What to Expect… from your Brand Proposition Workshop
The Importance of a Brand Proposition Workshop
A brand proposition workshop helps you clarify your unique position in the marketplace by articulating your brand’s purpose and its reason for being.
Defining your brand strategy will help you to get everyone working towards one common goal within the business. While also communicating a clear and coherent message to the world about what makes you unique.
Brand proposition workshops help to bring internal teams together to build a coherent brand strategy. We typically run these events as either in-person or virtual workshops.
What to Expect from a Brand Proposition Workshop
The workshop is a valuable experience that draws on individuals’ unique perspectives and knowledge, fostering collaboration and alignment. This collective effort ensures a strong and coherent brand proposition, leaving participants with a sense of accomplishment and empowerment.
Workshops can last anywhere from 3-6 hours, depending on the format and if any extra bolt-on sessions are combined with the workshop.
A typical agenda looks like this
- Introductions to the team
- Ice breaker activity
- An introduction to the strategy behind a brand proposition, illustrated with examples
- Tea break
- Defining Your Brand Purpose
- Defining your Brand Vision
- Lunch break
- Defining Your Brand Values
- Defining Your Brand Personality
- Round up of the day and next steps
For each critical section, e.g. brand values, there are fun and collaborative activities and examples to guide you. These activities are designed to be engaging and thought-provoking, encouraging participants to think creatively and share their unique perspectives. Activities typically start with working on your own or in small groups, and then you come together to discuss everyone’s work and align on your preferred direction – often, it can be an amalgamation of everyone’s work.
Our in-person brand proposition workshops are a full day, with a leisurely 10 am start and finishing up around 5 pm. Virtual workshops are 3-4 hours (with a break included).
Brand proposition workshops that take advantage of our bolt-on sessions are run over 2-3 days. These additional sessions provide a deeper dive into specific aspects of brand strategy, allowing for a more comprehensive understanding and application. It helps to make these consecutive days as everyone is focused and has a clear headspace to get the most out of the sessions.
Key Activities in the Workshop
These activities are not just exercises, they are engaging experiences that will get everyone thinking creatively and feeling excited about the potential of their brand.
- Icebreaker exercises are fun and short to help ease everyone into the workshop, making them comfortable and engaged.
- Brand purpose exercise: aimed to get everyone thinking big and aspirational. It is at your brand’s core and influences how your business acts, looks and speaks towards your target audience.
- Brand vision exercise: focused on the practical steps on how you can go about achieving your brand purpose.
- Brand values exercise: this is what you believe in as a company. They help you build an authentic and trusted brand with which your audience can connect.
- Brand personality exercise: aimed at defining your visual and verbal tone of voice. A defined personality will help create a relatable, human-feeling brand that people know and trust.
Bold on activities
As part of our workshop, we offer a series of additional sessions to complement the development of your brand strategy. Sessions can last between 1.5 hours to a half day. These can include:
- Target audience mapping and personas: to ensure your messaging is targeted and connects
- Brand architecture: creating a coherent system for growth, whether that be through acquisition or new product development
- Ideation sprint: this utilises trends and insights from the brand audit to develop ideas for growth, whether that be new products, initiatives, services or markets to enter
- Brand development: this includes how to leverage your proposition for the likes of social media and marketing
- Brand Accessibility: outlining the key principles to make your brand more inclusive to attract a diverse audience
In-Person vs. Virtual Brand Strategy Workshops
In-person workshops are not just about learning, they are about coming together as a team. They foster collaboration and enable a hands-on environment with activities and props, creating a sense of unity and shared purpose.
They also build strong engagement and focus, as phones and laptops are turned off during the sessions to avoid distractions. There are plenty of breaks, so everyone can still check in if they wish to!
In-person workshops often cost more as they involve more planning and hands-on activities, usually arranging venues, catering and equipment. They also require all stakeholders to travel to the venue. However, time away from the office (or even day-to-day work) gives people headspace to be more strategic and look at the bigger picture.
Virtual workshops can provide more flexibility for teams in different locations or time zones, making scheduling easier and often providing a much-needed collaborative space for them to get together. The workshops use virtual whiteboards and screen sharing to create an interactive environment that fosters collaboration.
The downside of virtual workshops is that even with regular breaks and dynamic and interactive collaborative sessions, some people participating can get sidetracked by emails and day-to-day work.
Pre-Workshop Planning and Preparation
Before arranging a brand proposition workshop, knowing what you want to achieve from it is essential. It could be creating clarity around your strategy, bringing brands together, laying the foundations for a rebrand, or exploring new markets and opportunities. Whatever your objective, it’s essential to meet beforehand to align this with key stakeholders so that the workshop can be designed around your specific needs and ensure you walk away with what you need.
Work is often done before the workshops, typically a brand and competitor audit, including crucial stakeholder and customer research. This ensures you take advantage of valuable opportunities and have individuals who will resonate with your audiences.
Who Should Be Involved?
Having a diverse group that provides cross-departmental representation, e.g., marketing, sales, finance, customer service, etc., and has varying service levels is good. Include key decision makers who can drive the brand forward and those who strongly understand the brand’s current position.
Facilities and Tools Required
In-person, we bring everything with us for the activities; however, if you are hosting the workshop at your venue, you will need the following:
- Venue with enough space for group activities and breakout sessions.
- Whiteboards or flip charts
- Catering and refreshments
- AV equipment, e.g. projector or a screen for presentations
- For workshops with over 30 people, it is helpful to have access to a microphone
For virtual workshops, each participant will need access to the following:
- Stable internet connection
- Video conferencing software (Zoom, Microsoft Teams, etc.)
- We provide access to Miro, a collaborative whiteboard for brainstorming
Timeframes
The whole process, from booking your brand proposition workshop to receiving the finalised strategy, takes 2-3 weeks. It comprises pre-planning, workshop days and one week to develop the finalised strategy document.
We recommend doing a comprehensive brand and competitor benchmarking audit as a precursor to the workshops. It provides you with valuable insights and context and enables opportunities that might have otherwise been overlooked.
What You Will Get Out of a Brand Strategy Workshop
From the workshops, you will have a defined brand vision and mission that reflects your business goals and market positioning. Brand values and a personality that truly represent your business and will resonate with your audience.
Most importantly, it provides alignment across teams and a unified understanding of the brand and strategic priorities that all stakeholders can get behind.
Don’t just take our word for it…
The flow of the day felt very organic and interactive. Studio Noel guided us gently in pinpointing and recalibrating our brand, vision, value, and personality. It helped us to realign with the team to create a brand that we want to drive success for the future.
I really enjoyed the freedom to think creatively within a structured framework. The workshop was expertly led, guiding us through the creative process in an inspiring and practical way. My key takeaway was how valuable it is to step back and objectively sense-check our thought processes. It was an authentic and rewarding experience, and I wouldn't change a thing!
End Result: What You Take Away
After the workshops, we refine your brand proposition with our copywriter so that it is succinct and compelling. These are collated in a comprehensive document outlining your brand strategy.
Understanding the business's core messages, including its purpose, vision, values, and personality, was enlightening. The clarity and well-structured approach established an environment where everyone could fully engage with the material. Studio Noel's positivity and collaborative support facilitated the natural and effective crystallisation of the messages and characteristics of our business. I'm confident that applying these insights will achieve our business objectives more successfully.
I thoroughly enjoyed the workshop! It made me think about our business from a fresh perspective and provided guidance for creative thinking. The pace and timing were spot-on, with sessions thoughtfully broken down and supported by helpful examples. My key takeaway was discovering how valuable the right brain space can be—truly transformative!
How to Book Your Brand Strategy Workshop
Workshops can be customised based on your needs, whether a rebrand, a new product launch, or a long-term strategy session. To book your brand proposition workshop and create a memorable and unique proposition, get in touch with us.