Brand Workshop

01The room

Who takes part, and what to bring

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.

Setup

• 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.

02Phase 1 · 30–45 min

Values & attributes brainstorm

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.

03Phase 2 · 30–45 min

Yes and no

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.

When a word gets stuck

• 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.

— Break —

04Phase 3 · 30–45 min

Affinity mapping

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.

05Phase 4 · 30–45 min

Distilling into values

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.

Comparison examples

• 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

06What comes out

The document

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.