Brand workshops are in demand and important, but how can you prepare a brand workshop to make it successful? By starting with a workshop before the brand workshop. In this article we will show you how.
Prepare the workshop before the brand workshop
As mentioned in the introduction, you should start with a workshop before the brand workshop. We call this Discovery Workshop and it serves as preparation for our Brand Strategy Sprint. A Discovery Workshop serves to understand where you are currently, where you want to go with your start-up or scale-up and what problem exists that should be solved in the Brand Workshop.
But how do you prepare this workshop? First of all, it should be determined who will participate in the discovery and brand workshop. The number of participants is also very important. We have achieved very good results with a number of 5-6 participants from different fields of activity. Each person has a different view of the brand and can therefore contribute valuable insights and questions.
Who decides in the workshop?
In addition to the different jobs, fields of activity and the number of workshop participants, you absolutely need a person who can decide. This means a person, such as the managing director, who is authorized to actually implement the ideas and solutions developed after the brand workshop. What may sound logical at first, is unfortunately still often left out. If a decision-maker is not on board and cannot understand and help shape the solutions and ideas in the workshop, this often leads to a brand workshop coming to nothing when it comes to implementation.
You are probably the person who founded the start-up or already scaled-up anyway, which is why this task solves itself when you participate in the brand workshop. The important thing here is that you as a team determine the goal of your own brand so that you can review and adjust it together in the future.
Duration and breaks in the Discovery Workshop
Once the participants and the person who will work as the decision-maker have been determined, the question arises as to what should be worked out so that the brand workshop can begin as well prepared as possible. An important factor beforehand, however, would be the time or the schedule. Our Discovery Workshops typically require 5 hours including breaks. Be sure to schedule enough breaks and don’t take suggestions from others to skip a break in order to finish sooner.
The goal is not to finish sooner, but to achieve really good results that help your brand. After each break (approx. 15 min) all participants are back with fresh energy and the participation increases. Especially for workshops that last several hours, we recommend a 60-minute break at lunchtime.
Contents and the aim of the workshop
What should a discovery workshop contain and what should be the goal or what do you need for the later brand workshop? We first try to understand the start-up by working out together who the competitors are, what they do well or even worse. In addition, we take a strong look at who exactly the customer target group is, for example, by creating personas together and shedding light on our own product or service to understand what problem it solves. In addition, we get to the bottom of the question of where the problem currently exists. This could be that customers are not buying or that you do not have a consistent communication or brand message.
The goal is for everyone involved in the workshop to understand where we currently stand, what we are about and where we want to go. Only then will you be able to hold a successful brand workshop. The goal is also to create a „Problem Statement“ together at the end of our Discovery Workshop. We do this by giving all participants the opportunity to describe what they see as the biggest problems for the start-up. Afterwards, we go through each problem and question it, e.g. what happens if we don’t solve this problem and what the advantage is if we do solve it.
By means of voting, we determine which problem we need to focus on together as a team and what we need to solve in the brand workshop or in our Brand Strategy Sprint. This „problem statement“, which is formulated as a complete sentence, serves as the basis for the brand workshop. The goal is that everyone who participates understands what is at stake and what needs to be done to define and position the brand in such a way that it solves a specific problem in the future.
You have questions or need help?
We hope that this article will help you to prepare your brand workshop. If you need assistance, please feel free to contact us. If you’re also looking for a partner to hold a brand workshop with you and your team to position or develop your brand, be sure to check out our Brand Strategy Sprint. With this, your clients are part of the workshop, so we can develop your brand in a more focused and secure way in real collaboration.
