The power of a branding workshop

Aching to tell a more compelling story about your company, product or service? Struggling to unlock new inspiration, gain a deeper understanding of what makes your brand special, or figure out how to create the kind of brand people love?

A customized Branding Workshop with Motto® may be the next best thing you do for your brand. We invite you to roll up your sleeves, take the much-needed time to reflect and self-discover, and tackle your strategic branding challenges with Motto as your guide. We’ll delve very deeply to discover the genuine, authentic soul of your brand, jumpstart creative ideas, and help you explore the elements of your brand that you need the most help polishing.

This is an opportunity to rally your company’s leadership team and key thinkers under one roof to have productive conversations about your brand and collaborate on reimagining your brand for greatness. The result is a meaningful understanding of who you are and what your brand stands for, and solid positioning that reflects your vision, values, purpose, and culture. We’ll cut through the clutter, pull you from indecision, and give you actionable ideas to solve your most pressing branding challenges in short order.

Our Branding Workshops benefit entrepreneurs, funded startups, small businesses, and CEOs who are tired of struggling with answering the not-so-simple question of “What are we all about and why should anyone care?”

How Does it Work?
Each Workshop is guided by Motto’s co-founders and branding experts, Sunny Bonnell and Ashleigh Hansberger, virtually, at your/our office location, 0r in an off-site meeting space. We offer a turnkey solution that includes creative exercises, supplied materials, food, snacks, beverages, and thoughtful facilitation.

During our Branding Workshop, we explore these crucial brand foundation elements:

Purpose
Having a deeper sense of purpose is the greatest of all human needs. We all want our lives to have meaning and count for something, and to feel like we’re doing what we’re passionate about and what we were born to do. We spend eighty percent of our whole lives in the grind — that’s a lot of precious time spent wasted if the work you’re doing doesn’t align with who you really are and what you can offer the world. Building your brand around an inspirational core purpose is a pathway to greater meaning and influence. We’ll help you and your team get clear on what the brand’s purpose truly is and articulate that succinctly and effectively. Once understood, brand purpose becomes the driving force around which all your behaviors and actions align.

Vision
Your organization’s Vision Statement is a picture of the future you hope to see and want to create for the people you wish to impact. This is not just about the future you want for your organization. Instead, it should tell the world what you wish to create for the future of the people you serve – your community. We’ll help you think big and articulate a valiant vision for your work—or empower you to create one.

Big Idea
We don’t believe in mission statements, we believe in having a motto. We’ve asked so many companies what their motto is and often the answer is “We don’t have one” or “I don’t know.” Mottos inspire us to take action, overcome obstacles and keep working toward our goals, even in the face of opposition. Examples of great mottos include Facebook’s “Move fast and break things”, New York State’s “Ever upward” and Harley Davidson’s “Live to Ride, Ride to Live.” Your motto should be the core of your brand strategy, decisions, behaviors, and messaging. We’ll help you craft a unique motto that is a true reflection of why you get out of bed every day to bring yourself, and your employees, and why you do what you do in the world.

Core Values
Brand values act as a set of guidelines that steer your company’s attitudes, choices, and actions. Think of them as the code by which you do business. They represent a clear articulation of what is most important to your business and act as a benchmark to measure behaviors and performance. We help you key in on the most fundamental guiding principles of your company. Core values support your vision, shape your culture and reflect what your company stands for.

Brand’s Archetype
Are you the lover, hero, or rebel? Based on the work of Carl Jung and Dr. Carol Pearson, we help you discover the archetypal storyline that most authentically and meaningfully represents your brand. Brands that take a human approach and embrace human-like traits are better at connecting with their audience. This exercise will help your team discover the character your brand is meant to live out in the world.

What Makes You Different
With so many others out there doing the same or similar things, what makes you rise above commodity status? It’s paramount to create meaningful brand differentiation if you want to beat the price war. We’re not slaves to the ordinary and we don’t want you to be either.

Who Should Participate?
Too many participants can lead to some taking a back seat and others taking the wheel. Our workshop is designed for under 20 stakeholders so each participant is fully engaged. Choose people who can bring valuable insights and expertise about your business, and who get what your brand and company culture is all about. This could include the founders, management team, dedicated staff, etc.

Workshop Preparation
Prior to the workshop day, we’ll dig deep to learn about your core business, industry, audience, goals, challenges, and history, so we’re well-equipped on the day of the workshop to lead you. We’ll email the workshop agenda to each participant so everyone can start thinking about what will be discussed.

Workshop Outputs
Following the workshop, the knowledge, insights, and conclusions we extract are compiled into a formal brand positioning framework to use as a foundation for building your brand over time. The Brand Framework is an encapsulation of the gems we uncovered during our time together, distilled into a narrative that captures the essence of your brand. It’s also a living document, so it can evolve with your brand as it matures. We share it with your stakeholders and work through one or two rounds of iteration. The end result is a strategic document you’ll be excited about and disciplined enough to actually implement.

Understanding Your Brand’s Archetype

Understanding which archetype your brand should live out will enable you to clearly define the role you want your brand to play in people’s lives and the story you want to tell about who you are and what you stand for. The process of discovering your archetypal connections will vary from company to company. For some brands, the experience will be instantaneous and highly intuitive. For others, the process of answering the question, ‘Are we the hero or the rebel?,’ is more grueling.

As humans, the fact is that we’re drawn to all of these archetypes, and we see a bit of ourselves expressed across multiple dimensions and personalities. The earlier on in your company’s journey that you can uncover your brand’s true identity–the character your brand is meant to live out–the sooner your team can begin living it and leaving a lasting impression in your audience’s minds, regardless of whether you’re running a small business or big company.

More often than not, you’re going to need help, so don’t be afraid to connect with someone on the outside, who can look upon your brand with the right balance of empathy, objectivity, and truth. At Motto, we go through archetype exercises with our clients to help tell the brand’s story and uncover the essence, heart and emotion that can only happen through an exercise like this.

Defining your brand’s archetype is a journey that will lead you to inspiring places within your business and your brand.

This post originally appeared on Inc. under the title: Is Your Brand a Rebel, Lover, or Hero?

Buy our Discover Your Brand Archetype Workbook

This exercise helps you discover which archetype is active in your organization so you can understand the character of your brand.

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