The document provides guidance on running a brand workshop to clarify a company's brand strategy. It outlines exercises to determine the company's vision, audiences, value proposition, personality, and design preferences. The workshop is facilitated and includes roles like a decider to make final calls. Exercises include creating a 5-year roadmap, identifying tensions the brand can address, and selecting core values. The goal is to gather input to develop a comprehensive brand foundation document.

1. ISSUE89
RUNNING A BRAND WORKSHOP
Brand Strategy 101

2. INTRODUCTION

3. About the Author
Arthur Colker is the founder of ISSUE89, an independent content platform and
marketing consultancy that provides guides, advice and tools for a new
generation of marketers.
He is also the Director of Marketing at Hometeam, the nation's leading
innovator in home health care.
Prior to Hometeam, Arthur ran digital marketing for Softcard, a mobile
payments company later acquired by Google. He earned an MBA from Columbia
University in 2016 and graduated from Georgetown University's School of
Foreign Service in 2011.
Introduction

4. What is the Brand Workshop?
The brand workshop is a series of exercises for the founding team or C-Suite of a company that clarifies the who,
what, and why a company exists. It is an internal-facing process.
The Brand Workshop gives you the inputs to develop the Brand Strategy for a company.
This Brand Workshop is part of the Brand Strategy 101 process from ISSUE89.
Introduction

5. What are the goals of the Brand Workshop?
When explaining why we are doing the Brand Workshop to clients, I like to show the following diagram. In
general, most people find the idea of a “brand” flimsy and hard to define. We discuss that the Brand Workshop is
the first part in creating the “Brand Strategy” which includes all of the more tangible “brand properties.”
Introduction
values
brand property
value props
brand property
mission
brand property
voice, tone
brand property
vision
brand property
personality
brand property
channels
brand property
Audiences
brand property
Brand strategy
Internal & External Communication
web design print design product design

6. What are the roles during the Workshop
Introduction
The best Brand Workshop should have around 5 people who are either the C-Suite or the founding team of the
company. They should represent every major function of the company
Prior to the workshop, you will assign the following roles:
1. The Facilitator [you]: You probe, ask questions, and challenge people to explain themselves better, all
while managing time and hordes of post-its on the whiteboard. Internalizing the information in the
questionnaire you completed in Part 1 is key here, so you can ask intelligent questions that force people to
dive deeper.
1. The Decider: One individual, typically the CEO, will be asked to make certain final decisions at the end of
some activities.
1. Participants: Each individual will have a workbook to fill out as they go along and are required to leave
their cell phones/other work at the door.

7. Preparing the room & supplies
Introduction
You will need a good size space preferably with a whiteboard. Breather is a good way to get a space if you don't
have access to one.
I also like to use these giant post-its to help organize the information from certain sections of the Workshop. In
the Exercises section of this presentation, I dive into the specific approach to take for each different exercise. You
will need plenty of additional post-its and sharpies as well.
Finally, there is a presentation available on the ISSUE89 website that you will actually use to run the workshop. It
includes some visual elements that will need to be projected or shown on a large screen. Feel free to brand it
accordingly.
There are also packets available on the ISSUE89 website that you will need to print out in advance for each
member of the session.
Remember to take a photo of the result of every exercise so you capture all of the results.

8. Outline and Times:
Introduction
1. [10 minutes] Why Brands Matter - Exercise to get everyone thinking about what makes great brands and
less-great brand.
2. [5 minutes] Process Overview - Explains how inputs here feed into the Brand Foundation and Brand
Strategy
3. [15 minutes] 5-year Road Map - Explore where the company will be in 1 year, 3 years, and 5 years from
now
4. [15 minutes] Audiences - Identify the top 3 audiences/personas
5. [20 minutes] What & How - Determine what the company does and how they do it
[10 minutes] Break
1. [30 minutes] Why - Identify the company's top "tensions" (more on what this means later)
2. [15 minutes] Values - Develop a list of potential value-concepts for the company
3. [15 minutes] Personality - Get a sense of how participants feel about voice/personality
4. [5 minutes] 20 Second Gut Check - Understand directional design/style preferences
Finished!

9. The Exercises

10. Why Brands Matter [10 minutes]
The Exercises
The purpose of this exercise is to get people thinking about why brands matter. To get the group started, I ask two
simples questions on the slide:
Name some of your favorite brands?
● What do you like about them?
Any brands you dislike?
● What about them do you not like?
With these two questions, you will hone into what your group thinks “branding” means. After spending a few
minutes going around the room brainstorming, I bring up the classic example of Advil vs. generic ibuprofen. Advil
has spent millions of dollars to convince individuals to buy their more expensive product which is sitting on a shelf
next to a cheaper chemically identical generic substitute. Ask your audience if they buy branded Advil and why.
Close this section by stating that the greatest brands are ones that connect the higher sense of mission & purpose
of a company with the culture at-large like Dove or Budweiser. With that as an aspirational gold standard, I state
that the goal of brands can be highly variable on whether a company is B2C, B2B, luxury, mass etc… but usually
those goals are focused around how they make individuals “feel.”

11. Process [5 minutes]
The Exercises
The goal of this next slide is to take people from the very aspirational high-level feeling from the last exercise and
ground them in a very specific process. Emphasize that while the branding process can feel intimidating, you are
here to guide them through a structured approach.
Explain that the Brand Strategy is composed of specific “brand properties.” These brand properties are what we
are going to spend today uncovering through a series of challenging and fun exercises.

12. Five Year Road Map [15 minutes]
The Exercises
The goal of this exercise is to achieve agreement from the company leaders on the overall direction of the
company. This is the first exercise where you will deploy the decider role.
You start the exercise by asking everyone to spend 5 minutes writing on post-its what the company will be doing
in 1, 3, and 5 years from now. Each post-it should just have one idea written on it. Each person should be coming
up with at least 5 goals for 1, 3 and 5 years from now.
After 5 minutes, you can engage the group in placing the sticky notes on a timeline you have drawn on the giant
post-its. You should be actively helping the group cluster the like sticky notes into like-ideas at each period.
Then, facilitate a discussion around each time period with the group. At the end of each discussion, you will ask
the Decider to decide on the ranked order 1, 2, 3 for each time period.

13. Audiences [15 minutes]
The Exercises
The goal of this exercise is to achieve agreement on the top 3 audiences (in ranked order) that the company
should focus on.
You start the exercise by asking everyone to spend 5 minutes writing on post-its their top audiences.
After 5 minutes, you can engage the group in placing the sticky notes in like-clusters on the board. During the
discussion about each group, push the group to start defining each audience more specifically. When ready, ask
the decider to rank order to top 3 audiences.

14. What & How [20 minutes]
The Exercises
The premise of this exercise is simple. Ask the group to spend 5-10 minutes writing in their workbooks what their
company does and how do they do it.
Then ask each individual to read their responses going around the room. Facilitate a discussion where you decide
together as a group what the right what and how are. You should be writing these up on one of the large post-it
notes.
The decider should sign off on the final two definitions for what and how.

15. Break [10 minutes]
The Exercises
Spend this time organizing your notes and make sure all the post-its are put away carefully. You will need the
results of all the exercises in order to create the Brand Foundation Document.

16. Why [30 minutes]
The Exercises
This section is the most intellectually challenging section of the workshop, and it will require some more time for
you to explain how it works.
The focus of this section is a concept called “tensions.” Tensions are how we are going to determine the best path
to making the brand relevant to a company’s target audiences.
A tension is defined as an accepted belief or practice that carries with it some discomfort for many people, even if
they aren’t necessarily able to express it themselves. Tensions can be expressed at five different levels: Cultural,
Sub-Cultural, Categorical, Company-Centric, and Psychological.
During this exercise you will present examples (that are in both the presentation and the packet) for each level of
tension. Then the group will come up with relevant tensions, first on their own, and then as a group, for each of the
tension types.
The next five slides review what each of the tension types, as well as providing the example that is given in the
packet. Be prepared to get questions on what these means - so please review carefully! I’d advise thinking of your
own examples of company’s that used each, so you can provide more examples and look like a real expert.

17. Cultural Tension
The Exercises
Cultural tension is the highest level tension. Most of the most successful brand campaigns you can think of are
aimed at cultural tensions. The example in the deck and packet is that of Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty. Dove
challenged society-wide beliefs about beauty that many people felt inherently uncomfortable with.
Russ Klein of Burger King once described tension as “a real observation of a coiled-up social or emotional
discomfort which gives us a powder keg awaiting ‘discharge.’” It must capture something happening in culture
that is ripe for conversation, disagreement, debate and discomfort. It may represent the view of many or just a
few. But regardless, it’s unresolved.

18. Sub-Cultural Tension
The Exercises
Sub-Cultural tensions are similar to cultural tensions, except they are just relevant to one particular sub-culture.
Sub-cultures have their own unique styles of communicating, consuming and behaving in general. The example in
the packet Subaru’s campaign targeted at Lesbians.

19. Categorical Tension
The Exercises
A category’s many conventions or rules often create tension and are therefore ripe to be challenged. Category
tension can help to swiftly and successfully reposition a brand against its competitors.
In the opaque, antiquated world of mattress marketing, Casper introduced a direct to consumer model that
challenged how the mattress industry worked.

20. Company-Centric Tensions
The Exercises
There are times when the most important tension to release is around the brand itself. It may be that people have
come to categorize the brand in a very narrow, restrictive way that limits its potential. Or the brand may have
been associated with a particular crisis or accident that needs to be addressed before it can take on larger
tensions at the category or cultural level.
Patagonia gained enormous additional respect for proactively criticizing its own supply chain for not being
sustainable enough.

21. Psychological Tension
The Exercises
In some ways, psychological tension is both narrow and broad at the same time. Narrow because it relates to
people’s inner emotional world and how they see themselves in relation to the world around them, including
brands. Broad because psychological tension can be very widely shared, crossing cultural boundaries.
Equinox’s campaigns challenge the viewer to think about whether they are fulfilling their potential and conveys
that Equinox is an aspirational brand for successful and beautiful people.

22. Values [15 minutes]
The Exercises
In this exercise, you ask the group to brainstorm individually on values that describe the company on post-its.
They can be words or short phrases.
After the brainstorm, help the group cluster the similar post-its on the board and facilitate a discussion. At the
end, the decider should pick the top 5 for the company.

23. Personality [15 minutes]
The Exercises
For this exercise, the group will use the sliders (example on next slide) in the packet to help describe the
personality of the company. Again, every individual will do their own and they you will facilitate a discussion. The
decider will determine the final slider positions.

24. 20 Second Gut Check [5 minutes]
The Exercises
For this exercise, you will need be projecting the computer screen so that everyone can see it. Each person has a
grading rubric for 10 web designs. During the exercise you will flip through the 10 slides (in the presentation
deck) giving the group 20 seconds each to grade the design.
The purpose of this exercise is to just get a sense of what kinds of design appeal to this audience. There is no
discussion afterwards (by this time everyone is pretty tired).

25. Wrapping Up
The Exercises
Make sure you collect everyone’s packets. Also, as you go along make sure you photographed the final
whiteboard result of every exercise.
You will need all of the data inputs in order to make the Brand Foundation deck!
If you have any questions about how to run the session, please email me at a.colker2@gmail.com
Thank you!
Arthur Colker
Founder of ISSUE89