(2017-03-16) Knapp Gv Threehour Brand Sprint

Jake Knapp documents GV's Three-Hour Brand Sprint (Which is more about defining corporate Mission and Culture.)

Luckily for our startups, two of my colleagues at GV, Laura Melahn and Daniel Burka, actually are experts on Branding.

Over the past few years, I’ve watched Laura and Daniel help startups through these stressful decisions about naming, identity, logos, and so on. They start with brand exercises. Much to my surprise, the exercises are not a goofy waste of time.

The Brand Sprint consists of six exercises. First, you’ll think about your company’s motivation:

  • 20-Year Roadmap helps you think long-term.
  • What, How, Why reminds you why your company exists.

Next, you’ll add detail:

  • Top 3 Values makes your why more specific.
  • Top 3 Audiences helps you prioritize the target for your brand.

Finally, you’ll position your brand relative to others:

  • Personality Sliders defines the attitude and style of your brand.
  • Competitive Landscape compares your brand to other companies.

Don’t run a Brand Sprint unless you really have to. If you won’t use the results right away, wait for a trigger event. Good triggers are naming your company, designing a logo, hiring an agency, or writing a manifesto.

Must have in the room: And at least one of these: Co-founder; Head of marketing; Head of product or design... One participant must be the “Decider”

In addition to your executives, you’ll need one or two facilitators. These might be folks from marketing, product, or design. Since you’re reading this post, you’re a good candidate. The facilitators should have good writing skills.

Sometimes, you might bring in a customer expert.

The Brand Sprint is designed to fit into a morning or afternoon. The schedule will go something like this: Try to find a block of three straight hours

No devices

Time-box all activities with a Time Timer

1. 20-Year Roadmap (15 minutes)

HOW TO

What will your company be doing at each of those future dates? To decide, you’ll use a simple exercise we call Note-and-Vote. In fact, you’ll be using Note-and-Vote throughout the Brand Sprint, because, as Daniel Burka says, “If you let people talk out loud very much, the whole thing will be a disaster.”

5, 10, 15, and 20 years into the future

2. What, How, Why (30 minutes)

What, How, Why is an exercise based completely on Simon Sinek’s “Golden Circle”. (Sidenote: Sinek’s TED talk is the third most popular of all time

Sinek’s premise is basically this: You need to know why you’re in business — and talk about it.

HOW TO

Start by drawing three concentric circles on a whiteboard. Label the outside circle “what”, the middle circle “how”, and the inside circle “why”,

What does your company do?

How do you do it?

Why?

Coming up with a great why sounds basic. It’s not. It’s surprisingly hard.

this 1997 video of Jobs... he’s addressing Apple employees, not the world. It’s a behind-the-scenes video from before Apple’s resurgence, which is very cool to see. And finally, it’s completely on-topic for your Brand Sprint. This is the moment where Jobs explains Apple’s why and its importance to their products, advertising, and sales. Today — 20 years later! — the why is still relevant.

Sinek uses Apple as an example of a company who understands and communicates their why extremely well

another Note-and-Vote

3. Top Three Values (30 minutes)

another way of saying “stuff that really matters to us” or, better yet, “decision-making principles”.

you’ve got to cut down to just three values and rank them so you have one single most important value

4. Top Three Audiences (30 minutes)

Whose opinion do you care about?

Note-and-Vote

5. Personality Sliders (30 minutes)

position your company’s “sliders” between pairs of brand extremes:

four ranges

6. Competitive Landscape (30 minutes)

Draw a 2x2 matrix

“Classic” to “Modern”

“Expressive” to “Reserved”

Double-check: Look back at the rest of the sprint exercises.

Taken together, these six diagrams are a powerful, concrete representation of your company’s brand.

Ramy Nagy provides a process that requires less block-time.

The workshop is based on the 3-hour brand sprint by Google Ventures. It’s designed to take less than half the time, be inclusive to team members working remotely, and a better fit for those who prefer to reflect alone and then discuss as a team.

allows people to focus on the first part on their own time and preserves the opportunity for the team to be focused just for one hour or so as a group when discussing the responses and still answering the last key question together as a team.


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