Too often, companies spend their days stuck with lackluster, ill-performing, and ill-defined brands – brands that simply languish in the marketplace, when instead they could be living with brands that stand out and truly flourish – brands with a clear, compelling, and well-communicated identity.
In most cases, the problem is that the business has never sat down and taken the time to really think through their brand(s). This involves questions like... Who or what is our brand? What is our brand really all about? What does it stand for? Who (if anyone) does it resonate with? What comes to prospective customers' minds when they think of our brand? Does our brand have a clear and compelling identity? Does it convey a specific and well-understood promise to the market – one that draws in prospective customers and makes them want to be a part of the brand's community? Have we communicated this promise effectively so that everyone in the world knows what our brand's promise is? Is it a promise that speaks to both the fundamental and higher needs our prospective customers have? Do we even know what those fundamental and higher needs are? Are we able to articulate them so that we can define a brand that will resonate with them?
These, and many other questions, are the types of questions that have to be answered if a business is to have a successful and thriving brand. Yet too many businesses allow time to pass them by without ever putting this care and attention into their brands. And this is unfortunate, because it means they are most likely leaving money on the table – money (and sometimes lots of it) they could otherwise be reaping.
Legacy Innovation Group solves this problem. We do so via our Brand DNA Workshop. This is an exciting and dynamic workshop in which we bring together a business' leaders and guide them through a careful discussion and evaluation of their brand. Over the course of the workshop, we step them through a carefully curated series of steps designed to let them define the brand's DNA one step at a time.
We generally begin the workshop by having the team use visual metaphors to visualize their brand, and for each participant, describe their respective metaphor and explain how – to them – it personifies their brand. After everyone has done this, we then have a collective discussion around all the metaphors, with the goal of converging on a single, common, shared metaphor for who the brand is and what it stands for. This lets the team establish its baseline for the brand, so that everyone on the team then has a common and shared concept of the brand's true identity. We work this process until everyone is in shared agreement on the fundamental identity of the brand. This is crucial, as this shared understanding of the brand will serve as the foundation for everything else we will do in this workshop. As such, this part of the workshop will often consume the greatest amount of time.
Once we have led the team in reaching agreement on the fundamental identity of the brand, we then move on to creating the remaining elements of the brand's DNA, starting with the brand's positioning with respect to all of the other brands it competes with. This is important, as it provides the next layer we need for being able to clearly define the brand in the context of the world in which it lives. Is it a high-end luxury brand? Is it a mass-market brand? Is it a value brand? Where does it belong in the pecking order of brands in its market? We answer this question before going any further.
Our third step in this journey is to define and document the overall brand experience we intend to deliver for the brand – what actual experience do we want customers to have when they are engaging with this brand's offerings? Later on, this can be translated into very specific product and service attributes, so that these offerings do in fact deliver on this intended brand experience.
Once we have defined the overarching brand experience, our final step in this journey is to collectively craft three specific items. The first of these is the brand's promise – what promise is it to make in the marketplace concerning what customers should expect from it? The second of these is the brand's message – what message will we use to convey this promise? And the third of these is the brand's language – what language will we use to convey this brand promise / brand message in a way that uniquely distinguishes this brand from every other brand in the market? Note that this will include descriptive brand language (DBL – what is said about the brand), visual brand language (VBL – what characteristic aesthetic all of the brand's offerings share that uniquely identifies the brand), and experiential brand language (XBL – what characteristic product or service experience all of the brand's offerings deliver that uniquely conveys the brand's essence – this stemming from the brand experience we had just previously defined). We are masters at helping our clients define DBL, VBL, and XBL that all harmonize with one another – extremely important if the brand is to always convey a coherent identity.
When finished, your team will walk away with a complete Brand DNA for your brand... its identity, its positioning, its overall experience, its promise, its message, and its language. The team can then take this Brand DNA and design effective brand actuation and brand penetration strategies around it. It can also use this Brand DNA to define specific product and service attributes for the brand's portfolio of offerings.
Brand DNA Workshops are typically staged as 2 – 3 day events, and can be held anywhere of your choosing.
If desired, we can expand the Brand DNA Workshop into a full-on Brand Strategy Workshop. To do this, we add on additional team work designed to walk the team through defining effective brand actuation and brand penetration strategies. Beyond the preceding details, this involves all the tactics needed to achieve successful brand actuation and maximum brand penetration in the markets being targeted – tactics such as pricing, distribution channels, marketing campaigns, and so on.
This results in a complete Brand Strategy Playbook, putting the bow on the present and giving your team everything needed to go out into the market and drive effective actuation and penetration strategies around what is now a clear, compelling, and well-communicated brand.
Brand Strategy Workshops (incorporating both the Brand DNA work and the brand actuation/penetration work) typically require approximately one week to complete, and can be held anywhere of your choosing.
The Brand DNA / Brand Strategy Workshop Engagement typically follows these steps:
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