Every company should be able to say clearly who they are, what they do, and how their products or services help customers. For Brunner clients, those answers are foundational to their brand strategy, which supports everything else we do for them.
To lead Brunner’s brand services, Brunner has promoted Patrick Culhane to vice president of brand strategy. Culhane, a native of the United Kingdom, has been with the agency since 2015.
“During his years with Brunner, Patrick has served in several roles, from group account director to director of business development. All along, one thing has been a constant — Patrick’s passion for strategic and creative work,” said Ken Johns, Brunner partner and director of client experience.
“Patrick’s natural curiosity, plus his energy and excitement for the work we do for our clients, has made him a valuable member of the agency from the day he walked in the door. He just has an enthusiasm for the work that is special and contagious.”
We caught up with Patrick to ask about his background, his approach to brand strategy, and what Brunner clients can expect working with his team. Congratulations on the new role, Patrick!
Q: You’ve held a number of positions at Brunner and various marketing roles prior to joining the agency. How do your background and experience ladder up to this new role leading Brunner’s Brand Strategy team?
A: I have been blessed to have worked with many impressive brands and marketing experts over the years. I led the implementation of brand strategy at my agency in the UK for the work we did with Diageo, Pepsi, VW Commercial Vehicles, and Castrol. In the years I’ve been at Brunner, I’ve had the opportunity to enhance my brand strategy skill set by applying it to clients including Cheddar’s Scratch Kitchen, Goodwill of North Georgia, Cold-EEZE, and Church’s Texas Chicken. Across all our clients, I’ve developed an enhanced understanding of consumers and their motivations.
Q: How do you define brand strategy? Why is it so important?
A: Brand strategy is the rigor you apply to a plan that ensures your best brand strength aligns with your target audience’s passion points — and is communicated in a way that separates you from your competitors. Having a solid brand strategy is increasingly vital because marketers’ budgets have to accomplish more every year. Few brands can afford to win while sounding the same or only talking about what they want to communicate vs. what consumers truly care about.
Q: Can you share examples of a few brand strategies you’ve developed and describe the value they created for those organizations?
A: I worked with Diageo, the largest alcohol producer in the world, and developed a brand ambassador strategy that created their global Bar Academy program. The Bar Academy went on to be their leading on-trade initiative for driving out-of-home sales.
I helped Britvic, the largest soft drinks company in the UK, see the power of having a heightened brand purpose and portfolio approach. This led to Pepsi, Mountain Dew, Fruit Shoot, Lipton Iced Tea, and other brands being a part of a Transform Your Patch campaign. Every sale helped improve brand-relevant facilities such as skate parks and local soccer fields. The success of the campaign resulted in it entering WARC’s Effective 100 rankings.
I highlighted an opportunity for Goodwill of North Georgia to win with a younger audience before they are lost to more boutique thrifting alternatives. This is one of the reasons we developed their Go BIG On Good campaigns, showing how everything you do in-store is part of a much bigger purpose. The campaigns helped 2023 become GNG’s most successful year ever. Here’s the Goodwill of North Georgia case study.
“Brand strategy is the rigor you apply to a plan that ensures your best brand strength aligns with your target audience’s passion points.“
Working with a chicken QSR chain, I highlighted the category belief that in five years, the winning brands will be a part of their audience’s lifestyle and go beyond price and promotion. We showed that success will come from talking in a way that reflects the perspective of their unique and diverse audience, rather than talking to that audience. We developed a brand strategy that shows the brand is a part of the communities we serve. Since launching our first campaign in 2023, we have seen a consistent 9% increase in comp visits.
Q: Tell us about the Brand Strategy team at Brunner. What can clients expect in working with your team?
A: The team’s experience covers all the skills needed for us to activate our five-step brand strategy process. The team includes researcher skills to ground a brand in existing insight and give a brand strong roots by digging deeper. We have semiotic skills that help our creative teams express a brand’s strengths with compelling storytelling. The team includes people with client-side experience who know how to amplify brand campaigns, with testing to ensure we show measurable brand results. Brunner’s Brand Strategy team embodies our agency’s ethos of ‘Good People Creating Great Work.’
Q: What do you find most rewarding about helping clients define and implement a brand strategy?
A: In the short term, it’s very rewarding to grow sales. In 2023, we helped a client develop a new brand strategy and translate that into sales within 20 weeks. Longer term, what I find rewarding is being a part of building a brand that lasts. I can look back at brand strategies that I developed over a decade ago that are still going strong today. On a personal level, it is building relationships with the marketing professionals involved and seeing the success that brings.