A brand workshop is an excellent way for you to explore the detailed facets of your brand, for the purposes of a re-brand or to create a brand from scratch.
A Brand Workshop is also an important way to create a verbal narrative around your logo. A verbal narrative just means that you and your team can very confidently and clearly:
- Describe what, how and why your brand exists.
- Who your ideal customer is
- Identify exactly where you sit up against your competitors
- Describe your brand’s personality, value-set, emotional and tangible benefits.
Having these words mapped out and applied to a brand blue-print, (or A Brand Bible as we here at rara refer to it) removes any doubt, overwhelm or confusion entering into the marketing process.
A brand workshop should form a part of your brand audit, if you want to:
- Re-launch your business after a hiatus (such as COVID-19)
- Scale and grow your business
- Improve and increase your business or ‘brand’ visibility and awareness
- Get some PR for your business
- Systemise and organise your socials to be lead-generating AND brand driven
- DOMINATE.
This work should be completed before you design your logo, your website or complete any PR. The saying goes that you have got to know and love yourself before you can meet your soul mate – well the same goes for branding.
You need to do the work to reap the rewards.
A brand workshop should be the beginning of any brand audit.
Usually the process goes like this:
- Brand Audit (including a brand workshop)
- Brand Strategy
- Communications Plan
- Execution
- Measure & adjust.
If you jump to execution without completing 1,2 or 3, you will flounder, and run out of ideas, what to say, how to say it and when to say it – or worse burn through your marketing budget and de-rail, in a paralysed mess of shame and hopelessness.
A brand strategy helps you to put the words and the pictures around your brand in the most efficient, intelligent and CONFIDENT way.
Some people might work directly with a graphic designer to craft a logo or a visual identity but what you don’t get there are the words to go with your logo.
- A mission and vision
- Micro and macro elevator pitch
- A value-proposition
- A clear understanding of your competitive positioning and point of difference.
- A clear and distinctive point tone of voice
- A collection of words and language to use throughout your collateral.
So back to the brand workshop…
The brand workshop is where it all begins and whilst it is an investment up front, it undoubtedly empowers you with clarity and confidence you need to launch, re-launch, announce or promote – without the guesswork.
The rara workshop framework is not theoretical or tokenistic. It has been prototyped, trialled, pressure tested and refined on many real paying clients, start-ups, large corporates and SMEs – and will continue to evolve.
When you are considering investing in a brand workshop with an agency or a consultant, check their credentials. Ask how many times they have run workshops, what the tangible outputs will be, how many years they themselves have been running the workshops and if they have any references.
The reason we insist on putting rara clients through a brand workshop, is so that we can know them, and thus tell their story. Much like method acting, this means immersing ourselves in the character of your brand and ‘unpicking’ the very anatomy of it to find its core and its truth.
To know you, we must also ask the right questions, and often we don’t glean these rich insights from emails, or questionnairres completed in a hurry or last minute.
The brand workshop is put in place to push our clients to stop running their business for a few hours and start thinking analytically about it.
What do you do in a brand workshop?
A good workshop is interactive, engaging and has a facilitator who pushes it’s participants out of their comfort zone. No ‘feed me the data while I check my phone.’
The idea is you are thinking analytically for the full three hours. A good brand workshop is truly three hours of power where we turn off our phones, drink lots of coffee and go deep, mining for those gold nuggets that define and express your unique brand.
Our framework is made up of the following parts:
- Finding your belief blueprint: Your founder or origin story, what, how and why, your beliefs.
OUTPUTS: This will form the basis of you About Story, micro and macro elevator pitch, your vision and mission and your value proposition.
- Understanding your Global Context: customers, competitors and cultural trends.
OUTPUTS: This will form the basis of your point of difference, value proposition and tribal language.
- Brand Pyramid: We workshop brand benefits and proof points, values, and personality.
OUTPUTS: This will form the basis of your brand archetype, brand essence, value proposition.
Wrapping it up
A brand workshop will be transformational in you understanding and being able to articulate your brand to others – your ideal customers.
It also gives you sustainability in your marketing messaging. Instead of stabbing in the dark, writing reactive social media posts and press releases, you come from a methodical, calm and centred place. A brand workshop and strategy brings the zen.
If you are interested in chatting with raraPR about a comprehensive brand audit, and PR campaign please do reach out, OR if you would prefer to DIY, we have a the perfect product support system for you, the raraPR Brand Workshop Kit.
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raraPR is above all the sum of people who together help build brands and share stories. We are present in our determination to make a positive difference to the world by representing individuals and businesses that are doing good. We are an extension of the personal stories within us, those that we exist for and those within you that need to be heard.
