We're a production studio, not a brand strategy firm — but we see the results of strategy every day, because it's the thing that walks in the door before a shoot. Brands that show up with clear strategy make better content, faster. The ones without it burn budget figuring out what they're trying to say while the camera waits. So while we don't sell strategy, we've watched plenty of companies choose a strategist well or badly, and the difference is worth spelling out.
Start with how a provider begins. A good strategist opens by trying to understand your business — what you sell, who buys it, why they choose you over the alternative — not by presenting their framework. If the first meeting is mostly them talking about their proprietary process, that's a sign the process matters more to them than your specifics. Strategy is supposed to be about you.
Look for someone who can connect strategy to what happens next. A deck full of positioning statements no one can act on is an expensive document. The strategists worth hiring think about execution — how the strategy shows up in a website, a campaign, a video, a sales conversation — because a strategy that can't be built is just an opinion. Ask a candidate how their work has translated into things a company actually made.
Be wary of anyone who won't tell you what strategy isn't. Good strategy is as much about what you decide not to do — which audiences to ignore, which messages to drop — as what you pursue. A provider who promises to make you appeal to everyone is selling you the absence of a strategy. Sharpness is the point.
Pay attention to how clearly they explain things. Brand strategy attracts jargon, and jargon is often where vagueness hides. The best strategists can describe what they'd do, and why, in plain language you could repeat to your team. If you leave the conversation unable to explain what they'd actually change, that's information.
And consider how they hand off. Strategy rarely lives with the people who then produce the work — the designers, writers, and studios who turn it into something real. A strategist who documents their thinking clearly, and stays reachable as the work gets made, saves you the game of telephone that happens when strategy and execution never talk. From where we sit, downstream, that hand-off is where a lot of good strategy quietly falls apart.
Choosing a brand strategy provider comes down to one question underneath all the others: will this person help you decide what you are, clearly enough that everyone who builds the brand afterward knows what to do? Get that right and the work that follows — the content, the campaigns, the video we and others make — has something true to stand on. Get it wrong, and no amount of production polish covers for a company that hasn't decided what it is.
