Brand · Brand Strategy
Before you design anything, decide who the brand is.
Four mandatory parts: brand core, personality and messaging, audience and personas, positioning. It ends with a document, a presentation, and a one-page Brand Card a freelancer can pick up and work from. No mood boards, no flattering adjectives.
65M VND for one brand, roughly 8 weeks.
Vietnam-market specialist · Founded 2019 · Shopee Partner · TikTok Shop Partner
Is this you?
Three signals the brand was drawn, never decided.
This is for you if
- You are about to commission an identity or a website, and nobody in the company can answer "what makes us different" in one sentence.
- Everyone writes in a different voice. Freelancers, creators, and your CS team produce three different versions of the brand.
- You carry a full range but cannot explain why a customer should buy the range instead of the one bestseller.
Looking for something else?
You have not decided whether to sell in this category or on this platform at all.
Market ResearchThat is a market-entry decision, not a brand decision. It runs before this, not instead of it.
You only need a logo, a palette, and visual guidelines.
Brand Identity serviceIdentity runs downstream and takes the strategy document as its brief.
What we deliver
Four parts, one continuous argument.
Not four separate chapters. The order is load-bearing.
Brand core
Story, purpose, vision, long-horizon goal, and the value set. Every value carries a negation: "if we did X, that would not be us." This is the first sign-off gate.
Personality, voice, and messaging
An 8-axis personality slider with actual scores, a 4-axis voice slider, a use-and-avoid word list, and three message pillars. Every pillar needs at least three verifiable proof points, not adjectives.
Audience and personas
Pains, needs, the questions a buyer asks themselves before tapping buy, and two personas with journey maps. Built from real marketplace reviews and chat logs, with verbatim customer quotes.
Positioning
A two-axis matrix with 4 to 6 competitors named by actual product, plus the no-brand option. Includes which squares you deliberately concede, written as concrete actions. This is the second sign-off gate.
What this is not
Strategy only. No identity, no execution.
The two boundaries that matter most in this service - repeated here, in the FAQ, and in every contract.
Brand Strategy answers who the brand is and what it says. Logo, color, typography, and visual direction are the Brand Identity service, which runs afterwards and uses this document as its brief. Buy them in the reverse order and your designer has to guess, and the guess gets redone.
You complete intake forms across three rounds, 60 to 90 minutes each, split across whoever on your team knows the answers. There is no 90-minute live workshop. Personas come from the data already sitting in your store, not from surveys or focus groups.
How we deliver
Three intake rounds, one positioning round, then publication.
Every round ends with a one-page confirmation. No round starts before the previous one is signed off.
Round 1 - Brand core
You complete the Brand DNA form, around 90 minutes. We draft the story, purpose, vision, and value set. You confirm on one page and sign off.
Round 2 - Personality and voice
We send three sample paragraphs describing the same product in three different voices, and you pick. You complete the form, around 70 minutes. We lock the 8-axis scores and the banned-word list.
Round 3 - Audience
We read your own store's reviews and chat logs before the form goes out. You spend around 60 minutes. The three message pillars are locked in this round, once there is a pain list to check them against.
Positioning
We spend 3 to 5 hours reviewing competitors and building the matrix. You spend 20 minutes on the single heaviest decision: which squares you concede. Second sign-off.
Cross-check and handoff
We run 14 consistency checks across all four parts to catch the passages that read well alone but contradict each other. Then we build the document, the presentation, and the Brand Card.
How it is priced
One price. One brand. Fixed scope.
No tiers, no introductory rate. Each part includes one revision round, carried in that round's one-page confirmation.
Brand Strategy
One brand, four mandatory parts
- Full strategy document, four parts
- Presentation, 18 to 24 pages
- One-page Brand Card, Vietnamese and English
- Positioning matrix with named competitors
- Four one-page round confirmations
- Handoff session for your execution team
Payment terms
Payment follows the sign-off gates.
- On signature Engagement opens; the Round 1 form goes out within 2 business days.
- 50%
- On Part 01 sign-off End of Round 1, once you confirm the four core statements and the value set.
- 30%
- On handoff After the handoff session and delivery of all three output projections.
- 20%
- The 8-week schedule assumes you return each form within 7 days. Past 14 days in any round the engagement moves to paused and restarts on a new schedule.
- Changing Part 01 or Part 04 after sign-off is new work and is quoted separately. Everything downstream is built on those two parts.
- The fee is not credited against later services. You keep the document and it stays useful whether or not you continue with LMC.
- All prices in VND, exclusive of VAT.
All prices in VND, exclusive of VAT.
Where this document goes next
Strategy is an input, not an endpoint.
One document, many downstream briefs
We do not design logos, write your monthly content, or run your ads. This document is what those teams use so they stop guessing.You need a logo, palette, and visual guidelines.
The strategy document becomes the identity brief - no restarting from scratch.
You need a brand website.
Messaging, content pillars, and voice are already settled for the site copy.
You need your marketplace storefront rebuilt.
Store and listing copy comes straight off the three message pillars.
You need briefs for creators and affiliates.
The one-page Brand Card is what you send a creator, not the whole document.
You need ongoing marketplace operations.
Voice and the banned-word list govern daily CS replies and content.
Frequently asked questions
What clients ask before commissioning strategy.
How is this different from Market Research?
Market Research answers "should we enter this category, and how." Brand Strategy assumes that decision is made and answers "who is this brand." The competitor review inside this service is only deep enough to build a two-axis positioning matrix - it is not a full competitive map and there is no 90-day plan. If the entry decision is still open, run Market Research first.
Do you design the logo?
No. This is the most important boundary in the service. We decide who the brand is and what it says; logo, color, typography, and art direction are the Brand Identity service, which runs afterwards using this document as its brief. Brand naming also sits outside default scope and is quoted separately.
Why is there no live workshop?
Because most of our clients cannot clear 90 uninterrupted minutes, and because answers to the hard questions tend to be more honest when nobody is sitting across the table. You fill in the forms yourself, split across your team, over two sittings if you prefer. If we need clarification we collect it into one list and ask once; past five questions we book a 20-minute call.
What do we need to have ready before we start?
Three things. A full product spec sheet, because the proof points behind your message pillars come from it. Access to your marketplace reviews and chat logs, because personas and verbatim quotes come from those. Your seller-centre customer data, for gender split and channel evidence. We can run without any of these, but we will state plainly which sections rest on estimates.
Can the 8 weeks be compressed?
No, and the constraint is not on our side. The pace is gated by how fast you complete and confirm each round; the next round's form is the previous round's confirmation sheet, so they cannot run in parallel. If you need one decision rather than the whole document, Advisory fits better.
Is the fee credited against later services?
No. Market Research carries that mechanic because research is a cost incurred before a decision. Brand Strategy delivers an asset you keep and use indefinitely, whether or not you continue with LMC, so no credit applies.
We own several brands - can they share one engagement?
No, one engagement per brand. Merging two brands into one document produces averaged personality scores and a meaningless positioning matrix, which is exactly the part worth paying for.
Settle who the brand is before you pay anyone to draw it.
A 30-minute scoping call is free. We look at your current products and storefront, confirm whether this is the service you actually need, and tell you exactly what data to have ready.
Prefer not to book a call yet? Send us your questions and we'll point you to the right next step.
65M VND
Book a scoping call