A Brand Plan for Founders Building a Premium Brand

10 minutes reading time

The plan I write before a single post goes out.

We see a lot of brands every day, in fact we are being bombarded with them. On our phones, in our mailbox, on billboards, on the coffee cup in our hand. But not every brand that posts something is what I would call memorable (sorry folks). A lot of them are just making noise.

And let's get one thing straight right away: most content fails before anyone picks up a camera or starts writing the piece.

Not because the photos are bad. Not because the captions have typos (although, please, proofread). It fails because nobody ever sat down and decided what the brand actually stands for, who it's for, how it should feel and what success looks like. So every post becomes a guess. Some guesses look lovely. Almost none of them add up to anything.

So let's find a way to fix that. What follows is the plan I write before I shoot a single frame. I used it for Roots by Truncus, the next-generation community of a Belgian family office called Truncus Wealth, and I use it for every brand I work with. Seven steps, in the order I do them. Grab a coffee (or that something stronger you're hiding in the corner, I won't judge), and let's dive in.

So what are you actually selling?

Let's start with the uncomfortable one. No colour palette, no logo and no clever Instagram strategy can save an offer nobody wants. Believe me, people have tried. Very expensively.

A good offer does three things at the same time. It's great, so people genuinely want it. It's clear, so they understand it in one sentence. And it's easy, so they know exactly how to get it, today. Miss one of those three and the rest of your marketing is like trying to drive a car with the handbrake on.

When I sat down to build the plan for Roots, the very first slide wasn't the logo or the colours. It was five words in capitals: what is your killer offer? Everything else had to wait until we could answer that. And honestly, it was the hardest slide in the whole deck.

So your very first question should be: what do you sell? Explain it in one sentence a twelve-year-old would understand. And why would someone tell a friend about it?

Who is your brand, deep down?

Here's what happens to brands without a foundation. Every new post, every partner and every campaign pulls them a little further in some direction, until one day they look exactly like everyone else in their industry. (Scroll through ten hotel websites in a row and you'll know exactly what I mean.)

The fix is something called an archetype. It sounds like something from a philosophy class, but it's actually very practical. An archetype is one clear character that steers every decision your brand makes: what you post, who you let in, how it feels to be part of it. The Creator builds. The Ruler reassures. The Explorer goes looking for what's next.

Think of Volvo (the car brand). For decades, everything they do comes back to one idea: safety, protecting the people inside. Their adverts, their engineering, even the way they talk about cars. That's what a foundation looks like when it's doing its job.

For Roots, we chose a different archetype on purpose. Truncus Wealth, the family office behind it, is the Ruler: formal, authoritative, the institution you trust with your family's wealth. Roots is the Creator: next-gen, forward-looking, talking peer to peer. Same roots, but two voices, each speaking the language of its own generation.

And here's the part most people skip. Every archetype has a dark side, so write that down too. A Creator can get so busy building that it forgets the people building alongside it. Knowing your trap is half of avoiding it.

So which archetype is your brand? What does it stand for, no matter what? And what's the trap you'll need to watch out for?

What are you not?

Here's a little trick I use all the time. The fastest way to explain what you are is to show what you're not.

Take a piece of paper and draw two columns. On the left, write down the usual alternative your customer already knows. On the right, you. Then compare the two: why people choose it, who it's for, what they take home, how long it lasts, and what's behind it.

That last one is the one that really matters. Anyone can copy your work, your look or your prices tomorrow morning. What they can't copy is what's behind you. That's your real difference, and it should be in everything you say.

When we did this for Roots, the other column was full of the classic business networks everyone in Belgium knows. People join those to collect contacts. People join Roots to connect and grow with the next generation, together, for the long run. And behind Roots there's a family office, which no other community in the country can copy overnight. That one exercise gave us the line we still use today: Connect to grow.

So what does your customer compare you with? And what's the one thing behind you that nobody can copy?

How should it feel?

Remember this one, because it's probably the most important sentence in this whole post: people don't remember what you showed them. They remember how it felt.

It's the same reason you remember the hotel with the receptionist who knew your name, and took the time to make you feel welcome, and not the one with the impressive marble lobby. I spent years in hotels and events, and in my experience guests almost never talked about the lobby.

So before anyone makes a single piece of content, write the feeling down. Who speaks in your content, and about what? (Real stories from real people beat abstract advice every single time.) Where do people meet you in person, and is it small and well done, or big and forgettable? How does someone get in, and what makes coming back worth it? And what is it like to be there, including what it's definitely not?

Then try to sum it all up in one sentence. For Roots, that sentence became: "Roots isn't a network you go to. It's a place you belong to, to build." Once you have a sentence like that, every post, every event and every email has something to live up to.

So how does your brand feel, and can you say it in one sentence?

What does it look like, every single time?

Consistency is what turns a pile of posts into a brand. Think of how quickly you recognise an IKEA catalogue, or a Coca Cola advert, before you've read a single word. That's not luck. That's somebody deciding the look once and then sticking to it, year after year.

The good news is that you don't need a hundred-page brand book to get there. You need your name, written the same way every time, with a short line underneath. You could get away with one typeface and one colour, but let's make it a little more creative.

So, you need two typefaces, one for headlines and one for everything else. You need three colours (one for headlines and accents, one for text, one for the background), with the colour codes written down somewhere your whole team can find them.

And you need two short lists about your photos and films: what they always show, and what they never show. That second list is the secret weapon. For Roots, the never list said no posing glamour, no busy stock photos and no status symbols. Those few words say more about the brand than a mood board with forty pictures on it.

Decide all of this once, on one page, and stop deciding it again every week. Your designer will thank you. Your Monday mornings too.

So what are your name, your two typefaces and your three colours? And what do your pictures always show, and never show?

How does a stranger become a fan?

Let's be honest: nobody buys the first time they see you. Would you? They see you somewhere, they look you up, they browse your website, they come back to your content a few times, and only then do they decide.

Think about how you booked your last holiday. You probably saw a picture somewhere, checked the reviews on Google, scrolled through on Instagram, had a look at the website, maybe forgot about it for a week, and then booked after a reminder showed up. Your customers do exactly the same with you.

So draw that path for your own brand. Where do people meet you for the first time: an event, an Instagram post, a friend, an email, a website? Where do they go to check if you're trustworthy? (These days, that includes asking an AI assistant what it thinks of you.) What convinces them to go with you? And what brings them back to finally book, buy or join?

Then put a number on every stage. How many people should see you, how many should sign up, how many should buy, how many should stay, and how many should bring a friend? For Roots, every single stage got its own target. It sounds a bit corporate, I know. But without numbers you're just hoping. With numbers, you can see exactly where people drop off, and fix that one step instead of everything at once.

So what does the path from stranger to customer look like for your brand? And what's your number for each step?

Do you have a content machine, or just a calendar?

Most brands have a content calendar. It asks "what do we post on Thursday?". What you actually want is a content machine, which asks a much better question: what has already been proven to work, and how do we make our own version of it?

Here's how I build one. First, research before you create. Follow five to ten accounts in or near your world, and collect twenty to thirty posts or reels that did unusually well, with lots of views, comments and shares. Then study why each one works: the hook, the structure, the feeling. And then, very important, you don't copy them. You write your own version, with your own expertise and your own voice.

After that, it's simply a matter of posting consistently until something hits. And when it does, you milk it. Same topic, same kind of hook, small variations, until it stops working. (It always does, eventually. Then you go and find the next one.)

Meanwhile, you turn viewers into regulars. Reply to every comment. Give people a recurring series, so they know what to expect from you. Use your stories to show the behind the scenes: the event, the dinner, the question on your mind, the work in progress.

And if you make one video early on, make it your origin story. Where you started, what was hard, the moment it changed, and who you are now. Because in the end people follow a story long before they follow a brand.

So which accounts will you study this week? And what's the first recurring series you'll launch?

So, to plan, or not to plan?

You'll notice that none of this starts with a camera or even posting on social media. That's exactly the point. When the plan is clear, the content should almost write itself, and every post pulls in the same direction.

If you want it all on one page, here are the seven questions again. Write down one or two sentences for each, tonight:

• What do you sell, in one sentence, and why would someone tell a friend?

• Which archetype is your brand, what does it stand for, and what's its trap?

• What are you compared with, and what's the one thing nobody can copy?

• How does your brand feel, in one sentence?

• What are your name, two typefaces, three colours, and your always and never look & feel?

• What's the path from stranger to customer, with a number for every step?

• Which accounts will you study, and what's your first recurring series?

Answered all seven? Then you have more of a brand than most companies twice your size. Not bad for one evening, if you ask me.

Want to see how these steps play out on real brands? Follow along on Instagram at @emielvd, where I take one brand apart at a time.

And if you'd rather have the plan written and the content made for you, that's what my studio is for. Feeling like your brand needs a partner in crime?

Hit me up at The Story Labs

Yours truly,
Emiel