Do Brand Strategists Need SWOT Analysis?
By Levina Kusumadjaja
Business frameworks can be intimidating for us creatives. I went to business school and we had to do SWOT analysis all the time, but truthfully I didn’t understand how to use this tool. It was only recently that I saw SWOT used in the context of brand strategy. To my surprise, it felt like I’m finally learning about SWOT analysis for the first time.
First things first: What is a SWOT analysis?
SWOT stands for Strength, Weakness, Opportunity, and Threat. Just as its name, a SWOT analysis is a framework that we can use to map out 4 things: strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. The framework is applicable to anything really—brand, business, product, service, or even personal life goals.
In the case of a brand, strengths highlight what the brand is really good at or specialize in. It highlights what makes the brand special, what the brand’s secret sauce is. The opposite of this are the brand’s weaknesses. Weaknesses can either consist of things that the brand needs improvement in (for example: online presence, because the brand doesn’t have a website yet) or things that are not the brand’s main expertise. Here’s an example: if the brand focuses on helping busy mothers build a healthier lifestyle through easy home-cooking kits, then perhaps lack of knowledge in fitness programs may be a weakness.
Opportunities and threats are identified by understanding the competitive landscape of the brand. This part of the SWOT analysis relies heavily on the competitor analysis. Threats pinpoint areas where the competitors are better than the brand, while opportunities show potential pain points that the brand can uniquely solve.
If you've been doing brand strategy, chances are you are already doing a SWOT analysis without you even realizing it.
Could it be you’re already doing the SWOT analysis all this time?
As a brand strategist, your goal in strategy workshops is to understand what the brand offers, what the customers need, and what can the brand do to bridge these two things. As you dive deeper in the workshops, you will also tap into the brand’s competitors and differentiators to find further clarity about how to the brand can connect with the customers and answer the customer’s needs.
These elements are not unique parts of any specific framework, but rather they are fundamental elements of any brand strategy. How so? It’s because the positioning and strategy will be the combination of the brand’s strengths to seize the biggest opportunities. It represents the sweet spot where the brand’s competitors are not good at or problems that the competitors aren’t solving, but that your client’s brand can solve. When these findings are mapped out under strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threads, what you have done is essentially called the SWOT analysis.
The SWOT analysis framework is a tool that you can use to put together the information you have uncovered in your strategy workshops and conclude the best strategy moving forward for the brand.
At the end of the day, if it helps you, use it; if it overwhelms you, use something else.
So what to do with the SWOT analysis then? Should we use it? As brand strategists, your top priority is to give value to your clients. To do that, you are free to use whatever framework, technique, or approach that will help you pinpoint the best possible positioning and strategy for the brand you’re working on. If the SWOT framework can help map out your thoughts, use it as a part of your process and roadmap. If not, just do something else. Make it fun and make it your own—but don’t allow the overwhelm of framework choices stop you from giving value to your clients.
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About the author:
Levina is a writer based in Indonesia. Because of Melinda Livsey, she recognized the power of brand strategy for every creative. She is sharing about her learnings as she goes to help creatives have fun in their growth and journey of building brands. Connect with her on LinkedIn and say hi!