Transcripts
1. Intro: I wanted to make a class about brand discovery meetings because in my career I've been on both the client and design side and I've seen so much miscommunication that leads to a lot of frustration. Have you ever had a design meeting where the answers to your questions went a little something like this. We value inclusivity here, so our target markets really [inaudible] , I can't really say that we have any competition. We really want to be recognizable. We want people to see your brand and just know that it's us. I love purple, it's my favorite color, is the color of my alma mater. I was thinking in terms of color and I'm just spit balling here. What about purple. My name is Elizabeth Brooklyn. I'm a graphic designer and illustrator in Memphis, Tennessee. Nailing the brand discovery process is critical because there are so many talented designers out there. It's not enough to be a good artist. You have to also be a storyteller. You have to know how to ask the right questions in order to effectively tell that brand story. That's what this class is all about. A structured process with interactive exercises is a great way to build trust with your clients. In this class, we'll go over a few things you can facilitate, and how you can tailor them to get the feedback you need to make your best work. This class is for designers who were interested in brand creation and anyone who may collaborate the with them. By the end of this class, you will have made a thorough plan for leading a brand discovery meeting with confidence. I'm so glad you're here. Thank you for watching and let's get started.
2. Class Project: Your class project will be to make a comprehensive meeting plan that includes; meeting guidelines, three exercises specifically tailored to the plan of your choosing, and a final meeting agenda. You'll also be performing a fourth exercise as if you were the client, and you'll create a practice color palette using the results of what you find. By the end of this class, you will have all the tools you need to run an efficient meeting. You'll be able to impress your clients, not only with creativity, but with your ability to facilitate in an organized manner. For your project, you will need the following items; any materials you prefer for note-taking, index cards, sticky notes or small scraps of paper, markers or pens, a computer, smartphone or tablet with internet access, and any software or analog materials that you would like to use to create a practice color palette. The format for your class project is pretty wide open and I encourage you to get creative with it. But if you'd like to borrow from exactly how I do things, I've included the following items in the projects and resources section: sample meeting guidelines, worksheets with examples for each exercise, and a sample meeting agenda. Pick a client to prep for. You can use an existing client or you can pick a dream client that you would like to re-brand. If you decide to use a company that already has a very recognizable visual identity, just make sure that you choose one that you'd like to completely new brand in a totally different way from what they currently have. When you've picked your company, please post some information about them in your class project. It doesn't have to be anything fancy, just a couple of sentences to give some basic things like product or service they offer, where they're located or how many patients they have, and if they are a non-profit, private, or public company. You don't have to reveal the name of the company, especially if they're a real client of yours. Let's choose those clients and I'll see you in the next lesson.
3. Lesson: Setting Expectations: In this lesson, we'll make a list of meeting guidelines with a clearly defined goal. It helps to provide this list to participants to set the tone for your meeting. Your documented guidelines should cultivate a positive and productive discussion. When clients don't know what to expect, it can cause anxiety that may discourage participation. A little bit of information can go a long way in setting a foundation of trust. It's helpful to state the goal of the meeting even if you think your client already knows it. For example, our goal today is to determine the essence of your brand. Keep in mind that there may be participants who have not yet been briefed on what you're doing and even if they have, it's best to make sure that everyone is on the same page before diving in. Tell them why what they are about to do is important. Their time is valuable and you're about to ask them to do some creative thinking that can be draining to those who aren't used to it. Give them a few words of motivation. For example, I frequently like to remind my clients that your visual identity has approximately two seconds to evoke an emotional response before someone either continues to look or moves on. The work that we do today will help us create an identity that can compete for the viewers attention. Tell them how you plan to get to your goal. You don't have to go into much detail. Something along the lines of, today we will perform a few exercises intended to uncover feelings and guttural responses should be sufficient. When it comes to establishing guidelines for behavior, it's best to be clear but understanding. No one wants to attend a meeting where they feel like harsh and unnecessary rules will be enforced. But it is helpful to set some reasonable expectations. Start by identifying typical meeting hurdles and how to prevent them. Think about the meetings you've attended that have gone horribly wrong. What happened? How can you anticipate those situations and kindly respond to them beforehand? What distractions get in the way of productivity? For example, how many times have you been to a meeting that goes absolutely nowhere because everyone keeps looking at their phones? How do conversations sometimes get heated? Have you ever been to a meeting in which someone just trashed the opinion or perspective of another person? That sort of thing can discourage participation and bring productivity to a screeching halt so it's really important to create a safe space and use empathy to respond in advance. For example, you could use something like, please refrain from using mobile devices and laptops in the meeting room. If you need to tend to an emergency, please excuse yourself and rejoin us when you can. This guideline makes it clear that you would like to avoid distraction but it does give attendees some flexibility. A helpful tip when creating guidelines is to use language that describes what you would like participants to do rather than not do. It feels condescending to say, don't be mean to each other. But you can positively set the tone for the meeting by saying something like, there are no wrong answers, only different points of view. Please encourage each other to share thoughts. Now it's time to create your own meeting expectations document. Don't forget to include your goal, why the meeting is important, a description of your process and your meeting best practices. There's no right or wrong format for your meeting guidelines and I encourage you to show off your creativity and personality. Having said that, if you get stuck on how to format your guidelines, I've included a sample document to the lesson 1 resources that you can use as inspiration. When you've finished your meeting guidelines, share them in your class project and I'll see you in the next lesson.
4. Lesson: "If your brand were a" Exercise: In this lesson, we'll learn an exercise called "If your brand were a." The goal is to encourage clients to use emotional language to establish tone. If you ask your client, what is the tone of your brand? You're likely to get an answer like professional or cool, which isn't really very helpful. But if you ask them something like, if your a brand were a car, what kind would it be and why, you're likely to get much more usable information. A response I received to this question once was, "Our brand would be a Range Rover, because they are classy but tough and appropriate for off-roading or the opera." That response let me know that they saw their brand as both polished and accessible and I could immediately envision the type of balanced look they were hoping to achieve. Now, you could just come up with some broad appeal questions using this format. But it's very beneficial to know in advance who is participating and what makes them tick so you can get the best responses possible. Ask your contact who will be participating in the meeting and if they have professional bios that you can look over. It also helps to do some Internet research and there's no need to get creepy here, a simple Internet search can reveal some helpful things about their hobbies and interests. Do they have a blog about cooking? Does their name appear in the winners stats of every local 5K race? Identify objects that evoke an emotional response and input them into the question, if you're a brand were a plane, what kind would it be and why? For example, one of the participants is a big time foodie. Perhaps ask if your brand were a flavor of ice cream, what kind of would it be and why? Someone who has a deep appreciation for culinary experiences will probably give you a very detailed response. Most important part of the answer is the why. So don't forget to have them elaborate on the why. Everyone has different reasons for the responses they give. The first time someone told me their brand was vanilla ice cream, I thought, "Wow, that's much more classic and honestly boring than I was expecting." But it turns out that their reason for choosing vanilla was because of its versatility and ability to be as strong foundation. Have a strategy for encouraging responses from everyone through the questions you ask. There's a degree of shyness that some people have that you won't be able to control, but you can put extra care into the questions you ask. Make sure to ask enough of them that you feel confident that everyone will be inspired by at least one. A helpful tip for encouraging balanced participation is to simply ask someone who isn't speaking up when they think. Some people just need to be directly asked in order to feel comfortable sharing their opinion. But again, approach the situation with empathy. If someone really doesn't want to respond, I don't recommend pushing. Instead, try to pay attention to their body language. Did they sit up a little bit straighter when you ask a certain question? If so, try to think on your feet and ask a similar question to the whole group to hopefully inspire that person to share. Now it's time to come up with your questions. If you already have an upcoming brand discovery meeting schedule, reach out to your contact and find out who is attending your meeting. If you're taking this class as practice, I've included a few meeting participant profiles in the lesson 2 resources. I've also included sample questions on the resources that you can use as inspiration if you get stuck. When you've decide on the questions you'd like to ask, share them in your class project and I'll meet you in the next lesson.
5. Lesson: Celebrity Comparisons Exercise: In this lesson, we'll prep for an exercise that uses celebrity comparisons. The intention is to build on the use of emotional language, which is pretty easy to do in this exercise. We tend to have very strong feelings about public figures. The goal is to get a sense of visual style and the brand experience that our clients would like to create for their customers. The first step is to pick a type of public figure that you think your participants will connect with. From your research, can you find common threads that your group may be into like music, film, sports or politics. Like the previous exercise, you'll then plug that category of public figure into the basic, if your brand were in question. For the sake of my explanation, we'll use musician as our celebrity category. The basic question would be, if your brand were a musician, who would they be and why? But that's not where this exercise ends, with this one we go a bit deeper. The next step is to create a list of questions about the other sensory elements involved in the celebrities line of work. The reason for this is not everyone's a visual person. Their visual associations may be connected to other senses. We have to ask questions about those other senses in order to get to their visual references. For example, what is their concert like? What do they wear? What's the lighting like? Do they use special effects and what kind? Do they invite special guests? Who are they? Do they play with a full band, acoustic or electronic? What's offered at the concession stands? What does the match look like? I once asked a series of questions to a client who has a business consulting firm and who I learned is also a musician. Her response was, "My brand would have the energy of an Ariana Grande concert. It would be fun and upbeat and unapologetically feminine. It would draw people in the spectacle, but it would have substance to back it up. There would be a lot of ice cream colors and bold choices." From her response, I could easily picture the visual style she was expecting. Even though she thought of herself as someone who wasn't great at communicating visually. Something to keep in mind with all of these exercises is to be aware of personal preferences. Frequently remind participants that you are looking for responses as it pertains to their brand, not their individual likes and dislikes. That's why it's very important to always ask about the reasons behind their choices. Now it's time to come up with your questions. Go back to your participant research or the profiles in the lesson two resources and decide on the category of celebrity you'd like to use. I've included some sample sets of questions in the lesson three resources if you need some inspiration. Make those lists of questions, share them in your class project and I'll see you in the next lesson.
6. Lesson: Either/or Questions Exercise: In this lesson, we'll use either or questions to determine a client's target market. Target market is difficult for a lot of business owners to define, because our natural tendency is to want to get as many customers as we can, so, it seems intuitive to cast a wide net. But the truth is, that we have to narrow our focus in order to make an impact. We have to see a specific human to make a human connection. To start prepping for this exercise, make a list of the things you'd like to know about your client's ideal customer. Some examples include age, spending behaviors, media consumption, education, etc. Creates a series of either or questions that will help you narrow down those details, and don't forget to ask why. For example, if I want to find out the age of someone's target customer, I could ask questions like the following. Does your customers spend more time on Facebook or TikTok? Do they listen to the Jay-Z or Drake? Do they prefer to read paperback books or listen to audio books? We know that social media users who spend more time on TikTok are usually a little bit younger than those who spend more of their time on Facebook. We also know that Jay-Z's fan-base tends to be a little bit older than Drake's. Of course, there are always exceptions, but that's why we ask multiple questions to try to narrow down specifics, and we always ask about the whys. The whys tell us a lot. Here's an example from one of my meetings at this exercise in action and why it's important to explore the whys. I once asked a client if his target customer ate lunch at Chipotle or Taco Bell, his response was Chipotle, because they care about the ingredients they're putting into their body and they're willing to invest a little bit more to know they are doing good for themselves. That answer, gave me an idea of the type of lifestyle that's important to the brand's target customer. My next question was, does your target customer prefers sushi or pizza? Based on the previous answer, I was fully expecting him to say sushi but instead, he said pizza because even though our customer cares about quality and health, they need more affordable product than sushi. They tend to be early in their careers and don't yet have an income to support a sushi habit. By asking just those two questions, I was able to pinpoint that their target customer is roughly 21 to 25 years old and health conscious, which began to paint a pretty specific picture. When forming your either or questions, make sure comparisons are two sides of the same coin, for example, if you'd like to find out more about a target markets spending patterns, ask questions that compared to similar brands, like, do they shop at Target or Walmart, Whole Foods or Trader Joe's, Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts? If you ask, does your target market shop at Dunkin Donuts or Walmart? It creates more questions than answers, because it's essentially comparing apples and oranges. A helpful tip for this exercise is to remember to include everyday items, experiences, and small joys in addition to brand names. Not all either or questions have to revolve around existing brands. One of my favorite questions to ask is, does your target customer have a cat or a dog, and why? We have very intense emotional connections to our pets, so, this question gets a lot of very honest responses. But again, it's so important to ask the why. In my experience, dogs tend to be friendlier than cats. But to someone who owns a cuddly pet kitten and grew up with a dog that may be scared them as a child, the opposite can be true. Now it's time to create those either or questions. To recap, make a list of the specific things you would like to learn about your target customer, then create a corresponding series of questions to determine each. If you still feel like you need a bit of inspiration for this exercise, I've included sample questions and the lesson for resources. When you finish writing your either or questions, add them to your class project, and I'll meet you in the next lesson.
7. Lesson: Key Words Exercise: This exercise is a bit different because there's nothing to prepare in advance of the meeting, but it is important to practice this exercise so that you know what it feels like to participate. The great thing about this keywords exercise is that it's easily scalable with the number of people in your meeting. For this exercise, you'll need index cards and scraps of paper and a marker or pen for each person participating. Ask participants to use single descriptive words to describe the brand is if it were a person and they were describing that individual's personality, participants will write down one word per index card or scrap of paper. Set a timer for a specific length of time and usually recommend five 5-10 minutes and ask each participant to brainstorm as many words as possible during that timeframe. They'll do this individually and then give you their cards when the time is up as the facilitator, you will then spread all the cards out onto a table or attach them to a wall for everyone to see. For this lesson, I'm using words from a recent brand discovery meeting with a fitness and nutrition brand. Once you have them all visible, group together the words that share the same sentiment. For example, with this particular group of words, I would ask the group if it makes sense to group together words like believable and authentic, down to earth and relatable, engaging and fun, kind and thoughtful, forward thinking and proactive, scientific and cutting edge, attractive and polished, trustworthy and transparent. With this particular client, we also decided that down to earth and relatable meant the same thing to them as authentic and believable. When you've made your stacks, you can then examine the outliers. Are the outliers because they don't communicate the brand's personality as well as the others, or are they outliers because they communicated better. For example, the client decided that equitable is the value of the brand rather than a personality trait that would inform a visual identity. So we eliminated that one. They also came to the conclusion that admirable can mean a lot of things, so it wasn't necessarily as strong as the words in the stacks we made. Upon further discussion, it was decided that what they meant by smart shared the same sentiment as scientific and cutting edge, so we added smart to that stack. Our final outlier, that irreverent felt a bit special. Like maybe it touched on an aspect of the brand, but the other words didn't. This group really wanted to communicate that they were able to laugh at themselves and they wanted to visual identity to reflect that. We felt that irreverence effectively communicated their brand's personality and we capped out. At this point, work with a group to come up with the top five words. Choose the one on each stack that best describes the brand. Compare the winners from each stack against each other and it gets the outliers to come up with the top five. My client decided that down to earth was the winner of this group because it was the least fussy way to describe this sentiment. For similar reasons, they chose forward thinking out of this group. They thought fun was a better fit for their brand than engaging, because they felt it was more specific. They felt that thoughtful make more sense for them that kind, because thoughtful as a more active word. They decided that scientific was a better word than cutting edge and smart. Because smart felt vague. Cutting edge felt like a corporate buzzword that they didn't think fit their personality, and they chose transparent over trustworthy. Because they felt that transparency is what builds trust, and they chose polished over attractive because they felt that attractive was more subjective and difficult to pin down. So we're left with eight words and the goal is to narrow it's a five. Ultimately, the group decided that polish, scientific and transparent while important to them, we're not as descriptive of the brand's personality as the other words. Now, what do we do with these top five key words? You could use them for a lot of things that I like to use them to make color palette choices and to explain those choices to my clients. It's often pretty difficult for some clients to separate their personal preferences from what's best for their brand, especially when it comes to color. So I've learned to make intentional choices with the help of science. Using the basics of color psychology to develop your color palettes can help clients focused on the goal of reaching their target market, rather than making decisions based on what may appeal to them personally. There's a lot of great color psychology research on the internet and I encourage you to use in digging to find your favorite sources. I've also included a color psychology reference guide and the lesson five resources to get you started. For the set of five words that my client decided upon, my color psychology research covered a wide variety of options that make sense on an emotional level for the brand. I decided that I wanted to use a wide range of color, but I didn't necessarily want to use every color for the five key were associated with. In the end, I eliminated purple from this particular set of colors and came up with this palette, and then went back to my five keywords and asked myself, do these colors seem like they could be used in the context that feels down to earth, thoughtful, fun, forward thinking, irreverent and felt good about my choices and use this palette in one of the concepts I presented to my client. Stay tuned for future classes to see how this brand developed. Now it's time for you to practice this exercise as if you were the client, set a timer for 5-10 minutes and brainstorm keywords to describe the personality of the company you chose to use an example for this class. At the end of your brainstorming time, decide on your top five words. Use color psychology research to help you make decisions about your color palette. Remember the color reference guide in the lesson five resources. If you need some help, feel free to use whatever materials you would like to create a color palette. You can use computer software, paints, collaged items whenever you prefer. When you've created your color palette, add it to your class project and tell us a little bit about why you chose the colors you did. Happy color palette creating and I'll see you in the next lesson.
8. Lesson: Meeting Agenda: Now it's time to look at the big picture and make a meeting agenda. An agenda lets your clients know that you value their time, that you have a specific goal, and that you didn't call a meeting that could've been emailed. There are three main parameters to consider when making your meeting agenda. The first is, how much time do you have? Ideally, I like to have a brand discovery meeting that lasts an hour and a half to two hours. That amount of time isn't always realistic. I don't recommend going longer than two hours because this work can be creatively taxing, and you don't want this process to be stressful on your client. The second consideration is how many people will be attending the meeting. The larger the group, the more you have to think about how to efficiently divide up the time. The final key decision for your agenda is, what order makes most sense? This can vary from meeting to meeting. For example, I've found with a keyword exercise, especially when it's a larger group, it can take a bit of time. When I'm working with a larger group, I tend to put that exercise first because you may have people who need to leave early and it's really important that everyone's there to reach consensus on those top five words. I'd like to put a time limit on each section and exercise in my meeting agenda to make sure that we stay on track. A helpful tip is to add 5-10 minutes more time than you think you need to each exercise to give you some wiggle room to finish on time, or even to finish a little early. Clients always like that. Now it's time to create your meeting agenda. Decide on the order of the exercises you'd like to perform, and allocate a time limit to each exercise. Don't forget to also add in time slots for introductions, reviewing the meeting guidelines, any quick scheduled breaks, and closing thoughts. As a reference, I've included a sample meeting agenda in the lesson 6 resources. When you've completed your meeting agenda, add it to your class project along with a few notes about your decision-making, and I'll meet you in the next video for some final thoughts.
9. Final Thoughts: Congratulations, you're ready to have a killer meeting. My hope is that your biggest takeaway from this class is the importance of putting thought into your brand discovery process. As designers, we put a ton of work into creating the branding artwork. There's nothing worse than presenting something we're really excited about, that doesn't quite meet the client's expectations. Hopefully, this class can help you avoid some of those situations. We've learned a lot, so let's recap. In this class, we learned how to set expectations for a successful meeting, how to use the if your brand were a, exercise to establish tone, how to get an idea of visual style expectations by using pop culture to your advantage with celebrity comparisons, how to ask the right either or questions to really get a clear picture of the brand's target audience, how to facilitate the keywords exercise to inform color palette decisions, and how to put it all together in a clear agenda. The exercises we went over today are not the only ones you can use to uncover useful information in a brand discovery. You may find ways to facilitating them, they work better for you in this specific process I outlined. I encourage you to use these exercises as a launchpad for creating your own process, that is unique to you. I also recommend sharing your methods with other creatives. Every time I've shared these exercises, I've learned something about ways I can make my process better. Stay tuned for future classes in which we'll use the information gathered in the brand discovery session, to continue the brand development. Thank you so much for watching. I really look forward to next time. Now, go forth into the world and ask questions. Don't forget to ask why.
Elizabeth Berglund, Designer. Illustrator. Goofball.
