# Brand workshop Exercises for agreeing on a brand’s character, voice and visual direction. **TL;DR** Agree on the brand’s character, audience, voice, and visual direction before making everything look lovely. This adapts Bruno Bergher’s sprint. Expect useful disagreements; the adjective pile will not sort itself. Status: Workshop method ## Origin and acknowledgment This workshop is Noord’s fork of Bruno Bergher’s original branding exercise, first shared on Medium. The underlying method is his; this is an adaptation, not a method invented by Noord. [A Lightweight Branding Exercise for Startups — Bruno Bergher](https://brunobergher.com/writing/a-lightweight-branding-exercise-for-startups.html) We retain the progression from brainstorming to sorting, grouping and distilling. Polder adds facilitation guidance, illustrative boards and an explicit decision-and-handoff structure for our working practice. Read Bruno’s original for the source approach and rationale. ## Before you start For: Brand facilitators and cross-functional teams Use when: People express the brand differently and need shared decision criteria. Bring: Decision-makers, examples of current communication, sticky notes and a facilitator. Leave with: A short set of values translated into behaviors and examples. ## Worked example (fictional) A fictional education service chooses ‘clear’ over ‘clever’. Translate this into a rule: explain the task before introducing a metaphor. ## Check the result Each value changes a real decision; ‘professional’ alone is too vague. ## Limitations This aligns internal intent. It does not establish how customers currently perceive the brand. Ask five people what the company should sound like and you may get five reasonable answers. The useful part of the workshop is finding where those answers would lead to different work. This is our fork of Bruno Bergher's Startup Brand Sprint. The exercises make room for people to think before the discussion starts, then bring their choices together. Leave with a few decisions you can use in the writing and design, and examples of what those decisions rule out. ## Prepare Every brand stakeholder should take part. If the team fits in a room, get them all in there. If it's larger, get the people who express the brand day-to-day: designers, marketers, executives, salespeople, recruiters. Bring whoever demonstrates interest; you want motivated people brainstorming. Don't do this alone. You'll end up with a limited perspective. The more diverse the perspectives, the better the output. Large groups move slower and go less deep; pick your tradeoffs. Schedule a 90-minute block for the first session in a room with whiteboards or foam boards. Plenty of colorful sticky notes (at least 40 per person) and Sharpies for everyone. No fine-point pens: ideas must read from a distance. Snacks are handy. Set a timer for 10-minute intervals to instill urgency. ## Values & attributes brainstorm · 30–45 min Reinforce the rules: there are no bad ideas, and be additive to other people's ideas. Start writing random adjectives on stickies: words ('simple', 'exclusive') or short expressions ('gender neutral', 'on your terms') that could describe the brand. Say each idea out loud as it lands on the table, so others can hear it and build on it. People will stick to "good" adjectives: smart, professional. Those are acceptable but tend to be generic, which doesn't help differentiate a brand. Include controversial or silly ideas just to get the discussion going: 'complex', 'hard', 'expensive', 'aggressive', 'powerful', 'for dummies', 'rough'. They often cause people to write down the opposing notion, or something in between, which leads to interesting discussions later. Keep people generative and on topic: no discussion of what works yet. When ideas slow down, run another 10-minute round; don't stop until two full minutes pass with no new ideas. The silence can be helpful. ## Yes and no · 30–45 min Write Yes and No on opposite sides of the board. As a group, place every sticky: yes means "this could describe our brand", no means no. The facilitator moves the stickies; everyone's participation is encouraged. The discussions during this step are the most important part of the process. There will be plenty of disagreement, which is healthy, but it needs to be sorted out. Stickies might start on one side and move to the other; that's why we use them. When you hit a wall, deconstruct the meaning of the word: This takes the rest of the session. A few unresolved disagreements are fine, up to five or six adjectives. If you have a large "maybe" group, you probably haven't gotten to the bottom of it. You should be exhausted at this point; call it a day. Document the board: photos are good, transcribing each word is ideal. Keep yes and no separate. - Find a close synonym — a specific word can carry implicit meaning an equivalent removes. - Use an antonym — if the opposite clearly belongs on one side, the original places itself. - Separate the brand from the product — a product can be easy to use without ease being a core brand value. - Separate the brand from the customer — a $5,000 seat doesn't mean the company should be perceived as exclusive. - Skip it and come back later — a word discussed later might clarify the disagreement. ## Affinity mapping · 30–45 min Second session, same room, the yes stickies from before. Spread them on the table, then start placing them on the board at random, grouping related adjectives close together. It feels awkward for the first three to five minutes. Then the team starts spotting similarities and tight groupings emerge. You'll probably see groups like Presentation (visual ideas about style, color, light, polish), Tone (communication-related adjectives: voice, authoritativeness, friendliness), and Personality (human-like attributes: expert-like, teacher-like, childlike), plus groups about values: abstract, almost philosophical notions that will be unique to the company's mission. Organize everything in up to 60 minutes. As groups become clear, write a descriptive name above each on the board or on a different-color sticky. ## Distilling into values · 30–45 min The most analytical step. Transpose each grouping into a hierarchical list in a document: titles and content. If a group doesn't feel unique to the brand, ignore it. Abstract groups go under a Values header; then, with the team, sum up what each cluster encompasses: safe, secure, trustworthy → Secure; easy, empowering, low barrier to entry → Easy. Take another pass and coalesce each group further. Aim to limit each header to four items so the result is actionable. These attributes by themselves can still be ambiguous. That's where brand comparisons help. Use the last ten minutes to list sentences in the format "More like ___ than ___", filled in with other brands. Brands in the broadest sense: well-known public entities with consistent perception, ideally not in your industry. Celebrities, cities, typical dishes all count. Get at least fifteen; thirty if possible. - More like Google than Apple - More like Toyota than BMW - More like Tag Heuer than Swatch - More like George Clooney than Ryan Gosling - More like burgers than sushi ## Output One document: the brand values, concrete ways those values present themselves, and comparisons that anchor the brand relative to others. That document becomes a structural brief for establishing or refining the brand identity, used internally for guidelines, direction, benchmarking, and generation. Share it with a designer and you can expect designs that fit the brand; work from it with marketing and it's easy to define what language and tone to use. ## Handoff Record the input sources, decisions, assumptions, owner and acceptance checks. Have the responsible person approve the record before downstream automation. ## Tools, in order ### Before the session [Notion](https://www.notion.com/) · Paper or a shared workshop board Gather current communication and examples of what feels right or wrong for the organization. Put the decision you need on the first page. Agree on recording, transcription, access, and retention with everyone before starting; handwritten notes are a valid alternative. Carry forward: A brief, a prepared board, and an agreed capture method. ### In the room [Notion AI Meeting Notes](https://www.notion.com/help/ai-meeting-notes) · Paper or a shared workshop board · Phone camera Use the recorder to support listening, not to replace a facilitator. Translate chosen values into observable behaviors and examples; preserve competing interpretations. Write decisions and disagreements visibly; photograph the boards with permission. Pause recording whenever someone asks. Carry forward: Authorized source notes, a transcript if agreed, and labeled board photos. ### After the session [Claude](https://claude.ai/), [ChatGPT](https://chatgpt.com/), or [Grok](https://grok.com/) · [Notion](https://www.notion.com/) Check speaker names, quotations, numbers, and apparent agreements against the sources. Ask an assistant to draft a brand brief with decision criteria, language examples, and unresolved choices, with a source ID for each decision and a separate list of open questions. Have participants correct the record before using it as a brief. Carry forward: a brand brief with decision criteria, language examples, and unresolved choices ### Review the work with partners We make and revise the work with Claude, ChatGPT, or Grok, then put selected versions on our Studio project pages for partners to review. Check the preview before sharing it. You can do the same with a private prototype or shared document; use a workspace that can access the files you need. Name the version, say what changed, and ask the question you need answered. Keep feedback with that version and discuss conflicting requests before making the next changes. Confirm approval separately, and keep confidential work in a restricted space. For this method: Which direction best expresses the agreed character, and which specific detail contradicts it? ### Delegate the routine work Turn verified notes into a source-linked table, label board photos, or format the agreed action list. Give the agent only the relevant excerpts and a completed example. Keep with a person: Interpreting disagreement, choosing a direction, and deciding what participants actually approved stay with the facilitator and decision owner. [Sequence prompts, then delegate](https://noord.dev/polder/delegating-with-prompts) [Choose a model for the design task](https://noord.dev/polder/choosing-design-models) Source: https://noord.dev/polder/workshop-brand Public working material from Noord. Third-party code, fonts and assets retain their own licenses. Publication does not imply a license to redistribute third-party material.