We have designed several branding strategy scopes of work recently where the available time between developing strategy and implementation is tight. In these cases, a critical question arises: How do you open branding strategy development to other partner organizations to create a seamless implementation process?
5 Ways to Open Branding Strategy to Multiple Marketing Agencies
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Here are five things we do to bring other marketing agencies in early to set them up for implementation success:
- Invite the partner organizations into all the planning activities for developing the branding strategy.
- Provide full visibility into all strategy development processes.
- Create expanded roles to ensure partners can contribute their expertise and strategic thinking early.
- Integrate the partners as active team members, even before their implementation roles begin.
- Let them help shape all the strategy outputs during planning.
In these ways, we open strategy development to marketing agencies so it's not a closed process. This allows internal and external parties to look for ways to jump starts implementation planning as the branding strategy direction develops.
One Cautionary Note
One expectation behind this approach: any external partners must participate with the client's best interests and success as the top priorities. If a partner expects full access but is intent on gaming the outcome to serve their interests, this level of openness won't work to its full potential. I learned that lesson when I was on the client side and first put competitive marketing agencies together on project teams. It becomes clear quickly if a partner isn't engaging with the best intentions. That's an early indicator of big problems.
So, with an open process and the right attitude from participating marketing agencies, you can move seamlessly from strategy to implementation. – Mike Brown
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