Brand Strategy & Marketing Frameworks
A working library of 42 frameworks worth knowing, across 5 categories - brand, funnel, business, audience and messaging - grouped by what you are actually trying to do. Each one comes with a live diagram, worked examples on real brands, and honest sources. No vibes.
Brand Strategy
The frameworks for deciding what a brand actually is - its identity, meaning, positioning and reason to exist. Each one comes with a live diagram, worked examples on real brands, and honest sources, so you can build a brand spine instead of a mood board.
Brand Onion
Decode your brand's identity from skin to soul. Five concentric layers - attributes, benefits, personality, values, essence - that force inside-out coherence and become the spine of every creative brief.
Brand Pyramid
Keller's Customer-Based Brand Equity model. Build a brand bottom-up across four levels - salience, meaning, response, resonance - and see exactly where loyalty is won or lost.
Brand Archetypes
The 12 Jungian archetypes (Hero, Outlaw, Sage, Jester...) that give a brand a character people instantly recognise. Pick your primary, dodge its shadow, and brief from it.
Positioning Statement
The one sentence your whole strategy hangs on. For a target who has a need, your brand is the category that does the one thing rivals don't - because of a reason to believe.
Brand Ladder
Climb from what it is to why anyone cares. Five rungs - features, functional benefits, emotional benefits, persona, essence - built by asking 'so what?' until a spec sheet turns into a reason to buy.
Purpose, Vision & Mission
The three-tier foundation everyone claims and nobody can recite. A concrete Mission, a falsifiable Vision, and a north-star Purpose - each one sharp enough to actually decide things.
Brand Key
Unilever's eight-part positioning model. From root strengths and consumer insight up to the single discriminator that makes you the only choice - the rigorous, slightly bureaucratic workhorse of brand briefs.
Brand Identity Prism
Kapferer's six facets - physique, personality, culture, relationship, reflection, self-image. A brand modelled as a relationship between who you are and who the customer becomes by buying you.
Distinctive Brand Assets
The non-logo codes that make you findable in three seconds - colour, character, sound, shape. Score each on fame and uniqueness, then stop 'refreshing' the ones that actually work.
Golden Circle
Sinek's Why-How-What. Three rings that flip your story inside out: lead with the belief, let the How prove it, and make the product the evidence people buy - not the opening line.
Funnel & Behavioral
The frameworks for moving people from never-heard-of-you to acting, and then doing it again. Funnels, growth metrics and behavioural-design loops - each with a live diagram, worked examples and a clear-eyed look at where the model lies.
AIDA
The 125-year-old funnel that still runs your ad copy. Attention, Interest, Desire, Action - a four-stage spine for a single ad, email, or landing page, plus an honest look at where the slide lies.
Marketing Funnel
From stranger to superfan in five stages - Awareness, Consideration, Conversion, Retention, Advocacy. A shared map of where attention turns into trust and trust turns into money, read as a loop not a line.
AARRR (Pirate Metrics)
Dave McClure's growth scoreboard - Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Referral, Revenue. Pick one metric per stage, find the worst leak, and stop pouring budget into the top of a leaky bucket.
EAST
The Nudge Unit's behaviour-change checklist: make it Easy, Attractive, Social, Timely. Most plans fail because the right thing isn't the easy thing - EAST fixes the friction, not the intention.
Fogg Behavior Model
B=MAP: behaviour happens when Motivation, Ability, and a Prompt converge at one moment. The counterintuitive rule - make it easier before you try to make people care more.
Hook Model
Nir Eyal's four-move habit loop: Trigger, Action, Variable Reward, Investment - where the Investment loads the next Trigger. The most powerful and most ethically loaded framework in the canon.
CEP (Category Entry Points)
Map the moments, contexts, and motivations that trigger people to buy in your category to grow mental availability.
The Messy Middle
Google's map of how people actually shop - looping between Exploration and Evaluation until a bias tips them to buy. Win the loop, not the funnel.
Business Strategy
The frameworks for the bigger calls - where to compete, what to fix, and how to turn strategy into a brief a team can act on.
Get Who To By
The Get-Who-To-By framework is a fast, no-fluff way to turn strategy into action. Define who you're talking to, what you want them to do, and how you'll make them do it.
4C
The 4C Model is like the chill cousin of the 4Ps. Instead of focusing just on the business side, it flips the script and puts the customer right at the center.
4 Points Strategy
The OG of all frameworks. The 4 Points Strategy Framework is a simple yet powerful tool for building strategic clarity.
5 WHYs
Stop treating symptoms and uncover the real root cause by asking 'why?' five times.
Playing to Win
Lafley & Martin's five cascading choices - winning aspiration, where to play, how to win, capabilities, systems. Strategy as linked choices, not a plan.
SWOT Analysis
Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats in one 2x2. The classic audit - useful as a prompt, dangerous as a to-do list. Make it decide something.
Porter's Five Forces
Why some industries print money and others bleed - rivalry, new entrants, suppliers, buyers, substitutes. Map the forces before you pick a fight.
Ansoff Matrix
Four growth bets by risk - market penetration, product development, market development, diversification. Where to grow, and how scared to be.
BCG Matrix
Stars, Cash Cows, Question Marks, Dogs. Plot the portfolio on growth vs share and decide what to feed, milk, or quietly put down.
Blue Ocean Strategy
Stop knife-fighting in the red ocean. Eliminate-Reduce-Raise-Create your way to uncontested space where the competition is irrelevant.
Business Model Canvas
Your whole business on one page - nine blocks from key partners to revenue streams. The shared map for how the thing actually makes money.
Value Proposition Canvas
Fit what you make to what people actually want - products, gain creators, pain relievers against customer jobs, gains and pains.
Eisenhower Matrix
Urgent vs important in a 2x2 - Do, Schedule, Delegate, Delete. The reason your to-do list is busy but never productive.
OKRs
One ambitious Objective, three measurable Key Results. Align a company on outcomes, not a wishlist of tasks - if you dodge the vanity trap.
Audience & Insight
The frameworks for actually understanding the human on the other side - what job they are hiring you for, how they feel, where they are, and the one true insight that unlocks an idea. Each with a live diagram, worked examples and honest sources.
Jobs To Be Done
People don't buy products, they hire them to make progress. Map the four forces - push, pull, anxiety, habit - that decide whether they switch.
Bullseye Customer
Aim at the smallest, sharpest core customer first, then widen. The discipline of who you're NOT for, drawn in concentric rings.
Empathy Map
Get inside one customer's head - what they say, think, do and feel. Four quadrants that turn a demographic into a human.
Customer Persona
A research-based portrait of who you're really for - goals, frustrations, motivations, behaviours. The antidote to 'everyone'.
Customer Journey Map
The whole route from never-heard-of-you to advocate, stage by stage - what they do, what they feel, and where it breaks.
Insight & Tension Statement
The most abused word in advertising, done properly. Observation, then tension, then the human truth that unlocks an idea.
Messaging & Communication
The frameworks for turning a strategy into something worth saying - one sharp message, cascaded into work that cuts through.
Venn Diagram
Blend what your brand does best with what people truly care about to craft one sharp message.
Idea Cascade
Cascade one bold idea down into message and execution to turn an unconventional thought into a campaign that cuts through.
Pyramid of Truth
Find clarity in chaos by triangulating three fundamental truths into one core idea.
Message Map
The Message Map is a strategic messaging tool built for moments when one message won't cut it. It helps brands craft tailored messages for different audience segments while keeping a shared brand outcome.