Branding Process
Our branding process is unlike anything available in Brisbane.
We bridge the divide between campaign, creative, analytics and traditional marketing to deliver a usable and future-focused Branding DNA, without ignoring where you’ve been and what you’ve learned.
Although the experience in itself has been reportedly beneficial to all of our clients, other key positives include:
- A clear representation of the current state of play, contextualized by your brand and your position in the market.
- A rare opportunity to critically explore the fundamentals of who, what, why, how, when and where without interruption.
- A detailed road-map forward, designed by you and facilitated by us.
- A branding document to guide the development of future campaigns, promotions, audience driven content, market reputation, and internal and external communications.
Step 1: Preparatory Research – Who Are You Now?
Before we can sit down together and begin our deep-dive into your brand future, we need to understand both your past and current standing.
The Soak Branding team will perform an audit and sentiment analysis, documenting market positioning, current messaging, campaign activity, audience perception and opportunity, and much more according to external observation. Our findings will be delivered to you prior to the workshop, in an easy to read format, providing context and realistic framing going forward.
Step 2: Define Your Brand DNA – The Workshop
The DNA Discovery workshop is a 3-4 hour experience, guided by your unique needs as a brand. After discussing the findings of our brand audit, the Soak Branding team will direct you through a multi-stage session, beginning with an identity review.
The Identity Review:
Soak present participants with a handful of cards, each with a different brand attribute printed on either side. These are neither positive nor negative. You will be asked to allocate the various attributes to one of three sections – Applies, Does Not Apply or Torn – according to the relevance of the card to your brand as it exists now. Through an engaging and discussion heavy process, we will whittle down your Applies stack to 5-10 cards.
Re-shuffling the deck, you will be asked to perform the same activity again, this time focusing on what you wish for your brand to be going forward.
Market Positioning:
Following the Identity Review, we will explore the ebbs and flows of your market as you lay down a tri-tiered competitor matrix (with our assistance), detailing your primary competitors, your secondary competitors, and emerging organisations that may cause waves in the future. You will be challenged to explore the strengths and weaknesses of your own presence, using our preparatory research and your industry knowledge as a jumping off point, identifying your current brand position as it relates to your competitor versus where you want to be.
Audience Positioning:
Strong brands know their audience. To help you become an impact player, we need to understand who you’re talking to, who you’d like to talk to and who you want to move away from. This will help us marry your needs as a growing brand with the values and pain-points of those who make your business a public and search-worthy name.
The Fire Round:
The DNA Discovery workshop should leave no stone unturned. In case our discussions somehow miss these very key questions, we’ll be making up for lost time here and challenging you to articulate concise and clear answers to seemingly simple questions. They may look easy on paper, but we really want any developing brand to think about the answers in reference to their future, not where they’re already situated in the market.
- What is the essence of what you do? Summarise in a sentence or two.
- What are your short term goals (6-12 months?
- What are your mid-term goals ( 1- 2 years)?
- What are your long-term goals (3 -5 years)?
- What is your greatest strength as brand?
- What are some of the challenges you’ve overcome as a brand in the last 12 months to 2 years?
- What strength do you aspire to in the next 12 months?
- What is your greatest weakness as a brand?
- How can you utilize your brand transformation to combat that weakness?
- How do your employees feel about your brand identity and company?
- How do audiences feel about your brand identity and company?
- What emotion does your brand convey to customers, prospects, and employees?
Step 3: The Brand Profile – The Transformation Foundation
The Brand Profile is the foundation of everything to come. We combine our learnings from the workshop session with our audit discoveries and your feedback, to generate a cohesive and comprehensive brand document.
Although only 10-18 pages long, it represents the core fundamentals of your refreshed presence, documenting value propositions, internal positioning narratives, brand visions and directives, brand values, brand messaging, points of difference and audience impact. All future content and campaign collateral is informed by the Brand Profile, so it’s an incredibly important tool to have in your identity kit.
