Kaine Levy is a certified brand strategist and the founder of Ventur Agency. With over a decade of experience in the branding and marketing space, Kaine has helped companies internationally grow their brands using his proprietary NewVenturᵀᴹ framework. His expertise has helped numerous companies achieve remarkable success, such as adding 30% to their turnover within 9 months, and causing competitors to fall behind or go out of business entirely. Kaine's expertise in brand strategy has been recognised in various industry publications, and he has given talks at events around the UK, sharing his insights and inspiring others to build human brands that do good for people and the planet.
Kaine Levy, Brand Strategy Entrepreneur
Introduce yourself! Please tell us about you and your life, so we can get to know you better.
Hi, I’m Kaine Levy – an ex-heavy metal drummer turned entrepreneur. I’m the founder of Ventur, a London-based brand strategy agency helping B2B businesses find gaps in the market without trial and error.
If you’re connected with me on LinkedIn, you may know me as the guy who often shows up with his pet bird. That’s my cockatiel, Icarus, and he’s 80% of my personal brand at this point!
I studied filmmaking at Met Film School and have directed and produced movies that have been screened on TV and in cinemas around the world.
One thing I’ve noticed about my endeavours in music, film, and branding, is that they’re all closely related. Whether it’s constructing melodic progressions, believable characters, or human brands, I’ve always been fascinated with psychology and how it affects the way we express emotion and connect with each other.
The right approach can influence people’s behaviour, mood, and decisions, and I’m obsessed with uncovering how we can use that in business to build better brands, make more sales, and serve customers effectively.
When and why did you decide to start Ventur Agency?
Ventur was founded in 2012 and, at that time, my motivations were probably quite selfish. I was a young man with a dream of having his own business, being free, and not having to answer to anyone. It’s what I’d seen from my father when I was a child. However, anyone who owns a business knows that you’re probably less free and there’s always someone to answer to!
Back in the early days, Ventur focused mainly on video marketing. Using my experience from the world of filmmaking, we would help companies grow their brand awareness and social media engagement with cinematic video content. However, after seven years of doing that, I fell out of love with the process.
Why? Well, because I realised that most business owners, and even marketing directors, had no idea what they were doing with their brands. They would send us these campaign ideas which they thought were “cool”, and we would blindly agree to create them. Even though they were always done to an incredibly high standard, it was a coin flip as to whether or not they would result in any tangible growth.
The problem wasn’t our work, it was that our clients lacked any sort of cohesive strategy to begin with. We felt it was no longer genuine to take on projects, or our clients’ money, without first looking at their strategy to ensure they were on the right track.
Noticing this huge gap in the market, we pivoted Ventur into the dedicated brand strategy agency it is today.
Although we’re based in London, we help B2B businesses all over the world build a brand by finding gaps in the market. It’s an incredibly rewarding process that gives leadership teams clarity, direction and alignment across their entire business.
What kind of audience do you target your business towards? And how do you help your clients?
Ventur is primarily targeted towards B2B businesses. Having run service-based businesses myself for over a decade, I know what it takes to create a compelling offer, position a brand effectively, and deliver a great customer experience.
We help our clients find gaps in the market, build a brand, and create a roadmap for growing their business without trial and error. We achieve that in 3 steps:
Business Workshops: a deep dive with the key stakeholders and decision-makers to align them on their vision for the brand.
Market Research: a thorough review of our client’s industry, competitors, and ideal customer to find gaps in the market.
Creative Strategy: develop a step-by-step roadmap to help the leadership team set goals and grow the business.
We don’t believe in guessing when it comes to strategy so we like to combine what we learn from our clients, as well as our market research, to make informed decisions with them.
Our proprietary NewVenturTM framework includes:
Company vision, mission, and purpose
Company culture and values
Brand positioning and competitive analysis
Brand personality, tone of voice, and messaging
Customer avatars and research
Internal processes and touchpoints
We then package all of this into a roadmap, which is printed in a hardback book, to guide our clients over the next five to ten years of their business.
You can find a more detailed breakdown of our brand strategy services on our website.
What are your top 3 brand strategy tips?
I’ve got some great tips I can share with you. If you can implement these, you’ll already be ahead of 80% of your competitors.
Tip 1: Safety is death
When designing your business model or positioning your brand, the safe strategy is to look at what’s been done before and copy it. After all, it’s already been proven, so why reinvent the wheel?
This is actually a backwards approach and is the biggest mistake I see leadership teams make.
There are probably hundreds, if not thousands, of other companies offering a similar service to you. If you serve your clients in the same way as them, then why should you exist? You’re offering nothing new to the marketplace.
Instead, dare to be different. Create a new experience for people. This is how every innovation and successful brand has been built.
Tip 2: A business is not a brand
90% of my time is spent explaining to founders what a brand actually is and why they’re leaving money on the table by not building one.
It may seem obvious, but let's start by defining what a business is first. A business, at its core, is simply a series of systems and processes designed to sell a product or service with repeat success.
So, what’s a brand then? A brand is how you package that product or service in a way that appeals to a specific market, niche, demographic or customer need.
For example, let's consider two law firms that both specialise in property. They both offer property law advice, and they both have equal credentials, so why would you choose one over the other? The answer is brand.
Branding packages those services in a way that is interesting, unique, and designed to resonate with a specific client. This not only makes them the obvious choice between the two firms, but it also makes the buying decision much easier for the leads they attract.
Think of it a bit like a personality for your business. A good brand helps customers choose between businesses with similar offerings in the same way a good personality helps recruiters choose between candidates with similar CVs.
The result of this distinct competitive advantage is more revenue, higher prices, and longer customer LTV.
P.S. A common misconception is that a brand is a logo, colour palette, and fonts. These elements do make up a portion of the overall brand, but their main purpose is to visually represent what the brand is about in order to create a strong first impression and help customers remember it.
Tip 3: You can’t read your own label from inside the jar
I want you to imagine you’re jam inside a jar. Bear with me here…
Now, if I asked you to read your own label from inside the jar, that would be pretty difficult, right? You’d need someone outside the jar to help you.
Growing a business works in exactly the same way. To find gaps in the market and build a brand, you need outside help. Someone to give you a fresh perspective.
You’ve probably been working on your business for a long time. You have a huge amount of knowledge, experience and data. However, these things can sometimes skew your decision-making because you’re so close to the daily operations. We call this “confirmation bias” and it often leads entrepreneurs down the wrong path.
You may have heard the saying “What got you here won’t get you there.” Different stages of growth require different approaches to business. Bringing someone in to give you that fresh perspective into your company, your industry, and your customers could help you find the approach you need to take your growth to the next level.
What, or who, is your work inspired by?
My Dad, without question. I’ve had a lot of great teachers over the years but he’s the inspiration behind becoming an entrepreneur and serving clients in the way that I do.
When Dad was alive, he ran his own accountancy practice. As a child, I saw him work hard to provide a great life for us. I saw him treat every client like they were the most important and he made operating a business look easy. It’s all I ever knew and so I wanted the same for my life.
I was 23 years old when I lost him to pancreatic cancer. Although I miss him every day, my drive to build a successful business that gives back to the world is stronger now than ever before.
Tell us a little bit about your free E-book, the “6-Step Brand Strategy Checklist"!
Sure! Let’s end with something more positive.
We have a bunch of free brand-building and business development resources on our website. These are powerful tools that our team have put together from our decade of experience in branding and marketing.
The 6-Step Brand Strategy Checklist is a great tool to download first. It will give you a high-level view of what goes into the successful brands we all know and love. It will help you discover what gaps you need to fill in your brand to help it grow and attract your ideal clients.
Feel free to check them out and I hope you get a ton of value from them. Many of them you can start implementing into your business right away!
Or, if anything I’ve said here resonates with you or you’d like our help, you can book a call with me directly from our contact page.
Follow me on Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info!
