Brand workshops play an integral part in setting the direction of a brand. Typically held after extensive research and discovery, the workshops are multi-day explorations of collected data and alignment on strategic vision for the brand.
Brand workshops are highly interactive and normally directed by a 3rd party branding agency in order to reduce subjectivity around potentially touchy subjects. The workshops are part of a larger brand intelligence process and can be anywhere from 1-5 days dependent on the size, maturity, and tenure of the business.
5 Common Types of Brand Workshops
When exploring the right type of brand workshop for your business, it's important to structure them with brand goals in mind. Brand goals are generally agreed upon as part of a larger brand intelligence effort.Below we explore the 5 most common types of brand workshops, what goals may lead to running the workshop, and what to expect during the workshop.
Brand Workshop
The brand workshop is focused around defining the brand and its internal and external persona. This single day workshop is designed to determine the 'True North' of the brand while setting intentions for the brand strategy, the brand essence, brand values, business goals, and how each interact.
Consumer Focused Brand Workshop
The consumer focused workshop is a single day event to audit and unpack existing and potential target audiences in order to develop strategic buyer personas. Key data used in this development will be demographic, psychographic, and behavioral data collected during the brand research and discovery phase of the overall strategy.
Brand Experience and Touchpoint Workshop
Single day exercise to audit, document, and refine the buyer's journey and the experience touch points a customer has with a brand. This workshop is critical for any brand looking to increase their customer lifetime value and create a cohesive customer experience.
Brand Content Workshop
The brand content workshop analyzes current content availability, viability, and gaps. As a single day workshop, the team works to align on a brand messaging platform then segments content into top, middle, bottom, and cyclical content buckets. Using a SWOT system, we are able to identify content needs with a prioritization score of highest impact : lowest effort and map production needs to this matrix.
Brand CRM / ERM Workshop
Single day workshops are used to identify and refine both customer and employee interactions with the brand. We define how these interactions are recorded to CRM and ERP environments and set the precedence for customer satisfaction scoring, NPS scoring, and employee retention.
What does a Brand Workshop Agenda look like?
Every workshop is built around its goal, but most single-day sessions follow a similar shape. Here's a typical agenda for a 1-day brand workshop:
| Time | Session |
| 8:30 | Coffee and ground rules for the day |
| 9:00 | Research readout. What we learned in research and discovery, with customer quotes and competitive findings. |
| 10:00 | Brand personality exercises. Card sorts and "if our brand walked into a room" prompts to find the brand's character. |
| 11:15 | Break |
| 11:30 | Positioning. Small groups draft positioning statements, then present them and vote. |
| 12:30 | Lunch (no laptops) |
| 1:30 | Values. We turn each value into 2 or 3 behaviors people can actually be held to. |
| 2:45 | Competitive mapping. Where the brand sits today and where it wants to be in 3 years. |
| 3:45 | Priorities. What has to be true 12 months from now for the strategy to be working? |
| 4:30 | Recap and next steps |
A few habits make the day work. We send a pre-read a week ahead, so nobody sees the research for the first time in the room. Phones go in a basket during exercises. We keep the group to 12 people or fewer, because past that the quieter voices stop talking.
Multi-day engagements use the same structure, with each day focused on one workshop type from the list above and a short recap of the previous day every morning. Within 10 business days you should get a written summary of decisions and open questions, along with the draft positioning, ready for the strategy phase.
Who should attend a Brand Workshop?
Stakeholders from the organization which pertain to the workshop topic. We encourage a mix of executives, managers, and production folks to keep the input and output relevant throughout the organization.
We often see good results from cross functional departments joining workshops as well. For instance, including sales and/or customer service representatives in a content workshop will almost always expose unique opportunities to what are normally marketing controlled exercises.
How much does a Brand Workshop cost?
A single day brand workshop will cost between $5-$10,000 dependent on the firm running the workshop and how many attendees are present from the business.
Representatives to expect to be present from the firm will include a Director of Brand Strategy, a Brand Strategist, a Creative Director, and an Account Manager or mediator for the day. With larger groups (over 20 people) you may see more strategists present in order to keep the flow of the workshop sustainable.
What are good questions to ask during a Brand Workshop?
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