The weird, the wild, the WTH…every month, we’re sharing the industry observation, marketing mystery, or growth dilemma that gets our team fired up.
This Month: Four Brand Strategy Elements Most Firms Overlook
We spend a lot of time in brand strategy conversations - with firms that are just getting off the ground, taking their organization in a new direction, or working through major M&A changes.
Each requires the deliberate consideration of several key trade-offs; decisions that may be challenging to think through in the moment but ultimately do a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to the foundational work of defining brand identity, philosophy, and vision.
Take the time to explore them with intention, and you’ll never struggle to explain what your firm stands for.
Brand recognition can be an asset, but it isn’t always. When a brand already means something specific to the market, that meaning can work for you or against you.
We recently worked through a situation where the established brand held stronger market awareness and solid client satisfaction. In a traditional brand exercise, you'd protect that equity and build on it. The newer brand, though, represented something genuinely transformational, a complete reimagination of how an industry operates. Getting people to associate the familiar brand with that level of disruption by overcoming the existing perception would have been an impossible hill to climb.
Sometimes the right move is to lead with the newer, less-recognized brand and let the established name play a supporting role while the new identity builds its own equity.
When you survey a room about a potential brand name and everyone gives it a 7 out of 10, that feels like a win: broad appeal, no objections, a safe choice.
Safe isn’t better. A name that generates 10s from some people and 4s from others is almost always the stronger brand asset, because it means something specific to someone. A 7 across the board won’t offend anyone, but it also won’t move, motivate, or inspire them.
Going for universal appeal almost always means being forgettable.
Without deliberately exploring this strategic fork in the brand road, you risk a muddy message that leads with neither identity nor value.
When you lead with identity, your mission, your values, and your philosophy are the wedge. The right clients recognize themselves in you immediately and the wrong fits self-select out, which is a feature, not a bug, if your model depends on attracting a specific kind of client or advisor.
When you lead with value, your product capability and market flexibility come first, enabling you to serve a broader audience and position yourself differently across segments. But with this approach, it takes longer to create the emotional resonance that builds community.
Neither is wrong, but it’s rare to do both well at once.
Brand confusion is a tax you pay in every sales conversation, every recruiter pitch, every press mention, and every first impression.
When your brand architecture requires explanation, your prospects have to spend mental energy connecting dots instead of connecting with your story. And in a market where everyone says roughly the same thing, clarity is a competitive advantage most firms underestimate until they watch a competitor with a simpler story win a deal they should have closed.
If someone has to ask what you do after reading your website, your brand is costing you money.
Brand strategy is really an exercise in defining your identity. If you’re in the middle of that right now and want a second opinion, reach out. It's one of our favorite conversations to be part of.
We love branding so much, we built a whole platform around it - and now we’re bringing it to the demo stage at FinovateSpring. Advisor Brand Builder, which was also named the Pinnacle 2026 Generative AI Platform of the Year, delivers truly personalized brand identities, visual assets, content, and websites at scale for financial advisors. ABB uses AI to accelerate the time-consuming data gathering and synthesis elements of brand development in conjunction with the creative oversight and refinement of Intention.ly’s agency experts.
If you’re heading to Finovate in San Diego, look for Advisor Brand Builder as part of Sunday’s demo sessions. Joe Steuter takes the stage at 12:06 PM on May 5.
