What brand strategy actually covers
Brand strategy defines your target audience specifically (not "everyone," a real, describable customer), your positioning against competitors, the core promise or belief the brand is built around, and the tone you want to communicate in. None of this is visual - it's the thinking that everything visual should eventually express.
What brand identity actually covers
Brand identity is the tangible system built from that strategy: logo, color palette, typography, imagery style, and a written voice guide describing how the brand should actually sound in copy. A strong identity makes the strategy instantly recognizable and consistent everywhere the brand shows up.
Why confusing the two causes wasted rebrands
A business that changes its logo and colors without revisiting its underlying strategy hasn't actually rebranded - it's redecorated. If the positioning, audience, and message stay exactly the same, a new visual identity alone rarely changes how the market perceives the business, because perception is driven more by what a brand says and does consistently than by what it looks like.
The reverse mistake also happens: a business defines a sharp new strategy internally but never updates the identity or messaging to actually express it, so nothing external ever changes and the new strategy has zero real-world impact.