every agency knows the brand strategy deliverable problem. you spend 6-8 weeks. you present a 60-slide deck. the client claps. it goes into a folder. nobody opens it again.
three years ago we started measuring this. asked clients 6 months post-delivery: 'do you reference the brand strategy?' answer was almost always: 'we keep meaning to.'
it's a billion dollar problem across our industry. agencies bill for strategy decks that get read once and filed.
last year we changed the deliverable. now every brand strategy is a gamma site. used as a Google Slides alternative. lives at a permanent URL the client owns.
the structure: north star, brand voice, visual identity, audience map, messaging hierarchy, do's and don'ts, examples, FAQ. each section is its own page. evergreen, but updateable.
we now do quarterly check-ins where we update the site live with the client. 30 minutes. they see edits in real time.
reference rate (clients who say they 'use' the strategy in their work) went from 22% to 81%.
retention is up because they actually use what we built. they used to forget us. now they have a URL they open weekly.
the deliverable was the product. nobody told us we were selling a coffin.