This article originally appeared on the Toptal Design Blog.
Strategy breeds better design, but brand strategies don’t materialize on their own. They require cooperation between designers and clients. At the start of new engagements, brand strategy workshops align stakeholders and set the tone for the work that follows. Better still, they produce brands that go beyond aesthetic appeal to achieve business goals.
But what about remote brand designers? Can they lead strategy workshops?
Unfortunately, many designers shy away from remote brand strategy sessions. It’s understandable. Leading workshops remotely seems counterintuitive. Aren’t workshops, by definition, a time for people to collaborate in person?
Thankfully, the absence of physical proximity is no longer a barrier. Cloud-based collaboration tools are abundant, and remote-friendly work policies are on the rise.
With the right planning, remote brand strategy sessions are more effective than traditional workshops. In fact, the constraints of remote technology can breed greater levels of creativity.
What are the advantages of remote brand strategy workshops?
There are five stages to the remote workshop process:
The first step is to gather client information needed for a productive workshop. Start by asking the client to complete a brand discovery survey that covers the following topics:
The ideal survey takes no more than 30 minutes to complete and provides all the information needed for the workshop. Surveys can be administered using Google forms in which clients provide multiple-choice answers, scale ratings, and short descriptions.
Brand discovery surveys uncover relevant business details and allow clients to clarify their thinking before workshops begin.
*Pro Tip: Request that at least two stakeholders complete the survey without conferring. Areas of agreement or disagreement are excellent discussion topics for the workshop, and they often lead to interesting debates and discoveries.
Once the brand discovery survey is complete, it’s time for an in-depth review of the answers. During the review, complete the following tasks:
Gathering information is pointless if it’s not analyzed. The goal here is to draw out insights to verify or reject during the workshop.
The workshop itself is split into two 3-4-hour sessions over two days. This allows ideas and concepts to ruminate overnight before finalizing. It also makes the time investment more manageable since holding the entire workshop in one session could take up to eight hours.
There are a total of eight exercises to be completed over the course of the workshop. Each exercise corresponds to a topic covered in the brand discovery survey. The first four exercises are tackled on Day 1.
1. Define the Brand with a Mission Statement
2. Visualize the Brand with Keywords
3. Establish Market Positioning vs. Competitors
4. Build Target Personas
5. Analyze Competitor Brands
6. Construct a Messaging Framework
7. Assemble a Website Strategy
8. Discuss Business Goals and Measures of Success
The goal of the first workshop is to clearly articulate the brand and its design aesthetic, market position, unique selling proposition (USP), and target audience.
The second workshop focuses on strategically implementing these concepts into real-life applications.
Kickstart the first workshop by defining the brand with a mission statement. This stimulates creativity and provides an aerial perspective of the brand.
A mission statement encapsulates a company’s core message and includes the following components:
Once a mission statement is agreed upon, set it aside to be reviewed at the end of the workshop when the finer details of the brand are dialed in.
*Pro Tip: Before the workshop, write a mission statement based on the answers provided in the brand discovery survey. This will serve as a starting point for discussion among participants.
Clients love this part of the workshop. Simply ask the participants to trim the keywords they selected in the discovery survey from 20 down to four. Those that make the cut are used to refine the visual direction of the brand.
Concentrating on four ensures that the brand style doesn’t become diluted. It’s worth noting that the chosen keywords may or may not appear in the brand’s messaging, and they aren’t necessarily meant to be customer-facing.
Begin the selection process by asking each participant to describe and justify their four choices in detail. It’s helpful to frame this discussion around specific questions:
Reducing keywords is a challenging process, but it brings much-needed focus to the brand aesthetic.
Here, the goal is to demonstrate and visualize the client’s market position, thus clarifying their unique selling proposition in the eyes of customers.
Refer to this question from the brand discovery survey: “Select the following variable that your business excels in compared to competitors.” Use the client’s answers to highlight how they are positioned differently than competitors.
It’s time to build a detailed representation of the ideal customer. Personas help the client keep the customer in mind when making strategic design and branding decisions later in the engagement.
The brand discovery survey asks core questions about the demographics of the client’s target audience. Use the client’s replies to assemble:
If the client is targeting several market segments, it’s fine to produce multiple personas. That said, it’s best to be focused here, so try to keep them to a minimum.
At the completion of day one, the brand is defined and everyone involved can articulate the:
Now, we tackle the final four exercises:
1. Define the Brand with a Mission Statement
2. Visualize the Brand with Keywords
3. Establish Market Positioning vs. Competitors
4. Build Target Personas
5. Analyze Competitor Brands
6. Construct a Messaging Framework
7. Assemble a Website Strategy
8. Discuss Business Goals and Measures of Success
Day two is focused on real-world implementation of the brand, a step where designers often fall short. Here, brand strategy insights become actionable steps.
Schedule the second workshop the day after the first, allowing time for rest and reflection. Before starting day two exercises, recap the first session to reinforce learnings with the participants.
Start the second workshop with a fun exercise that examines the brand, messaging, website, and marketing strategies of the client’s key competitors.
As with the exercises of day one, the bulk of the work is done before the workshop begins. Refer to the list of competitors identified in the brand discovery survey and compile screen grabs of their websites and social channels. Use these to inspire the client or demonstrate approaches to avoid.
When sharing competitor examples, frame the presentation around the following questions:
A messaging framework is a repository of the problems, solutions, and values related to the client’s product or service. To construct a messaging framework, start by listing target customers’ pain points. The brand discovery survey asks, “What are the problems they (target customers) face?” Use the client’s answers to go deeper and brainstorm even more problems.
Then, run through the list of possible problems and describe how the client solves each (or doesn’t). This produces a list of customer problems and useful ways to solve them.
Mapping problems and solutions is helpful, but an important piece is missing: value–or the benefit that customers receive from the client’s solution. For example:
It’s time to assemble a website strategy. There are two stages to this exercise. First, revisit the brand discovery survey and discuss the client’s answers to:
This discussion produces action points that help the client improve their website strategy and SEO performance.
In the second stage of the exercise, work with the participants to populate a simple wireframe with the core modules that will appear in the final website design. Each module should be discussed and justified. There are two benefits to involving the client in the wireframe:
Finish the workshop by discussing three crucial questions:
Each question is designed to bring future plans into sharp focus. Once again, preparation is essential. Follow-up questions further reveal the client’s motivations. For example:
Use the client’s answers to the measuring success question to establish SMART goals. SMART is a framework that ensures goals are clear and reachable:
*Pro Tip: Ending with this exercise provides the client with a sense of completion and an ideal vision for the future.
Before the workshop concludes, it’s best to go back to the beginning and recap everything that’s been discussed. This ensures that everyone is on the same page and cements the decisions that were made.
When the workshop is over, gather the output into a summary document where the client can review in an easy-to-digest format.
Brand strategy workshops are an invaluable opportunity for designers to lead clients through the toughest questions their businesses will ever face. Workshops unearth essential brand-building insights and instill ongoing trust between clients and designers. And now, thanks to an influx of cloud-based tools and remote-friendly work initiatives, they enable real-time collaboration between participants on multiple continents.
- Charlie Osborne
1. If you want to position yourself as an expert, offering workshops is the most effective path. I'd recommend starting with an affordable course:
→ The Brand Strategy Mini-Course: Learn how to start charging your clients for remote brand strategy workshops in this 1 hour mini-course.
2. If you're ready to take your workshop skills to another level:
→ The Remote Brand Strategy Workshop Masterclass: This comprehensive course will teach you my two-day workshop method that has allowed me to charge clients £30,000+ per project.
3. Work with me 1:1 to grow your one-person design business that enables your ideal life (Currently 2 spaces left)
I am a brand strategist and designer for small-mid sized tech startups. I will help you grow your dream one-person businesses so you can live with freedom & autonomy.
A free step-by-step guide to successfully running a remote design business. Discover where you are on the roadmap and follow the actionable steps to reach your next stage.
This value packed 1 hour mini video course will teach you how to run fun and engaging brand strategy workshops for your clients. Enabling you to provide truly impactful value and raise your rates as a result.
Become an expert brand strategist and take your design offering to a whole new level. This course will teach you my method for running a professional two day brand strategy workshop that will position you as an expert in your field.