The Brand Personality Workshop: Understanding who you are as a brand
A strong brand has become more important to success than ever before. Users have unprecedented access to products and services, leaving companies competing to be seen and identified with. Having a distinct personality keeps you and your colleagues on the same page while telling customers what they can expect from you. Developing this takes time, careful thought, and consideration, but if you want your audience to know who you are, your brand needs to know who it is.
A workshop can align company leaders on current goals while also laying the groundwork for all future branding efforts. We structured ours around where we currently are and where we want the brand to be moving forward.
While there is no exact formula to figure out who you are as a brand, the exercises below helped us facilitate discussions to define how we wanted our audience to experience our products and services.
So, how do you create a new brand or revitalize an old one?
The Workshop Exercises
To start, find a three-hour block where your stakeholders can join you. We found Friday mornings were the best since schedules were more open than any other day during the week. Once the meeting is scheduled, set expectations by telling them they don’t have anything to do in advance other than to be open-minded.
1. “Where are we today?”
This is an important question for the stakeholders to define where they believe the brand is currently. To help them visualize this better, we created a 2x2 grid with descriptors on the y-axis: “formal/professional” on top and “informal/casual” at the bottom, and descriptors on the x-axis: “soft/calm” on one end and “vibrant/energetic” on the other.
We then provided each participant with sticker dots in three different colors. We asked them to place a green dot on the grid where they think the brand is today, and a blue dot where they think the brand should be — the third dot will be used for a later exercise.
Once all the dots were placed on the grid, we facilitated a conversation around the arrangement of the dots. It’s important to have discussions around any obvious deviations from the trend and note the reasons why some participants felt like the brand was leaning more in one direction versus the other.
This first exercise is very important and helps establish a baseline for the rest of the workshop.
2. Brand Archetype Exercise
Individual personality traits, for the most part, are recognizable across cultures and societies and follow a general framework. Brands that successfully make an emotional connection with their audience have a personality built on these archetypes.
There are twelve different archetypes and each has an emotional attribute that ties with it. IconicFox does a great job explaining each archetype in greater detail.
· The Outlaw > Liberation
· The Magician > Power
· The Hero > Mastery
· The Lover > Intimacy
· The Jester > Enjoyment
· The Everyman > Belonging
· The Caregiver > Service
· The Ruler > Control
· The Creator > Innovation
· The Innocent > Safety
· The Sage > Understanding
· The Explorer > Freedom
We split this exercise into two steps. First, we printed out sets of the archetype cards for each stakeholder to read. Each card had 1) the name of the archetype, 2) what the archetype personality is, and 3) companies that embody the archetype. Once all the participants had read through the archetype cards, we asked them to pick one that they felt strongly resonated with where our brand is currently and pin it to the board. Then, we asked them to take the third dot and place it under an archetype card where they believe the brand should be going.
Throughout both steps, we asked for the participants’ input, reasons, and opinions about their choices, noted them on sticky notes, and placed them next to the archetype cards they were referencing.
3. “If our brand was a...“
The day before the workshop, the brand team printed out 150 images and tiled them on tables that were large enough for the participants to gather around.
In this exercise, we wanted participants to pull images they felt embodied our brand, imagining if it were a person or an object. The topics we used in our workshop were cars, lifestyles, and celebrities. These categories worked well because many people are familiar and could relate.
This exercise gave us a chance to talk about whether our brand should feel flashy or conservative, friendly or serious, provocative, or calming. Participants should be able to ask themselves questions like, “Are we more Tesla or Honda?” or “Is our personality more like Ellen DeGeneres or Will Smith?” and have meaningful conversations about that. Similar to the previous exercise, we asked our participants to choose based on where we are currently and where we want to be.
4. “Imagine this…”
Before the workshop, the brand team created four large foam boards showcasing different aesthetics and stylistic choices.
We walked our participants through the style of each board and expanded on their differences based on the combinations of colors, shapes, and type used. The point of this exercise was to get insight on which visual styles or elements resonated with our stakeholders.
Once we were done, we asked our participants to imagine our brand in each of these aesthetics, complete with new colors, new typography, new photography, and overall new style.
Like the other exercises, as the conversations were flowing, we noted all opinions and input and pinned them next to each style board.
5. “This or That?”
For this exercise, we worked with our in-house copywriter to come up with two copy lines for each topic, similar to the concept of an A/B test. For example, we asked our participants to choose a headline for “Find Your Next Job On Glassdoor,” with two choices: A) It’s time for something new or, B) Take on your dreams.
This exercise was helpful to understand our verbal identity and how our brand might be expressed. The choices our participants made provided us with valuable insight into whether our brand should sound more quirky, straightforward, concise, or with a dash of humor.
Facilitate conversations
During the discussions throughout the workshop, there should be a colleague that captures all key insights that come up. Write them down on sticky notes or paper that you can hang on the wall, noting the undesired and desired attributes. We ended up using two different colored sticky notes, one for insights about the current brand, and one for discussions about where the brand should be going. Also, keep a tally of the number of times certain words or phrases are repeatedly mentioned or agreed upon by multiple participants.
Wrap up the workshop by thanking everyone for taking the time to participate and set expectations about what’s next. If you used the wall or foam boards to capture the conversation, photograph it, and upload it to Google Drive or DropBox where the design team can easily access it. You will need these things captured for when you synthesize the results.
Share it back with the stakeholders
Once we distilled our results, we presented them to the stakeholders. To convey the insights from the workshop and our conclusions from those conversations, we shared a PDF with our findings.
By taking the time to have these conversations and make them accessible across teams, we were able to get everyone on the same page. The Brand team was able to see how the workshop discussions informed the overall approach to the brand personality, the stakeholders felt like they were part of that solution, and we can now move forward with a clear view of our future as a brand.
