You’re considering a career in brand strategy. How can you build your confidence?

There are tons of free online courses or certifications you can learn to show you're serious. Plus, don't be afraid to volunteer your skills to a local non-profit or even a friend's business. You'll gain experience and a portfolio to showcase your talent. Before you know it, you'll be a branding expert with the confidence to prove it!

Building a career in brand strategy should combine study and action. The outputs of great brand strategists are exposed, which makes it pretty easy to get inspired and self-educate. Look at brands you love, find out who created them, and look for case studies. If they've won awards, it's likely you'll find them. Study the processes of the agencies and strategists behind these brands. Reverse engineer them. Some great agencies to reference include @siegel+gale, @matchstic, and @strawberryfrog. Then do what you can. Start with yourself - build your own personal brand using the structures and strategies you've learned. And, to the extent that you can, join in on brand strategy sessions - volunteering is a great way to do this!

Identify your Unique Value Propositions (UVPs) and differentiators. Uncover what sets you apart in terms of strengths, skills, and experiences – you can’t be a perfect fit for every role, nor can you be all things to all people. But you do offer something unique. Next, define your purpose - the driving force behind your professional journey. Explore how this purpose has shaped your skills and experiences. It’s what keeps you motivated when times are tough. Your “why” is the compass guiding your career path. Now, craft a personal brand statement that weaves together your UVPs, experiences, and purpose. Don’t be afraid to add individuality and a compelling narrative; whatever best represents you.

Knowledge is the key! Adept yourself with the right tools and upskill. Have that eagerness. Connect with industry experts to get experiential knowledge.

Hone in on your experience and what is unique about what you offer in terms of your clients or employers and what they need, not in terms of what you want to shout about. Think about their needs first, then tailor how you talk about yourself.

Know your value: In a fast-paced business world, a brand strategist must be agile and forward-thinking. For instance, if you've successfully navigated a brand through a crisis or trend shift, this demonstrates your adaptability and resilience. Reflect on instances where your strategies have increased engagement or sales, especially during industry disruptions. These successes are not just achievements; they're testaments to your value in navigating the ever-evolving brand landscape.

Everyone has their own magic. Unlock your uniqueness by being a Rebel - question the status quo. By being a thought leader - add value by saying Yes, and adding on to it... or Might be, did you consider... As a brand strategist, you should know your archetypes. Contribute by knowing what their different perspectives on a matter would be.

Building confidence in a career in brand strategy involves continuous learning and real-world practice. Start by deepening your knowledge through courses, webinars, and industry literature. Seek mentorship or join a professional network to gain insights and advice from experienced strategists. Gain hands-on experience through internships, volunteer projects, or personal branding exercises. Set small, achievable goals to build your skill set and confidence gradually. Remember, confidence comes from understanding your strengths and continuously applying them to solve brand challenges.

Start with a Strong Foundation: Develop your brand strategy. Get Clarity Early: Clearly define your brand exists to convey a clear message Take Action: Begin even if you're not fully prepared. Define Your Goals: Understand what you want to achieve. Seek Feedback: Ask people how they perceive you to improve your current reputation. Consider Your Legacy: Reflect on what you want people to remember about your values. Be Authentic: Embrace and express confidence in your brand Know Your Audience: Understand your target market's values. Passion and Belief: Align your beliefs with your audience needs. Continuous Self-Reflection: Assess how your authentic brand is perceived. These are some of the ways to enhance confidence in brand strategy.

Brand strategists can add value by mastering their strategic skills. Know the ins and outs of your role (SME, have a POV). Another great skill to master in any UX, creative or digital role is sharing findings with stakeholders in a confident, clear way. You can add value as a strategic thinker if your team is too tactical. People with dominant strategic thinking themes help teams consider what could be. They absorb and analyze information that can inform better decisions. They often have a mix of qualities including analytical, futuristic, research-oriented and are great at ideating, adding cultural truths, adding layers of customer desire, creating messaging architecture. All of this makes them strategic.

Many brand strategists are freelancers. Find ones who have worked with your ideal brands, and approach them to work as their support so you can help them grow their capacity and learn the ropes. Be open about your own career aspirations and ask if they can help you get there.

Learn from others: With the rapid evolution of digital marketing and consumer behavior, staying updated is crucial. Follow brand strategists who've mastered the art of pivoting strategies in response to market changes, like during the e-commerce boom. Engage in communities where real-time challenges are discussed. For example, how did top strategists handle the shift in consumer preferences during the pandemic? Learning from these scenarios can significantly bolster your strategic approach.

The first thing to do is to learn from others. Take courses. Look out for people who can hold you by the hand and show you the right path like mentors, coaches, or people you admire from afar (role models). Learning from others can improve your competence and help you avoid mistakes.

The best way to build your portfolio is by working with a brand strategist you respect in the field you’re most interested in. I advise against pro bono work - it’s not respectful to you but also the client won’t respect the work if they haven’t paid for it.

Practice your skills: To stay relevant, apply your skills to current market trends. For instance, if there's a rising trend in sustainability, try developing a brand strategy centered on eco-friendly practices and measure its impact. Participating in strategy simulations or real-world projects that focus on trending issues, like ethical consumerism or digital transformation, can refine your skill set and prepare you for real-world challenges.

After learning from the best hands, it's time to put your knowledge to use (implementation). Doing this will bring out the creativity in you, showcase your abilities to solve problems, and build your brand.

Every brand strategy will be subject to feedback from the client or brand team. The skill here is understanding how to take varied feedback from different stakeholders into one clear path forward they will all get behind and love.

Embrace feedback: In a dynamic business environment, feedback is often real-time and data-driven. Learn to analyze consumer data and digital metrics for feedback; this might include social media engagement rates or website traffic after a campaign launch. This quantitative approach allows for a more objective evaluation of your strategies and helps in making data-informed adjustments.

Great strategies are flexible! Be open to trying different approaches to find the best fit for each brand, and further develop your style of approaching brand strategy for every brand.

Challenge yourself: Set goals that align with emerging market trends. For example, if personalization is the new trend, challenge yourself to develop a brand strategy that successfully implements AI for a more personalized customer experience. Tackling such current and relevant challenges not only enhances your skills but also demonstrates your capability to keep pace with industry innovations.

Position yourself as an expert in your field. As a strategist, have you identified your skills, strengths, trainings and leadership expertise?Your skills could range from brand creation to industry trend expert. Give yourself "The focus test". Marty Neumeier, founder of Brand Gap, was a breakthrough brand expert who taught clients and agencies how to differentiate their brands. Through the San Francisco design agency I was working for at the time, I took one of the Brand Gap branding immersions and one exercise was about distilling the brand essence by answering three questions. Who are you? What do you do? Why does it matter?

START BUILDING YOUR OWN BRAND ASAP!! It doesn't need to be on LinkedIn. Pick a subject or topic that you are passionate about, let's say cooking healthy food, and start building your brand on IG or TikTok. The more personal the better. The lessons you learn from building your own brand, regardless of the subject matter, platform, etc. will be invaluable when it comes to all the things previously mentioned in this article.

As a brand strategist within a leading FMCG company, there are few dimensions that I’ve noticed to be important: - firstly - the skills set and level of proficiency that the brand strategist possesses. Some of the most critical skills are: portfolio strategy definition, brand equity development, brand communication development, equity analysis, media strategy, planning and analysis, consumer & customer insights generation, portfolio management - at proficient levels. Then, one should have good skills in: financial business understanding. Secondly - the ability to be recognized as a reference point for specific questions Thirdly - practice lifelong learning and curiosity to stay up to date

Educate others. The best way to get good at what you is to teach others. Whether that is facilitating Design Thinking workshops or Forrester CX workshops, training your team in a specialty skill or becoming a coach, these all lead to a level of expertise that shows you have mastered a topic and can help others learn too. Another way to teach others is to get certification. We are all practitioners on the web and we need to be good at making digital recommendations.

Here’s what else to consider: Consider the impact of global events on brand strategy. For example, how brands responded to the COVID-19 pandemic with empathy and authenticity, shifting their strategies to digital platforms and community support. Such real-world examples showcase the necessity of being adaptable and socially aware in brand strategy, underlining the importance of a strategist who can navigate brands through uncharted waters.

Leave your comfort zone, get yourself out there, be visible, create, show your work in respective communities (online and offline), ask for feedback, take classes, learn, get a mentor, try, test, and don't forget: play!

Like strong brands, I believe effective brand custodians should be authentic. Challenge yourself to assess and interrogate some of the brands you love and encounter every day. I love Adidas but why? What does that brand make me think, feel and do? How does this manifest? How does this compare to the competition and where I spend money elsewhere?Challenging yourself to analyse brands in this way will help you grow a deeper and more emotional understanding of how brands grow, building hard wired trust and loyalty with their audiences.