Brand Strategy RFP Template: Hire The Best Brand Strategy Agency

Use this template to drive apples‑to‑apples proposals and identify operators who can translate strategy into market impact. Replace bracketed placeholders, enforce the response structure, and require evidence over adjectives.

RFP Quick Facts

1) Company Background & Brand Context

Frame the mandate with business first, brand second. Summarize your business model, markets, categories, and the revenue levers the brand must influence. Share the current brand architecture, product lines, and how the brand shows up across the journey.

Provide the origin story, competitive landscape, and the perception gaps you need to close. Note regulatory constraints, claims substantiation requirements, and any category landmines. Call out prior research and brand assets to prevent reinvention.

Set expectations for the first 90 days with unambiguous success markers. If your internal governance slows decisions, name it and define escalation paths. Strong partners will propose a cadence that maintains velocity without breaking controls.

• Your Input: brand guidelines, market map, competitor set, current positioning statement, known risks.
• Agency Must Address: synthesis of your mandate, risk register with mitigations, and two relevant case studies.

2) Business Objectives & Brand Goals

Tie brand to commercial outcomes. Define the growth thesis and the role of brand in demand creation, pricing power, retention, or market entry. State trade‑offs you are willing to make between short‑term performance and long‑term equity.

Translate objectives into OKRs that survive executive scrutiny. Goals should ladder from awareness and consideration to preference and revenue. Distinguish leading indicators from lagging ones to preserve course‑correction agility.

Make the 90‑day ramp explicit to force a credible operating plan. If there are board‑level milestones, include them to drive focus. The agency should propose measurable checkpoints and decision gates.

3) Scope of Services (strategy, messaging, visual identity, campaigns)

Draw hard scope lines so proposals remain executable. Specify which services are mandatory, optional, or out of scope. Require explicit deliverables, owners, and acceptance criteria per workstream.

Core streams typically include discovery and research, brand strategy and architecture, messaging framework, visual identity system, campaign concepting, and activation support. Define packageable outputs versus embedded team support. If you expect production at scale, state volumes and channels now.

Require a roadmap that sequences strategy, identity, and activation to de‑risk the path to market. Insist on a change‑control mechanism so pivots are documented and financed. Scope creep is not agility; it is unmanaged risk.

4) Audience Research & Positioning Framework

Strategy without evidence is theater. Define priority segments, buyers, and users with hypotheses to validate. Require a research plan that blends qual and quant, with clear sampling frames and decision criteria.

Mandate a competitive audit covering functional table stakes and emotional territories. Positioning must be unique, credible, and hard to copy. Force a framework that links jobs‑to‑be‑done to benefits, RTBs, and proof artifacts.

If you operate globally, call out cultural nuances and language considerations. Demand a portability check so the platform scales across geos and verticals. The output should be a single‑minded positioning statement and guardrails for adaptation.

5) Messaging & Storytelling Requirements

Codify the message so every asset sings from the same hymnal. Require a messaging hierarchy from brand belief to RTBs and proof points. Include category reframes and competitive de‑positioning where appropriate.

Insist on a storytelling framework that travels: Problem → Insight → Solution → Proof → Call to Action. Demand guidance on voice, tone, and lexical choices to maintain consistency across channels and cultures. Require claim substantiation rules and legal review paths.

Ask for templates that accelerate execution, including headline formulas, value prop blocks, and CTA libraries. The agency’s outputs should be actionable, not decorative. Good strategy shortens briefs and speeds production.

6) Design System & Creative Asset Needs

Identity must scale, not just impress. Require a design system with tokens, components, and patterns across type, color, spacing, grid, and motion. Demand documentation with do’s and don’ts and accessibility baked in at the component level.

Specify deliverables in Figma or your system of record with versioning and contribution guidelines. Include motion principles, iconography, illustration style, and art direction rules. The outcome is a durable system, not a static style guide.

Define asset volumes and refresh cadence by channel to prevent creative fatigue. If creators or UGC will be used, include quality bars, rights, and disclosure requirements. Production must be industrialized, not artisanal.

7) Cross‑Channel Campaign Integration

Integration turns assets into outcomes. Require a campaign architecture that maps big idea, messaging territories, and assets to channels and funnel stages. Demand a cross‑channel calendar and a governance model for alignment.

Define roles for brand, demand, and lifecycle so efforts compound. Insist on orchestration principles for sequencing and frequency to avoid conflicts and overlap. If PR, events, or product launches matter, bake them in now.

Set standards for localization and cultural adaptation. Guardrails should maintain consistency while allowing relevance. The agency must operationalize integration, not just diagram it.

8) Measurement (brand lift, sentiment, awareness)

If you cannot measure it, you cannot fund it. Define the measurement spine from brand lift to revenue attribution. Require a methodology stack that includes trackers, social listening, and controlled lift tests where feasible.

Demand leading indicators to steer between trackers. Include mental availability, category entry points, and share of search. Insist on annotation of major launches and creative shifts so narratives match the numbers.

Align on cadence and audiences for reporting. Operators need weekly signal health; executives need quarterly business impact. The agency should propose alert thresholds and decision rules for reallocating spend.

9) Budget, Pricing & Terms

Price clarity drives velocity. Request three pricing models with assumptions: fixed‑fee deliverables, retainer for ongoing support, and hybrid with milestone gates. Separate strategy, identity, campaign concepting, and production.

Define inclusions, exclusions, and change‑order mechanics. Specify licensing and usage rights for identity elements and produced assets. If you need global rights or perpetual buyouts, say so now to avoid costly renegotiations.

Lock down commercial hygiene. Set payment terms, currency, invoicing, data ownership, IP, confidentiality, termination, and renewal. The best partners prefer clarity because it lets them focus on outcomes.

10) Submission Instructions & Evaluation Criteria

Standardize responses to eliminate theater. Require one PDF narrative plus native spreadsheets for pricing and staffing. Enforce a strict response order that mirrors this RFP and cap page counts.

Publish the Q&A window, finalist dates, and award timeline. Ask for two anonymized brand strategy decks with outcomes, one identity system with rules, and one campaign toolkit example. Require three client references you can actually contact.

Score independently before group debate. Weight strategy, creative system, activation feasibility, team strength, economics, and category fit. Invite two finalists for a 60‑minute session with a short live exercise using your constraints.

• Submission Checklist: format compliance, staffing table, pricing workbook, two strategy examples, one identity system, one campaign toolkit, three references, redlines to T&Cs if any.

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