Advisory FAQs
When is Advisory needed? Where does it start? What is the difference between Audit, Brand Strategy and Executive Advisory? Here we collect the answers relating to the first level of the Bliss Method: the one in which the problem is analysed and the direction is defined.
Understanding Advisory
What is Brand Advisory?
It is the work that precedes strategic decisions on the brand and the business. It analyses context, market, brand assets, risks and available alternatives to build sufficiently robust criteria before a choice is made.
When is Advisory needed?
When the decision has consequences significant enough to make intuition insufficient.
It can happen before a repositioning, entry into a new market, an acquisition, a divestment, a new phase of growth, or simply when what worked until yesterday no longer delivers the same results.
How do I know whether my company needs Advisory?
Some signs recur often: different people describe the brand in different ways, every agency offers a new interpretation of it, decisions keep coming back to the top, positioning loses ground to competitors, or the company grows without being able to explain clearly why it should be chosen.
Are advisory and consultancy the same thing?
The terms may overlap in the market, but Bliss uses Advisory to denote a precise scope: building quality around the decision.
The value therefore lies in the ability to analyse, formulate criteria, compare alternatives and offer leadership an independent perspective.
Does the Advisor decide in place of the CEO?
No. The decision remains with those who are accountable for it.
Advisory ensures that the choice is made with more information, greater clarity about the consequences and explicit criteria against which to compare the alternatives.
Why does Advisory work directly with leadership?
Because positioning, investments, acquisitions, markets and major transformations have consequences that run through the entire organisation.
When a choice can change the direction, whoever holds the authority to approve it must take part in shaping it.
Can an SME need Advisory?
Yes. The scale of the organisation changes the scope of the work, but an SME may have even less margin to absorb a wrong decision.
Does Advisory make sense for a startup?
Yes, especially when criteria can be established before the market, communications and the organisation start to lock in choices that are hard to correct.
Setting a direction early means reducing the amount of inconsistency that has to be recovered later.
Audit and diagnosis
What is a Brand Audit?
It is a structured snapshot of the present. It analyses the brand, the market, the competitive landscape and the dynamics that may foster or limit its development.
The aim is to reach evidence that informs the decision, not to accumulate data.
What does a Bliss Audit analyse?
The scope varies according to the mandate, but may include identity, positioning, market, competitors, digital presence, perception, consistency and strategic opportunities.
Do I have to carry out an Audit before Advisory?
In most cases it is the natural starting point, because a direction built without a diagnosis risks resting on unverified assumptions.
It can be skipped when a recent, documented and sufficiently complete diagnostic base already exists.
What if we have already carried out internal analyses?
They are taken into account.
The point is to understand whether that analysis really allows you to take the decision in front of you, or whether part of the picture is still missing.
Does an Audit commit us to working with Bliss afterwards?
No. The Audit produces a diagnosis that can also be used by the organisation or by other partners.
Brand Strategy
What is the difference between the Audit and the Brand Strategy?
The Audit clarifies the starting point. Brand Strategy establishes the direction in which to move.
The first produces a diagnosis. The second turns that evidence into positioning, values, decision-making criteria, promise and strategic direction.
What is a Brand Platform?
It is one of the tools through which the fundamental elements of the strategy are formalised: positioning, values, competitive scope and promise.
It makes accessible what would otherwise remain scattered across people, presentations and implicit beliefs.
Does the Brand Strategy also cover Tone of Voice?
Yes. When language forms part of the brand’s direction, it must be formalised together with the criteria governing its application.
Is a Brand Strategy useful even if we already have a positioning?
It can serve precisely to establish whether that positioning really exists as a system.
A sentence in a presentation counts for little if teams, agencies and the market keep interpreting it in different ways.
Does Brand Strategy change the logo and visual identity?
It can establish that this is necessary, but producing the identity belongs to Operations.
Advisory defines the criteria. Design makes them visible.
How long should a Brand Strategy last?
It depends on the starting point and the complexity of the mandate. The process may include analysis, Brand Platform, criteria and Tone of Voice, roadmap and handoff to Governance and Operations.
Executive Advisory
What is Executive Advisory?
It is ongoing support for the board and management when the need for dialogue continues after the strategy has been defined.
Investments, new markets, partnerships, initiatives and changes are assessed with an external perspective on hand that already knows the organisation’s direction.
What is the difference between Advisory and Executive Advisory?
An Advisory engagement responds to a defined decision or strategic phase.
Executive Advisory, by contrast, creates an ongoing presence alongside leadership, so that subsequent decisions can be tested against the direction already established.
Does the Executive Advisor join the Board of Directors?
The form of involvement depends on the mandate. The role is to support the board and management through analysis and independent challenge, while responsibility for the decision remains with the company’s governing bodies.
Can I engage Executive Advisory without first having completed a Brand Strategy with Bliss?
It is a condition to be assessed. Offering ongoing counsel requires a sufficiently deep understanding of the organisation’s direction, context and criteria.
Extraordinary decisions
Can Advisory support an M&A transaction?
Yes. The Brand Advisory M&A scope is dedicated to decisions in which an acquisition, merger or divestment also involves the identity, positioning and value of the brand.
When should the brand come into an acquisition?
Before all the decisions have already been made.
The brand can affect perceived value, future architecture, how integration is carried out and what it will be advisable to keep, transform or separate.
Can Bliss assess entry into a new market?
Yes. Advisory can analyse the market, competition, positioning and the compatibility of the current direction with the new context before defining entry criteria and priorities.
Can Advisory conclude that it is better to do nothing?
Yes.
A decision avoided can be as valuable as a decision taken, when analysis shows that the risk, conditions or expected return do not justify action.
After Advisory
What happens once the direction has been defined?
Governance translates that direction into responsibilities, rules and control systems. Operations make it concrete through what the market will see and experience.
How is the success of Advisory measured?
The metrics depend on the mandate. They may concern greater clarity of priorities, fewer iterations, perceived consistency, market results and growth in brand value.
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