Transcripts
1. Introduction: Having a solid grasp on what
makes your brand unique makes every marketing decision
a thousand times easier. Having competence in those marketing decisions
saves you time, money, and most
importantly, energy. So you can focus on
building your brand and making your business as
impactful as possible. In this chaotic landscape
of market shortages, supply chain interruptions,
and so many unknowns. It's especially
important to have a true understanding
of your brand to make it resilient
and sustainable. My name is Tamara Jensen. I'm hospitality entrepreneur
and a brand strategist. I've worked with
clients of all sizes at all stages of their business
in all kinds of industries. My passion lies in
the hospitality, arts and culture and
creative sectors. I practice what I preach. It's my responsibility to empower my teams with a
true understanding of our brands so that they can see the unlimited potential
of where brands can be. Over the past few years. I've seen firsthand
the benefits of putting in the work to
build a resilient brand. I love what I do
because I get to empower teams to maximize their impact and make smart decisions that
are rooted in strategy. I empathize with
small business owners who have to make tough calls
with limited resources. Over the past few
tumultuous years of keeping my own businesses alive and helping my clients brands
be more resilient. I've doubled down on how
important it is to understand the true core essence
of your brand and communicate its value
to your customers. You can take this class
if you're at any stage of your business
from establish two, it's a twinkle in your eye. Maybe you're an
artist or creative who's ready to share your
work with the world. You don't have to be a marketing expert to take this class. It's designed to be iterative and there are no wrong answers. This class is designed
to get you comfortable and confident your brand
can be positioned. From this class, you'll
end up with a word or a short phrase that captures
your brand's core essence. It will feel intuitive, like it's always been there, but you just haven't quite
put your finger on it yet. This class will give you
clarity on the core essence of your brand and excitement over how you can
bring it to life. You'll have the first
crucial building block of a resilient brand. Let's get into it.
2. Materials, Project, & Class Prep: In this class, we'll
do a series of exercises that will
work through together. We'll start with what I
call a brand brain dump. And then we'll populate
our brand essence wheels. And we'll narrow things down to our top contenders for
our core brand essence. Finally, we'll
test our best pics against some proven methods. I use this method because
it's iterative and intuitive. It's what you already know. Field think, dream
about your brand. Whether it exists or not. You don't have to sit
down and do all of these exercises in one go. In my experience, this is a process that doesn't
just happen in one day. Do the exercises, walk away, take time to breathe, let it marinate, swirl around in your head
and come back to it. Taking your time with
this process will make your brand essence more
nuanced and powerful. I've used this process successfully across different
kinds of industries, different sizes of businesses, different stages of business. And it is so satisfying and empowering to have your core
brand essence in place. I loved this process because it doesn't require
perfectionism. There are no wrong answers. But when you get to the
point of building out all of your public facing
parts of your brand, your logo, your packaging, your shop design, you name it. It makes it that much
easier. I own a restaurant. I've worked with a
number of brands, and I live in a small community, so I've been very lucky to
have word of mouth referrals. For the sake of the class. I thought it would be fun
to work on my own brand. Doesn't have a name yet. Let's call it tomorrow Corp. To set yourself up for success. Give yourself time,
revisit your worksheets. There are no wrong answers. Answer truthfully. Don't write down what you think your competitor might say
about their business. We really want to get to
the core brand essence, what makes your brand powerful? In the next video, we'll
go over the layers of a resilient brand and why the core brand essence is
so crucial. Join me there.
3. The Layers of a Resilient Brand: Whether you're a solopreneur and artists just
getting started, or you have an
established business with a large team putting the work
into the inner layers of your brand before you
worry about all of the public-facing stuff is crucial to make sure
your brand is resilient. Resilient brands are
competitive, sustainable, and scalable, and they withstand the inevitable
obstacles that will come along. A brand is much more than just a logo or the things people see and touch when they experience your product
or your service. A brand is how people feel and think when they interact with everything that
your brand does. Think of it as your
business's reputation. How would someone talk
about your business? How would they talk about
the things you offer and how you offer them when
you're not in the room. Your brand is at the heart
of all of your marketing. It's how you attract
customers, connect with them, retain them, nurture them
into loyal brand advocates. And it gives you access to opportunities that you
haven't even thought of yet. When we think of a brand, we often think of all of
the public-facing pieces, logos, packaging, design,
that sort of thing. I'm a very visual person. I like to think of a brand
as like a section of a tree. All of the public-facing
things that we see, the brand touchpoints. So your logo, your
packaging, your shop design. That's like the leaves and branches and fruit on the tree. They look great,
they feel great. But we have to make sure that the inner layers of our
tree are strong and resilient because
the outer layers are exposed to the elements. A lot of those elements
are out of our control. Market trends, economic
downturns, pandemics. We need to make sure
that the inner layers of our brand or a tree
are resilient and strong so that all of
the public-facing stuff can thrive during
the great times and stand up during
the tough times. And the inner layers, we have things like
your brand values, your mission, your vision, rules about things like
language and tone. All crucial aspects to
making your brand unique. Having the inner layers of
your brand in place makes it easier to do things like work
with product manufacturers, creative agencies, and
communicate your value. Having strong inner
layers of your brand and a strong core essence doesn't mean the
rest of your brand. The touch points will
be rigid or inflexible. Quite the opposite.
It means there'll be nimble and agile as needed. Just like a healthy tree. I think that things need to
be strong and healthy on the inside to feel and
look good on the outside. What we're focusing on today
is your core brand essence. It's the intangible, intuitive, emotional center of your brand. It's a source of power. It's important to note that your core brand
essence might not literally be reflected in any of your brand's touchpoints. It might not show up in a
tagline or an advertising copy. Its conceptual but powerful. When we think of a
brand like Disney, the core brand essence
is imagination. You don't necessarily see that come up in their
advertisements, in their characters,
in their movies. But you feel it when you
experience the brand. When we think of a
brand like Nike, the core brand essence is
authentic athletic performance. We don't see that
show up in things like taglines and
advertising copy. But when the brand is brought to life through its
many touch points, That's how we experience it. There are three main
reasons why having your core brand essence in
place is really important. The first, it empowers
smart decision-making. The second, it helps you position your brand
competitively. Third, it provides a strong foundation
for brand resiliency. I can't stress this enough. Having a firm grasp on
the core essence of your brand will make
every decision easier, smarter, and more impactful. In the next video, we're
going to start off easy with a
brainstorming exercise, the brand brain dump. We're going to get all of
our thoughts, feelings, opinions, and experiences
of our brand down on paper. So go ahead and download the class workbook and
meet me in the next video.
4. Exercise 1: Brand Brain Dump: In this video, we'll tackle the first nine questions
in your class workbook, the brand brain dump. If your brand doesn't exist yet, think in ideal terms. You can use the worksheet or find a workflow
that you enjoy. Some tips for this exercise. Give yourself time. You can revisit it as you go. This is a brainstorming
exercise. There are no wrong answers. So resist the urge to censor yourself or edit. Be truthful. Don't answer like you think
your competitors might. You can work alone or if you
have a team work together, you can complete it
independently and compare or work collaboratively. I'm working through
my brand brain dump and I'll post the results
in the resource section. Tomorrow Corp is the
placeholder name I'm giving my freelance
consulting business. I'm answering the brand brain
dump questions according to the experiences I've had with my brand strategy
clients so far, the clients I hope to work with. And how I think my brand will show up authentically
in the world. In this exercise, we've
taken everything we know, feel and think about our
brands and put it on paper. The questions are
designed to tease out some nuances about your brand by looking at it from
different angles. I personally love this exercise because it makes my
brand feel more real. Go ahead and post your brand brain dump
in the project gallery. In the next video, we'll take things a step
further and use one of my favorite tools from the advertising industry,
the brand essence. We'll then we'll
distill things down to our top contenders for our core brand essence.
Join me there.
5. Exercise 2: Brand Essence Wheel: In this video, we'll be populating our brand
essence wheels, developed by the Bates
worldwide agency in 1995. What's different about this
exercise is that we're completing it from our
customers perspective. This is important because our brand isn't
what we say it is, It's how other people
experience it. We want to consider
those perspectives when we're getting down to
our core brand essence. In the brand essence wheel, It's obviously a
circle and we've got our core essence
in the center. We're not going to worry
about that right now. We'll put in some
information from our other exercise in a moment. What we're starting with in this exercise are
the outer quadrants. So we're going to answer as
though we're a customer. What does this brand do for me? And we'll put that in
this outer quadrant. Next, we're going to answer, how would I describe the
brand again as a customer? And that goes in this quadrant. Next, we'll ask,
how does the brand make me look as a
user or a customer? And lastly, how does the brand make me feel as a
user or customer? Goes into squatter? To bring this exercise to life, we'll look at a
brand like Guinness. The core brand essence
of Guinness is strength. It's reflected in advertising, product labels, brewery tours, but it's not literally
written in anything. Strength as the
core brand essence of Guinness is sustainable, scalable, and tangible
and emotional. It takes all of the
boxes like what we're trying to find for
our core brand essence. Another example is Chanel. The core brand
essence is luxury, a conceptual but powerful word. It's brought to life in every
touch point of the brand, from the fabric and
material and fashion, the ingredients and perfumes, the in-store
shopping experience. You can find examples of these completed
brand essence wheels in the class resource section. Today, we want to distill down our core brand essence in a similar way to something
that's conceptual, powerful, sustainable,
tangible, and emotional. In this exercise, there is
still no wrong answers, so don't filter or
censor yourself, but be a little more thoughtful. You could consider reviews or feedback that you've had
from your customers. Or you could even ask a loyal customer for
some of their thoughts. This is by no means necessary. You should already have a pretty great
understanding of how your customers
experience your brand. If your brand doesn't exist yet, think about it in ideal terms. As I'm working through
my brand essence, we'll, I'm finding that I'm
repeating some of the same concepts from
the first exercise, which is a great sign. But I'm finding a
bit more nuance because I'm considering
my client's perspective. In this exercise.
We've looked at our brand from an
outsider's perspective. We've looked at
some functional and some emotional
parts of our brand. And we brought in some things
from our previous exercise, go ahead and post your brand essence wheel
in the project gallery. In the next video, we'll
begin to distill down the hard work we've
done to get to our core brand essence.
I'll see you there.
6. Distill Your Top Contenders: So at this stage, we've got our thoughts and ideas
about our brand on paper. Now, we want to narrow
things down and focus in on the strongest and most compelling
parts of our brand. We're going to begin
by identifying some recurring themes
and then we'll triangulate them using
a few effective tests. We're going to look at
some literal definitions of our top contenders, test them against some
industry back criteria, and then see how they come to life with a visual mood board. Now we want to narrow
things down and focus on the strongest and
most compelling parts. The goal of this process
is to distill things down to our top contenders
and let the rest evaporate. It's still an intuitive
and conceptual process, but it has to stand up to our
tests later in the class. There's a bit of an art to
this process, but don't worry, the tests are
designed to tease out our top contenders and
land on the most powerful. We'll start simply by finding some recurring
themes in the work that we've done and
narrow them down. You're going to go
through the first two exercises you've done in your class workbook and
highlight any recurring themes, things that are popping
up again and again. Try to keep it to three to five of the strongest
recurring themes. Next, we want to check
those recurring themes against their literal
dictionary definitions. If the literal definitions
aren't quite right, try using a thesaurus to find
related words or phrases. What I love about these
exercises is that you're answering similar questions
from a different perspective. You'll find that
recurring concepts are coming up again and again, but probably with more
nuanced. That's a great thing. Don't be afraid at this stage
to add to your worksheets, if something more specific
or nuanced pops up, your top contenders might end up being a combination of
your recurring themes. Imagine a Venn diagram
and there's that something in the middle that
just makes the most sense. Another tip is take a walk. Let your mind be occupied. Never underestimate the
power of a mind at rest. Next, we're going to populate
the central circle of our brand essence wheel with our top three to
five contenders. In the next video, we'll
test these against even stricter criteria and get closer to finding our
core brand essence. Post your progress in
the project gallery, and join me in the next
video. We're so close.
7. Testing against Industry-backed Criteria: In this video, we'll be testing
our top contender against some universally
recognized criteria developed by Curt
Phillips in 2010. The first criteria is
that it should be unique. It should differentiate
your brand from your competition and claim
the uniqueness of your brand. The second criteria is that your core brand essence
should be intangible, it should be emotionally driven. The third criteria is that
it should be single-minded. It should be very
focused and succinct forth your core brand essence
should be experiential. It should capture what
people actually experience. The fifth criteria is that
it should be meaningful. Your core brand essence should resonate
with your audience. Sixth, your core brand
essence should be consistent across all of your
touch points of your brand. Seventh, your core brand
essence should be authentic. You should be able to
deliver on it genuinely. Eighth, your core brand
essence should be sustainable. It should remain
unchanged over time. 9th, your core brand
essence should be scalable. It should be able to
grow with your company. Our goal with our
top contender is to satisfy all nine criteria. Check your top contender
against this list of criteria to see if
you're getting closer. I'm feeling really good about the top contender for
my core brand essence. It satisfies all the criteria and I think we're really close. Remember, your core brand
essence probably won't be used literally in any of your advertising
or marketing copy. So don't get caught up on
the actual word or phrase. It's more important at this point that it
checks all the boxes. Remember, your
brand will reflect your core brand essence
and bring it to life. You should be getting
really close at this point, but don't freak out. If you're not a 100% there yet. You can revisit your worksheets, add more specific
and nuanced answers and something even more
powerful might pop out. Post your work in
the project gallery. In the next video, we'll
use a visual mood board to see how your top brand essence contender
might come to life. It's my favorite
part of the process. I'll see you there.
8. Create a Visual Mood Board: Remember that your
brand's core essence will eventually show
up in the real-world, probably in places you
haven't even thought of yet. In this lesson, we'll
build a visual mood board. It's a collection of images that reflect how your brand
essence might come to life. These images might include things like lifestyle
photography, advertising examples,
shop design, packaging, any of those visual touch points
we mentioned earlier, a mood board is a
good visual test to find the nuance in
your core brand essence. And it's your first glimpse
of how it might come to life. In my experience
and mood board is a really useful test and
it gives you that a-ha, moment of clarity around your core brand essence when
making your mood board, feel free to go down
the rabbit hole. Let the algorithm guide you. Use websites like Google
image search, Pinterest, Instagram hashtags,
my favorite sites to use our Behance and
stock image sites. Be sure to add some
context to your search. Terms like lifestyle
photography or packaging design to your
core brand essence that will give you
the best results. When you're searching.
If the algorithm keeps serving up images that
feel instinctively right, run with it, that's
a great sign. Post your mood board in
the project gallery. I'll post my final project with my core brand essence.
So you can take a look. You should be feeling really, really good at this point. But if you're not quite
there, don't panic. Join me in the next video, we'll wrap up your
core brand essence. I'll see you there.
9. Progress Review & Next Steps: At this point, you should
be at one of two outcomes. Either yes, Amazing. I've got it or not quite, but I'm so close I can taste it. If you're not quite, but it's so close
stage, don't worry. You can revisit your worksheets, take a walk, give it a couple of days and come back to things. Nothing is engraved in
stone at this point, you're in control of
your core brand essence. Work back through things until you find that core
brand essence, that innate and feels natural, like it's always been there. Trust me, you'll feel it in your bones when you land on
your core brand essence. Don't underestimate the
power of walking away, taking a break and
coming back to things. In my experience, this is
never a one pass project. You want to let things marinade and the right
word will come to you. You can add to your
worksheets or edit, get more specific and nuanced. The closer you get, the more confident you'll feel in
your core brand essence. Post your project results
in the project gallery, and don't forget to ask questions in the
class discussion. Join me in the final video for some closing thoughts on this journey we've
been through together. I'll see you there.
10. Closing Thoughts: From this class, I hope you feel some clarity and confidence around the core brand essence and the center of
power for your brand. You also have some
useful tools to make your brand unique,
competitive and resilient. I really hope you have
some excitement about the possibilities of bringing your core brand essence to life. Your brand's core essence is at the center of everything
your brand does. That could feel like
a lot of pressure. But don't worry, don't
panic if you haven't gotten it 100% right after
spending this time with me, your info control,
revisit your work, make tweaks and live with
things for a few days, make adjustments, and you'll
get to that aha moment. Thank you so much for
joining me on this journey. I'm really excited to see your work and I hope
you'll join me in the next class when
we will continue to build the layers of
our resilient brands.
11. BONUS: Book a 1-on-1 Mentorship Session with me!: Hi, friends, just popping
on here to let you know, you can now book a one
on one mentorship call with me right here
on Skillshare. We can talk through building
your resilient brand, pursuing your biggest personal
and professional goals, and the obstacles that come along with being a
creative entrepreneur. I'm so excited to work
directly with you. You can book a call today
on my Skillshare profile.
Tamara Jensen, Entrepreneur & Brand Strategist
