The place of a concept in a brand journey

The sequence has a reason

There is always a moment in a brand journey when the strategic work seems finished, but the organisation does not yet believe in it. The positioning has been thought through, the values are on paper, and still it feels like a document. Then a concept arrives, and suddenly it all fits. Not because the concept adds something, but because it shows what was already there.

First the conviction and the position, then the proposition and the promise, and only then the concept. That sequence is not a dogma, it is simply what holds. A concept without a foundation stands out, but is not recognised. A proposition without a concept stays a document that no one does anything with.

The more interesting question is: what do you use a concept for?

A one-off idea or a load-bearing concept?

This is where the confusion lies that costs organisations time and money. In briefings, a campaign idea and a brand concept get used interchangeably, but they are different things.

A campaign idea serves a moment. A launch, a season, a promotion. It does not have to carry the brand, because it is passing in nature. It is allowed to be clever, striking or funny without touching the identity.

A load-bearing brand concept is something else. It is the anchor point to which all expressions are attached, across channels and across years. It touches position and identity at the same time. It calls for a foundation beneath it, because without that foundation it is a good idea that no one recognises any more after two years.

The test is simple: does this concept carry the brand, or does it serve a moment? If the answer is "a moment", then treat it that way too. Replace it without hesitation once the moment has passed. If the answer is "the brand", then first go back to what needs to lie beneath it.

Concept as energiser

Sometimes it is different. The foundation is there, and is even carried, but it does not yet come alive. The organisation knows what it does, but after all those years has gone blind to its own distinctiveness. Insiders are too close to the situation to still see what is special.

That is the moment when a concept can do something other than execute. It becomes an energiser. Outside eyes look and feel inside the organisation, and name what was already there. Not by inventing something, but by making people feel what insiders no longer notice.

Thebe's Wauw is an example of this. Thebe's brand foundation was strongly present and was carried internally, but only once a concept and a visualisation were attached to it did it truly come alive. On werkenbijthebe.nl you can see it: one idea, one image that does what a thousand words in a brand document cannot manage. The concept did not build the foundation, it made it tangible.

That is the least discussed role of a concept. Not execution, not anchor, but the starting point of meaning. For the first time, the organisation sees from the outside what it already was on the inside.

What a concept actually does

So a concept can be three things. The closing piece that translates a strategy outward. The energiser that lets an existing foundation be felt for the first time. Or, in rarer cases, a direction that runs ahead of what the organisation wants to be.

What holds in all three: a concept that has to carry the brand in every facet of communication calls for something beneath it. Not because the sequence is sacred, but because recognition and meaning are not the same thing. A brand that people recognise is visible. A brand that people remember means something. The second asks for more than a good idea.

At Schwung we start with the question of what the concept has to carry, before we work out what it looks like. Sometimes that is the strategy. Sometimes it is the voice of the organisation that has not yet been spoken. In both cases the image comes only once the foundation is right, or once we know that the image will open the foundation.

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Further reading

Branding and recruitment communication with Schwung Positioning: from conviction to relevant story