What's up brand builders! Stephen Houraghan here of BrandMasterAcademy.com and in
this video I'm going to share six brand strategy workshop mistakes that
you need to avoid so you can display authority earn trust
and develop a cohesive brand born from collaboration.
now if you're new to the channel and you want actionable brand strategy tips and
techniques to help your business grow well then hit that subscribe button and
the notification bell as well and you will be well on your way
now the brand strategy workshop can take on many forms but at the core
the workshop is a collaborative meeting between the brand strategist and the
leadership team to gain clarity in who the audience is
who the competitors are and then to map the best foot forward
for that brand so that they can stand out in the market
and appeal to who that audience is as best as possible now the workshop can
be as small a meeting as just the strategist and the business
owner or there could be five to ten of the leadership team
involved in the meeting so it really depends on the size of the
business but you really need to be on the ball here because
in order to extract the information that you need to develop
a cohesive strategy you need to know what you're doing you need to have
a sensible authority about your questions and about how you
manage the meaning how you lead the meetings so there are many pitfalls
that you can fall into and that's what I'm going to go through in this video
I'm going to cover six of the most common pitfalls
that you want to avoid for your brand strategy workshops
number one not setting the mood so you want to take the leadership team
out of their everyday environment now you might be holding the meeting
on the premises of your client or it might be remotely through zoom or skype
but regardless of the environment of the meeting itself you want to take them out
of their everyday environment so you want to set the tone
and let them know what's upcoming in the meeting and how to get the best
results out of it if you let them know then they're going
to be on the same page and they will work with you at the end
of the day it's their brand they want to get the best
out of this so make sure you take the time to set the tone
of the meeting let them know what's upcoming and let them know how to get
the best results from it number two not having a timed agenda
now the environment of the brand strategy workshop
is very collaborative it's very creative and it can take
many turns and go in different directions and if you don't have
a really solid structure as to how the meaning should go
and you don't keep an eye on the time you don't keep an eye on that structure
and move on to each section as you've planned it out
then the brand strategy workshop can get out
of hand it can get off track and it can derail the progress so make
sure that you keep an eye on the time make sure you keep an eye on
the structure and keep everybody happy at the end of
the day if you finish when you say you're going to finish
then the leadership team are going to be happy if you go over or
it takes multiple hours or even an extra day to get the work done that
you need to do then you're not going to earn trust by
doing that so make sure you keep an eye on the time make sure you keep an eye on
the structure and deliver what you say you're going to
deliver mistake number three over talking so a lot of designers
fall into the trap of over talking when they have a client on the phone telling
them about their design styles or preferences
we're talking about typography or color psychology or whatever it may be
but the brand strategy workshop is really a
split role for the strategist partly you're there as a strategist but
partly you're there as a facilitator you have a lot of
knowledge and a lot of ideas as to how you might go
and develop the brand but you're not developing the brand on your
own you're developing the brand in collaboration with the leadership team
and they need to feel that they're heavily involved in the development of
that so make sure you don't over talk give each person within the room enough
time to share their ideas and actually ask
strategic questions to extract their ideas so make sure that you keep a
balance there between how much you talk and how many questions you're asking the
leadership team and giving them an opportunity to get
their ideas across mistake number four not managing
personalities now we've all experienced this in school
there's always somebody at school putting their hand up wanting to ask
or answer every single question that the teacher asks and there's always somebody
in the class who will sit there and be as quiet as a
mouse until they're called upon and it's the exact same in a brand strategy
workshop as well you have different types
of personalities you will have people that want their voices to be heard and
will be sharing their ideas freely and you'll have other people that will keep
their ideas to themselves unless you extract it from them so it's
important to manage the different personalities that are in the room to
make sure that you get the information that you need from
everybody mistake number five shutting down ideas now remember the
brand strategy workshop is a creative environment and in order to get the best
results you need everybody to contribute you
need everybody to be creative and to share their ideas now if you
decide that an idea that is shared is not worth
considering and you were to shut that idea down in
front of anybody that's there well then that would stifle
that creativity and other people will be less likely to share their ideas so
if it is a really creative environment then chances are there are going to be a
lot of ideas that are terrible but it's how you manage those
ideas that are really really
important you need to use constructive language
and make sure that every idea is heard and manage the ideas that won't be
considered in a really creative and constructive
way and mistake number six making assumptions now if you have a bit
of experience about you going into your workshops well
then chances are you will have seen businesses like the business that you're
dealing with and you might have come across very similar
circumstances very similar competitors and you might
already have an idea as to how the brand can be developed how they can
define themselves within the marketplace how they can differentiate
themselves how to present their personality etc etc
however every single brand is different every single business
is different if you assume that you know the answer is going in
then chances are you're going to miss out on some ideas you're going to miss
out on some insights that the leadership team will have so
make sure that you start with a blank slate
make sure that you encourage everybody to share their ideas
and move forward with the idea that anything is possible now it's important
to keep top of mind that the brand strategy workshop is a creative
and collaborative environment that needs teamwork but in order to get that
teamwork it's important that you display
authority and leadership because it's only with that authority and
leadership will the leadership team actually trust you
and it's with that trust that they will feel safe
that they are going in the right direction and they'll feel safe
to share their ideas so make sure that you understand these pitfalls
and make sure that you avoid them so you're able to go out there display
authority and earn that trust and create an environment of collaboration
where you can develop a cohesive brand strategy
but I'd love to hand it back over to you I'd love to hear what your experiences
are when it comes to brand strategy workshops
have you made any of these mistakes before or have you made some other
mistakes that have jeopardized your brand strategy workshop I'd really
love to hear from you if you have any challenges or questions in relation to
brand strategy workshops let me know in the comments below if you
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there but again I'd love to hear from you I'd love
to hear what your challenges are what your experiences are
I'll do my best to answer all of those if you leave them in the comments below
until next time brand like a master and I will see you in the next video!