fretting about being an impostor and more time working on how to become a better strategist.