Crafting Your Story for Success - How to Execute a Branding Discovery

Hey everyone, how's it going? My name is Ian Isaacs. I'm the Head of Growth for the Founder Institute. Super glad that everyone's here today. We have an exciting online webinar planned out for today. For those of you who attended a few of these sessions, you know how it goes. We try to bring in subject matter expert and they will come and tell you a little bit about their domain and their expertise. So today we're gonna be talking about brand discovery and brand, just, I guess, in general branding. A lot of founders have asked us questions about this, so we thought we'll bring in a subject matter expert. So today we have Aram Malkumov and his team from Crowdlinkr. Aram's a very active mentor with the Founder Institute. He participates in a lot of these online events, a lot of mentoring sessions with our local chapters, so very appreciative of him taking the time out to jump on today, and along with his team members. With that being said, would love to kind of go over some housekeeping issues before we kind of bring Aram and his team on. The first thing is, as you can see on the right-hand side, if you're on a tablet or desktop or laptop, there's a chat function. Please use that. Right now I see people just telling us where they're calling in from. So we have Abu Dhabi, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., Grand Rapids, Michigan, Kenya, Orlando, Amsterdam, Austin, uh, Iran, Toronto, Austin, Sweden, Washington, D.C. Cape Town, Den Haag in Netherlands. So very, very international audience, very international audience we have with us today. I think we have, let me double check. Yeah, we had 350 people sign up for this event. So I'm expecting about 140, 150, we're at about 96. So that'll be interesting to have everyone here and then just learn from each other. In terms of format, Aram will come on in a bit, go over his presentation with the team. They'll do that, and then I'll jump back on towards the end to do Q&A. You know, feel free to use the Q&A button. It's right under the message button. Use that because, you know, feed us that question. You can upvote it, and I'll be able to bring it up onto the screen, and then we can all discuss it. Yeah, and then last but not least, at the bottom of your screen, you have some emojis. So if you wanna give feedback to the presenter while they're talking, please use that. And then once we're done with today's event, we'll kind of break out to open networking. There'll be some tables for you to chat with the speakers and chat with each other. That's kind of the point of the networking session. It's pretty helpful to kind of discuss with the other individuals on today's call. You know, you'll get to 100+ people. Just what did they learn and just get feedback from each other. All right, with that being said, uh, let's bring up Aram and his team onto the screen and then let's kind of get this, uh, started. While they're doing that, I just want to quickly talk a little bit about Founder Institute. So Founder Institute, we're a pre-seed accelerator. We've been around for 14 years. Uh, for those who don't know, we've been, uh, we've been running think in over 200 different cities around the world. So if you're an idea stage entrepreneur at the pre-seed level and you're looking to kind of take your idea to the next level, consider applying to the Founder Institute. You just go to fi.co/apply. You'll get the link in a follow-up email as well. Um, also in the follow-up, what we'll do is we'll make sure to send out, um, all the links for the LinkedIn and the recording of today's webinar. Yes, it will be recorded. To everyone within 48 hours. All right. Let me change the view here. How's it going?

Hey, everybody. I'm just sharing my screen. I think you're good. Can everybody see it? Yeah, I think it's good. All right, cool. Thanks, Ian. Thanks for the intro.

Yeah, for sure. I'll let you self-intro your team members and then we'll kind of— I'll hop back on if there's any issues. But yeah, I'll see everyone at the end of the presentation. Hi, thanks.

Hello everybody, glad to be here. Thanks for joining our webinar around crafting your story for success and how to execute a branding discovery. So the format for today's webinar is that I'll quickly introduce a little bit about Crowdlinker, who we are, what we specialize in, then we'll jump into the meat of today's webinar, which is gonna be talking about branding. So we're gonna talk about first what's involved when it comes to branding discovery, how to facilitate a brainstorming session. And then we're actually gonna be going through a live demonstration in a Figma file, a Figma project of the different kind of workshops you should do. And this is something that we'll actually share with everybody live so that you could follow along while we're doing it. And then it's something that we'll give out as a template for everybody to be able to to use going forward. And then we'll end off with doing a quick kind of a walkthrough of like what you should look for in terms of a successful branding discovery. And then we'll wrap up with Q&A and we'll share our office hours for everybody. And then yeah, we'll share this deck with everybody afterwards. All right, moving on. So quick introduction about us. Crowlinkr is an end-to-end digital product studio we've— that specializes in delivering transparent, value-driven relationships with customized, transformed solutions that help a lot of our clients propel their businesses forward. We've been around for 11 years, have launched over 85 digital products worldwide. Here's just some of the examples of the clients we work with. It's a mix of startups, scale-ups, to large enterprises. So we've, we've had a lot of experience working with a wide variety of different companies in different industries and verticals. In terms of our culture, we're very proud of our culture. Our values and beliefs are kind of what set us apart from other companies that are, you know, in the industry. We were also recently awarded the Great Place to Work certification as a best workplace in Canada. Here is a high-level overview of our various services and capabilities. So We can assist companies of all sizes from digital strategy thinking, uh, to human-centered design, branding, creative direction, and then obviously helping them build their scalable tech solutions. We're also a certified Stripe partner. Uh, so I'll quickly introduce myself now and then the rest of the panelists who we have on with me. So I'm the CEO of Crowdlinkr. I've been in the tech space for 15 years. I advise and mentor companies through the DMZ, which is an accelerator incubator in Toronto, Founder Institute, Loyal VC, and Forum Ventures. And I currently reside in Barcelona with my wife and 3 kids, and I like traveling around within Europe. Introducing Clem. She's our in-house product-led growth expert. She has a background in psychology, user experience design, product management, and strategy. She is an avid marathoner living in British Columbia who loves hunting down great coffee shops, and she's actually running in the upcoming Chicago Marathon in early October. Our final panelist, her name is Ursula. She's one of our product managers on the team as well. She has a very strong background in advertising and graphic design. Quick side interest on her, she loves exploring Toronto's beaches and is currently mastering French as her third language. So that's a little bit of an intro about the panelists that we have on today with me. So I'm gonna pass it now over to Ursula to introduce you to branding discovery, the first section of our webinar today.

Thanks, Aram. So first question is, What is a brand? I think we all have a general sense of what a brand is, but a brand is more than just a logo or a color palette or a catchy slogan. It's the very essence of what sets your business apart from others. It encapsulates your values, vision, and mission into a single memorable narrative. Think about the brands that you like, like Apple or Nike here. They have mastered the art of storytelling.

And there's— yes, sorry to interrupt, your camera is like a little bit funky. It's like squished.

I know, I don't know what's going on. Uh, I can turn off my camera.

You want to try to turn off and on again?

Yeah, yeah.

Or do you— yes, do you want to try refreshing, just refreshing the page and rejoin the Airmeet? That Airmeet can be a little bit clunky sometimes.

Sure. Okay, let me come back.

Sorry about that, I don't mean to interrupt the presentation.

Yeah, it was weird. I'm like, I don't know if I'm the only one who's seeing that, or is everybody seeing her squishing?

I guess while she's doing that, yeah, Aram, do you want to— because like we can see your Chrome, like the whole tabs and stuff. Did you want to like maybe go full screen?

Yeah, I see it's weird when I When I do that, then I can't see the other tabs. So I'll keep it like this. It's okay.

Okay, cool.

So let me get back to where I was.

Let's go back. Perfect. Thanks.

No worries. They have mastered the art of storytelling and they're successful because they have made us connect with that story. So I like to use the example of Airbnb. Let's consider Airbnb. They are a tech giant in the space of hospitality, not without its faults, but they tell a very compelling story. The creators were just a couple of guys who rented out air mattresses in their apartment to earn some extra cash. Their brand, which has grown immensely since then in 2008, is about belonging anywhere, connecting with people, traveling, exploring. Even their logo is a combination of those elements. People, places, love. People choose Airbnb over their competitors because of these elements and the level of trust they provide. So why is branding so important? For one, to distinguish your company in the, uh, from the competition. There is a lot of competition, and with that, a ton of information that customers need to take in about every single product and service. In addition to, you know, taking into account their own past experiences with these services and products. With all this, all these considerations, customers crave a North Star, a shortcut to recognition, something they can identify easily, and something that also inspires loyalty. Branding is also important to establish your company's identity, your values, and the promise you make to your customers. Having a strong brand will help you make business decisions that are aligned with your business's vision and mission. And this is essential to your business's success. I like to use example of 1Password. I think they're just a prime illustration of a company that leveraged its strong brand identity to inform its advertising strategies. Their brand identity, a combination of simplicity and convenience, the one, and trust and security, Password in 1Password, guide them to advertise the product using Ryan Reynolds as a spokesperson. This was a great business decision as it represents their security tech product as approachable and trusting, just like our beloved Canadian actor. It became a product that the everyday person felt that they could use with ease, which isn't very common, especially with tech products and security products. Alright, gains and risks. Branding and rebranding can offer numerous benefits: revitalizing a company's image, attracting new customers, adapting to changing market conditions. However, it also comes with the various, various risks and challenges that should be carefully considered. I would love to do a poll. Thumbs up if you've heard of the Tropicana rebrand story. Okay. Yes. For those who don't know about it, one famous example of how rebranding can go terribly wrong is how Tropicana changed their iconic orange with the straw on their packaging to a glass with orange juice in it. The change aimed to attract health-conscious consumers, but consumers found that the new branding looked cheaper and many had an emotional connection to the image of the straw piercing the orange. In the end, Tropicana alienated their market and their sales dipped 20%, and they ended up going back to their original artwork with a total loss of $50 million in the process. The lesson that is learned from all of this is do not underestimate your customer's attachment to your brand. Okay, so when should you consider doing a workshop? You should consider doing one if you're doing a— you can, you should consider doing a branding workshop if you are starting a new business. This will help you establish a clear identity, which will help you stand out and connect with your audience. You should also consider doing a brand workshop if you are planning to rebrand. I think it's just as important, if not more important. This will help you tackle issues such as lack of differentiation in your industry. Industry can be crowded and you really wanna stand out. Changing values or mission, which will require you to adopt and find ways to resonate with your current and your future audience. We don't wanna, you know, alienate the current audience for the future one. And also outdated branding images, outdated branding image. Sometimes, sometimes the branding, brands need an update. As we have all seen, times are changing quickly and it's important to stay relevant and fresh. Other reasons could just be for PR, you know, PR refresh and, a whole host of other things. So what skills do you need? As founders, having an external party help you with your branding and rebranding is essential. If you are a large company, this could be in-house. Irrespective of your company's current stage, the individual or team spearheading your branding discovery process should possess, possess the following knowledge and skills. Number 1, creative thinking. And this is where bringing in a designer is super helpful. They've been, you know, they have a multitude of education on how to, you know, conduct creative thinking and open and thinking outside the box. Next is strategic and analytical thinking. So market analysis will be helpful to inform brand strategy in this process as well. And then consumer behavior expertise. Someone who knows how and why consumers behave the way they do. We wanna avoid any sort of guessing game. We want to know how consumers think and why they do what they do. So moving on to section 2, how to facilitate a branding brainstorming session. So who should be there? Well, as founders, you should be there. So should your co-founders, your potential stakeholders, and a creative team, and finally, someone to facilitate the session who has experience in workshop facilitation. This last one is often overlooked, but it's integral to the process. It's very easy for projects to veer off course, so having a member of the team who's responsible for keeping everyone on track will ensure your success. What tools should you use in-person versus remote? Well, since the pandemic, there have been a tidal wave of amazing online tools. My favorite is FigJam from Figma, which you will see later in the presentation being used. There's also Mural, Miro, and countless others. If you are in person, you can always use the old school method of an empty wall, some sticky notes, or a whiteboard. Um, facilitation tips. Alright, so 1, define clear objectives. What do you want to achieve by the end of the workshop? 2 is get to know the participants. 3, have a structured agenda. And this means also ensuring that any pre-work is sent out with enough time. So if you're planning on asking some of your participants questions that they want to have answered prior to the meeting, this should be sent out, you know, well ahead of time, not 10 minutes before the meeting. 4, break the ice. Do fun activities such as play games or ask some get-to-know-you questions like, what's the one food you could eat every day for the rest of your life? These usually like lighten up the mood and it's an easy way to get to know your participants. 5 is guide rather than dictate. This is also essential. This is also why it's essential to have a facilitator that will help with your branding discovery. As a founder, you have to detach yourself from facilitating to be able to contribute. And 6, choose the right environment. Avoid loud, crowded places and opt for distraction-free zones. I wouldn't suggest doing this in like a coffee shop. Better to rent a space, a room, and do it that way. All right. So brainstorming rules. These were provided by IDEO. Pretty, pretty simple. And if you're a fan of improv, they also kind of apply. Defer judgment. You want to, you know, people are gonna explore ideas, so let's not, you know, judge what they provide. We are creating an open and welcome environment. Encourage those wild ideas, get them all out. Build on any, build on the ideas of others. I understand that sometimes businesses can be a competitive workspace, but this really is a team project. So we want to build on others' ideas, not just shoot them away to like put ours own in. Stay focused on the topic, one conversation at a time. Be visual, you know, this is where things like Figma and whiteboards are really helpful. And go for quantity. As back in my days when I was a designer, I remember we would do a logo, when we would be trying to make logos, it was about as getting as many ideas out as possible. You know, my instructors say like, get all the ideas out, even if they're bad or good, get them out, and then you'll find, you know, the diamond in there. It's always in there, but you gotta kind of like get it all out. So I'm gonna pass this over to Clem, who's gonna take us through the workshops.

All right, so what I'm gonna do now, uh, I'm just gonna share the link with everybody to the fig jam file that we're going to be sharing with you guys. So I'm going to paste the link here in the chat. So bear with me. So everybody should be able to join in with view access. So you could follow along while Clem and I go through this together. And so I'm just gonna focus in on Clem because we're probably gonna have a lot of people Moving the mouses around. So the first question I have for Clem, what's the first step when it comes to doing a branding discovery workshop?

Yeah, thanks, Aram. So I'll tackle this whole conversation and this whole section of the webinar from a perspective where you would have a facilitator or moderator helping out. I know we have a lot of founders on here, so of course as a founder, you can do this yourself kind of up to a certain point. Some of the, the skills that Ursula talks about become needed. So my advice is really, I agree with her, is to have a moderator facilitator so that you can actually focus on the actual content. So there's 3 sections on this board. One's called pre-work, the other one's called collaboration, and the third one is called mood board. And I'll go over the first one first. So pre-work is something that I like to do async with my clients. Also, this board is filled with an example that we use with an actual client. I've just stripped out anything that would kind of be too specific to them. So hopefully this helps us kind of get some context. So for pre-work, I like to do this async, like I said, and always providing introductions and kind of FigJam basics, especially if they've never used the tool before. So the purpose of the work is to get some inspiration that user— that your clients like with other brands by seeing what makes them stand out to them. So we'll talk about like logos first. So getting an idea of logos that a client likes or dislikes out there in the market and getting them to put screenshots and indications in terms of what they like or dislike. So for example, for Reddit, this client really disliked this logo. I think it's— they have a funny perspective on that and that they think it's childish and creepy and it makes them feel really uncomfortable. So we need to take that into account when looking at branding and not providing a logo that's too childish for their brand. But also they liked, you know, the minimalistic aspect of the Zoom logo and how clean it is, but they really didn't like the like curved ends of the M. Something else that I think is kind of specific to this client is they thought that the Tinder logo looked like a crab claw, which I'd never seen before in it. But now I can't unsee it. So just getting ideas of what a client likes or doesn't like. The second section would be use of color. So having again the client provide screenshots of examples of brands online and how they use their color in there. So for example, for this one, they liked the use of the gradient, but they really disliked neon tones. So that shows us that, okay, maybe we can use gradient in our branding, but don't use neon tones. They liked the way that all the colors were balanced in here. It was engaging and exciting, but it felt really clean. So getting some examples of that. The next one would be visual treatment. So looking at things in terms of anything that falls outside of color. So texture, imagery, type, etc. So for example, I think this was Bandcamp and we had two different stakeholders in this doing this, and one of them liked the playfulness and edginess of it. But the other one disliked the font, thought it looked sloppy, etc. They really liked minimal and bold colors, but things that were clean, things that felt playful but in a subtle way. So we're, we're learning a lot as we're going through this and as the client fills it out. The next section is brand positioning and tone. So again, they really like things that were humor, humorous, playful, clever. I hate looking at this image, but they said that they get the point, but it completely misses the mark for them because it's completely visually unappealing. And I completely get that. It makes me nauseous every time I look at it. So getting an idea of what they like about print positioning and tone with examples from other companies. And then the last section is a catch-all. So anything that wasn't covered in any of the other boxes. And if we didn't have this section, for example, we wouldn't have known that they really dislike the use of emojis in the app and we could have included that. So this is good to know. And again, kind of emphasizes the fact that this client really likes kind of clever humor, edge-catching, bold graphic design.

Cool. Thanks Clem. So the question I have is how long should it take someone to fill out this board, especially like the first part, which I think is asynchronous.

Yeah. And I, you know what, I just saw a question from Dennis as well who says, who provides logos and images? So, What I expect the client to do at this point is spend about 45 minutes to an hour. Honestly, the longer the better on this board, taking screenshots of logos or of fonts, images, etc., dumping them in here in this board and then providing information as to why they dislike or like certain things. The more the better. This is again, like Ursula said, quality, quantity over quality. So I'd love for clients to really sit with this and not rush through it. This is an important part of the process.

So once the participants kind of have gone through asynchronously and put all their feedback in, what kind of happens— what happens next once everybody's filled this in?

It's a really good question. You should come together and debrief. So here we had two stakeholders plus myself who was facilitating and the designer. So we connected for about 45 minutes, I think, to discuss this and really dive into what they liked, what they didn't like, and try to get more insights on things.

So I know this happened, you know, on this client project, or it happens probably all the time, but what happens when people have contradicting information within their own likes and dislikes?

Yeah, that happens quite often. So I gave this example here where Someone said like, oh, I like the playfulness and edginess and I dislike the font. So you can have differing opinions between people, but you can also have people who provide contradictory opinions. So here, for example, they said they really like the general aesthetic and they like the bold and the cleanness of it. But previously, in a previous conversation, our client had said like, I hate green in branding. So when it came to this, the designer and I were like, okay, obviously there's conflicting opinions and interests here. So what you wanna do is kind of dig into it a bit more without, without kind of like giving any bias or, or influencing their answers. So for example, here, a question you can consider asking would be, I wanna double check what you mean when you say you love Spotify's branding. You say you love the general aesthetic and how bold and clean it is, but you've previously indicated that you strongly dislike green. So could you tell me more a bit about What you like and why you like it. If they're a bit lost and they're like, I don't know, that's where you can start probing and have some suggestions and be like, is it the tone? Is it the font? But again, you never want to influence people's answers when you're facilitating. So it's really about creating that open space for communication first.

Awesome. So once everybody has gone in and put in their likes and dislikes, what happens if people aren't aligned or they don't have like a common ground in terms of like what they think, you know, a logo looks like, you know, that they've put in versus other people?

Yeah, at this point, hopefully when you're doing branding, you have a bit more idea already of your product, your user personas, the market out there. So what I would suggest is go back to your user personas and the competition, the landscape that's already out there in the market, and try to figure out how can you still How can you stand out while still appealing to your users? Because in the end, you want to produce something that sure, like you as a founder or your co-founders like, but in the end, a successful brand will always be one that appeals to your target audience. So for example, here, you know, someone said they liked how playful and edgy it was, but the other person said like, oh, it looks sloppy. Okay, what kind of space are you in? Who are your target users? You know, if it's playful and edgy, that might fit for like a younger demographic. But if you think it looks sloppy, yeah, sure. For like an older demographic, maybe that's not the way to appeal to them. So kind of going back to your user personas and trying to figure that out. That being said, if like there's still like clashing opinions, it's like decision making in any context. At some point you're going to need one decision maker or someone who has the decision-making power to help you move forward.

Cool. So that's the first part. That's the pre-work stage, you know, when you start a branding workshop. So once the pre-work is completed and you had that debrief, what's the next step?

Yep. Good question. So the next step is a collaborative kind of more synchronous workshop. So I don't send this to the client prior. I like to just dive into it with the client on the call. So for this, I would schedule about an hour to an hour and a half depending on how many stakeholders you have, and then have everyone kind of use one call So you can see in this example here, we had 2 contributors and then I think there was me plus the designer on there. So we had about 4 people. So the purpose of the session is to really build on the pre-work with open-ended questions and get direction without necessarily comparing to other brands. So the first question here was a discussion question. So in this one, I had the designer lead it and I was taking notes. So, or vice versa, actually there was a bit of both. But the first question was, what elements do you think are important to the brand regarding the story behind the products? How did you all come together? How is this idea conceptualized? So again, this was for like a social media app type of thing. And we kind of wanted to hone in on their mission and their values so that we could see and our designer could see how to like how to incorporate it in the brand. So a lot of the discussion that we had around here was about connecting people, breaking down gatekeeping, giving people access, sharing knowledge, a place of trust. And so that helps the designers see, okay, how— and start thinking about, okay, how can I integrate this in, in the, in the brand for this company? The rest of the questions were there in rapid-fire thinking and discussion. So you can see at the top here, I had some instructions, so we did about 2 minutes of rapid-fire thinking. And again, like Ursula said, it's all about quantity, not quality here. And then we'd spend about 5 minutes in discussions around them. So here the people in the call would add notes and little Post-its with one word and anything that would come to mind. So this question was, what are the core values and attributes that you feel your brand should embody? Use one note per word. So we had all of these notes and then we came together and discussed it and there's the discussion notes down here. Sorry, I'll zoom in a bit more. And you can see that some of the words that we were seeing were trust, access, collaboration, clean, professional. And we look at those, everyone kind of has different ideas of what this means. So that's where it becomes really important to dive into this discussion and figure out what it really means to the user. So if you're looking at our discussion notes, The kind of conclusions we came to was this product needs to attract high-quality users. There's a lot of risk of predatory behavior on social media apps. It's easy to take advantage of people and scam. So we really wanted to make sure that our brand embodies the fact that it's an environment where it's comfortable to interact with strangers. So that's really where your discussion is gonna help you hone in and figure out the like the meaty part of the brand. So that was question 2. Question 3 was, how do you want others to see your brand? So this is going to be really helpful in terms of designing logo, choosing fonts, colors, etc. So they wanted their brand to be bold, exciting, fresh, clean, progressive, clever, not busy, not cluttered. And again, during the discussion, it's okay, what does this mean in terms of actually making sure that we're on the same page and in terms of something that we can turn into a visual brand. The third question was, if your brand was a human, how would it speak to your audience? What's its personality? Obviously, this is to help us determine tone and copy. So they wanted to be funny, clever, witty, playful, etc. We went back to some of the examples that they had provided us during our discussion. So talking about Nike, Hinge, the KFC versus McDonald's feud, Scotiabank, which is a bank in Canada, had a really good rebrand a couple years ago. Which isn't sterile or like too corporate, even though it's, it's not like a challenger bank, it's just a regular bank. But the, the way it rebranded was really good. And so this all helped to determine that the brand needs to turn heads immediately. They wanted, they wanted to play on wordplay, etc. So that got some really good insights for that one. Question 5, what should the first thing a user notice about the brand be? So you're gonna start seeing the same kind of patterns. But again, it's still about diving deeper, getting really good insights, etc. So things we derive from here in this discussion: when they want to be cool like Spotify, not stiff, not serious, talking about like wordplay like Snapchat is a ghost and it says chat, skip the dishes, Waze is like ways just spelled differently. So kind of diving a bit deeper into that. And then the last question at this point, we're like, okay, this is quite repetitive, but this shows us that we're really all on the same page about what we want this brand to be. It needs to be innovative, it needs to be trusted and safe, it needs to be fun, it needs to be community-driven, organic, et cetera. So yeah, that was the, the, the last, the second part of this workshop.

Awesome.

So once, once this part, the brainstorming collaborative session is, is done, what's, what's the How do you determine if it was successful?

So at the end of this discussion, you should have a clear idea of a couple of directions that the brand could go in. And what we like to do here is to derive 3 very different branding concepts from these discussions. This is the point for where a designer would be really helpful or someone who has experience in branding so that they can take over and create some mood boards and different visual applications of potential branding direction. Yeah, that's just really what I wanna emphasize in this is like, as a founder, you can do this up to a certain point, but at this point you really need those creative thinking kind of human behavior, like cognition and skills and interpretations that Ursula was talking about earlier.

Awesome.

So the third step is mood boards. So can you walk us through what they look like and how it works?

Yeah, so I'll go down here. I'll just stay on here for a second. So at this point, it's going to take about a week for a designer to work through this for us. And we like to really spend time on this and get really kind of into it. And from the workshops above, our designer derived 3 different concepts with about 3 keywords each. So concept 1 was bold, friendly, celebratory. Concept 2 was nostalgic, vintage, minimal, Bauhaus grunge, and Concept 3 was effortless, energetic, and smooth. So I'll go over Concept 1 first. So from here, they went and just basically browsed the internet and created a mood board like the one that you would see in Pinterest or what you would do if you're basically redecorating your house and finding ways to that and screenshots of things that embody those three kind of pillars that I talked about earlier. After that, we like to do visual applications. Keep in mind here, I've stripped out— I've stripped out the text and replaced it with lorem ipsum just because this was like too specific to our client and I wanted to have something that we could show in here. And we also would put images taken from the internet. Of course, I stripped this out because we didn't have copyrights to those either, so stripped those out for the purpose of this webinar. And yeah, and kind of like show them this way so you could see how the mood board and like the pastel tones, for example, are reflected in here. This was concept 2. So this one was the vintage, minimal, nostalgic Bauhaus one. And this is how we applied it again with the image. It kind of looks bare and empty, but the image made sense with the context of this, this mood board, I promise. And then the third one was a lot more editorial. So this one was the effortless, energetic, and smooth one. These are some of the screenshots that you can see, and you can see it just looks a lot more editorial. So after our designer has completed this, we send it to the client and we get them to review it async. And then I would do about a 45-minute to an hour kind of session to debrief with them in and again, really dive deep into what they like, what they dislike, etc. So you can see some examples of the discussion notes that we were having around this. So for the first concept, they really like the pastels, but they didn't like the colors. Okay, this is good. This is good feedback that we can action on. They like the style of the photograph— photography. They love the tone. They didn't like how the text alignment was like not really aligned. And they also didn't like the fact that we were showcasing their app upfront. They really wanted to focus on the community aspect instead of the technology aspect. So this is really, really, really good insight that we're getting just from this, this mock and this, these like 3 keywords. The second one, some of the feedback we got was like, okay, I don't like the lines behind. It looks like you're just trying to fill space. I like the logos, but I don't like how they're positioned above this. Didn't really like this serif font, etc. Again, having the technology showcase at the top was not their priority. They really like the story. So kind of getting like weird feedback around this one, not very specific. And then the feedback around this that we got was like, okay, love it, love the editorial style. Can we incorporate some of the stuff from the previous two concepts? So yeah, that's, that's kind of what the, the mood board phase is. If at this point you're not really getting any actionable feedback or they're like, oh, I don't like any of these, I would recommend going back to the previous step with the client and going back to some of the questions and kind of diving deeper. Of course, this has never happened at Crowdlinker because we have the most amazing designers who usually nail this out of the park. But that, you know, it's an iterative process at this point, so you can keep on going back and forth with the client for quite a while.

Awesome. Thanks, Clem. So once the mood boards are done, what, where does, where does that kind of next step go?

Yeah, as, as you can see, the board ends here. And that is for a reason, because at this point you are fully immersed in your branding phase and we wanted to just talk about branding discovery. But from here it's just about iteration, getting feedback, et cetera. You'll start doing some logo work, some font work, colors, tone, et cetera. And you're gonna keep on presenting that to the client and refine it until you get something where you have nailed their vision, they're happy with it, and it's gonna be a good marketing Cool.

All right. So that's the, that's the live workshop components. So thank you so much, Clem, Ursula, so far. So this link to the board will be included in the slides when we share it with everybody. We do have actually an empty template on the right side for you to be able to copy and paste and use for your own projects. So we've stripped out everything here so that you could use it, you know, as you see fit. All right, so we'll, we'll make sure you guys have access to that so you could edit, um, on your own. All right, let me jump back into the final session. So this final session is going to be focused around how to determine if your workshop was successful, uh, and like the different success criteria you should look for. So I'm going to pass it back to Ursula to go through this section.

Thank you. So obtaining quality information in your workshop will dictate, dictate the success of the next steps in the branding process. So it's important that there is alignment and sufficient information. Looking at all the information you have collected, you may ask, how do I know if I have run a successful workshop? This, we do this by following success criteria throughout the process. So success criteria questions: have all the participants contributed? Are there patterns forming? If you are using Post-it notes, you may see that you have multiple Post-it notes on the same topic. Is there variety? Are service offerings aligned? The brand quality should match the sense of the service offerings, you know, um, Is there enough? We aim for like a maximum idea, so again, more is better. And are all brand aspects addressed? So thinking about photos, illustration, voice, tone, color, to name a few. Have these elements been explored? Um, so now we're going into synthesizing these results. If we have followed the success criteria during the workshop, we should be able to synthesize our results. From all the information that has been collected, what clusters are forming? Are these groups of information based on similar qualities? Um, what are the broad principles? What is a consist— what is consistent across all examples shared? Write out principles that would apply to the brand regardless of how it might be executed visually. And the final one, specific principles. What are the specific principles from those clusters that we have created? What quality— what qualities do they share? How can they be used to shape specific brand directions? So what happens next? Mood boards and concepts are shared, critiqued, and adjusted by a designer. And then once a concept has been refined to satisfaction, it is adapted into brand guidelines. And those brand guidelines should be included, should include visual elements. From the mood boards part, there's going to be a lot of back and forth. So when you're sharing, critiquing, and adjusting, this is still, you know, very much like a work in progress section. And then you're slowly refining down, down until you get like that brand guidelines that is like, you know, the rules of your brand. All right. And now the ultimate goal: alignment around brand identity across all stakeholders. That's incredibly important. You want to make sure that everyone is on the same page of like, what is the brand? Because going back to, you know, what we were discussing in the beginning of why is branding so important, important is this is going to be the thing that guides your business decisions. So you need to make sure that everyone's aligned. And then the next ultimate goal is creation of a full branding guideline. And there's some examples that we'll, we've provided below. This, these guidelines include things like logos, typography, voice, color, illustration, photography, and they're the rules of your brand. They'll provide rules of like how other companies can use your brand. And you wanna have this as clear and succinct as possible. Aran, did you want to share one?

Yeah, I just, I wanted to share the Starbucks one. So we went through a few different ones. We just picked two. One is Spotify's branding guidelines, another one is Starbucks. But what I like about Starbucks is that it's very public. Like everybody could go on and you could see exactly what they've done. So I'll just kind of walk you through it. I'll open up the contents area here. As Ursula mentioned, this kind of core elements of every branding guideline that you should always have. So first one is obviously logos. So here they talk about, you know, how their logo is presented. Um, you could see it as a wordmark or as a logo. You could see it like historically how it's kind of like transition over time, which I thought was pretty cool. Uh, the next one is color. Uh, so this is your color palette, which is like your brand colors. So as you can see, they have like their core ones and then they have different accents of that, of that one. And then they have some other ones which, which are secondary, some expressive colors. And then the voice. This is kind of my favorite part of the branding guidelines because this communicates to whoever's looking at what your brand is about, you know, how you represent yourself. So it's like functional versus expressive. Here's some examples of how the voice is being applied into the branding guidelines. Then I'll go into typography. This is how, from a typeform perspective, how they represent themselves. So they're using actually 3 different types of fonts, which is normal. And you could see the representation of the different typefaces. You could even see it based on different weights and size. And then Lander, and then Pike is one of their most impactful typefaces that they're using. And then illustration, this is how they kind of like express themselves using illustration. So different types of images here as like a way to showcase their functional versus their expressive one. And then photography. So this is how they showcase their products from like a visual standpoint. So yeah, as you can see, there's editorial and product photography, which is what they use. So obviously depending what kind of brand you have, if you're like a consumer packaged goods company, you know, it'll be good to have something like this versus software is quite different.

Cool.

So I'll jump back. And what I like to do is just wrap up with like some key callouts. So I'll, we'll go in a roundtable format. So I'll start off. So one of the main things that I always like to say is that when you're creating your own branding guidelines, try to put yourself in the shoes of whoever the target audience is that you're going after, just to try to emotionally connect with them. Like brand purpose for every business is the why behind everything that you do. Clem, over to you.

Mine is to really just have clear ideas of what you like and dislike and help provide direction to the brand. But that, you know, I've mentioned this is make sure you're working with someone whose expertise is branding and can take into account human behavior, accessibility, and all of the other nuances of creating a brand.

Thanks, Ursa.

Mine's just understanding that the branding process is a long process and it has tons of twists and turns. So it's best to, as Clem said, have somebody who's experienced to guide you through it and keep you on track.

Okay, cool. So next slide here is just to show our office hours that we have available. So you could use your phone to scan this QR code, which is a link to our online office hours, which are free. So feel free to book a time with us. There's also a link here that you could click on. And so now we'll open up the Q&A part of the webinar. So I know there's a lot of questions from what I could see that the audience has already put in. So I'll pass it over back to Ayan at this stage now to take over and let's start the Q&A.

Hey guys. Yeah, thanks. Super insightful presentation. Internally at F5, we did a branding workshop I think I was like, oh yeah, do we need this? And like, is it important? And because I came in like 2 years into the organization, this was one of the first things I was tasked to do. And I was like, why are we even doing this? And like, I think it took like 2 days to do. And then I was like, probably 20, 30 minutes in, I was like, wow, okay, this is really important, right? So that kind of reflected in our current branding initiative. I don't know if some of you've seen FI evolve in the last like 14 to 18 months, but like the copy has changed, design has changed, everything has— like how we positioned us as well. So this stuff here is always, always important. I appreciate, Aram, you and your team jumping on to explain all of this information. Uh, that being said, uh, we have about 12 minutes left. I'm gonna jump to moderate some of this Q&A. I'm gonna remove your screen just so you have a little bit more real estate and you can see everyone. Hey, uh, okay, so let's do the first one by Ajay. Uh, so Ajay is asking, how early in a startup's life cycle is a branding exercise recommended? How important is brand for consumer products versus B2B, especially when the client is another business? So again, tough question to answer fast, but I don't know if there's someone on the team specifically do you want to get this to.

Yeah, I mean, I'm happy to take it. Or Clem, Ursa, do you want to give it a go? Go for it. All right. So as you said, I think it really depends on the type of business you have. Like if it's a CPG brand, I would say, yeah, spend time doing your branding early on, because when you're selling a consumer packaged good product, it's really about trust, authenticity, awareness that you're trying to communicate, showcase to your target audience. So go through that exercise early on, I would say, for a CPG company or anything where you're selling like some sort of physical product, because your brand, I think, is important in terms of how you represent it, showcase it, and, you know, you know, make sure that the, the target audiences are resonating with how you present it. When it comes to SaaS companies or B2B companies, it's a bit different. I would say, um, again, really important, but I would say for like a SaaS company, you know, we've done different webinars around like, uh, product discovery or how to build an MVP, right? Like try to focus more on like trying to validate your software idea that you're trying to do first. But then once you have a good idea, you should then figure out, okay, how do I present it? Like, what's like my identity of like how the software is gonna be presented to the target audience? So again, like a bit different, like the life cycles changes. You could always, when you're building a software product, I would say there's different priorities. I would try to get the, you know, the product market validation, product market fit, figure it out first. And then I would say once you have enough users, you know, building out that brand identity with them and then, you know, in many ways you could kind of piggyback off of what they're kind of telling you about their brand as well and have them as like maybe active, you know, feedback loop participants in terms of like how they resonate or how they feel about your brand. And then that could be a way that you could also kind of guide that process that that you would be doing. It's good to do like a refresh of a brand when like, you know, you're going through maybe a messaging or a positioning change in your organization, no matter what size. Like we've done different branding revamps for different companies. So it really depends kind of where you're at.

Perfect. Thanks. Just keep things moving. We're bringing up this question from Elias from Montreal. He's asking, how important is it for the founders or stakeholders, I guess, to participate in the process? Why not just have a designer go take some market information and jump into it? Maybe Clem or Ursula, whoever wants to take this.

Um, I can take it. Um, well, the founder stakeholder knows better than anyone what their business— what they want their business to be, and the branding should align with what their vision is. Um, otherwise, like, you can start veering away from what your product is if you're just looking at the market. It has to all kind of work together. Your product what need it fulfills, what its vision is. And that comes down to like, you know, the stakeholders and, you know, the founders and then also the market. So these are all different, these are all components that are important to the overall brand strategy. And it should never just be marketing, the market analysis, 'cause, or a designer, 'cause Yeah, it could very easily go away from what is the original vision of the product.

Yeah, just to add to that as well, if you remember the slide where Ursula was talking about Airbnb, there was a little image of like the— it might have been a bit small, but the iterations of like how the logo for Airbnb came together. And it was like a person like raising their arms and their heart and like the A for Airbnb. And if the designer went by themselves and just looked at the market for that, it's like Vrbo and hotels and that kind of stuff. Like, yes, they could have had those ideas by themselves, but I think that direction probably came from the founders being like, okay, or someone being like, okay, what does your brand represent? It's like, okay, it's the people coming together. It's like an A-frame for a home and all of those stuff. And I don't know if a designer that is maybe not as close and as emotionally invested yet as, as a founder could have come up with those ideas and really given that brand the like oomph that it has, for lack of a better word.

Oomph is an appropriate word. All right, let's, uh, let's do the next question. Uh, I like this question from Jeremy from Sacramento. He's asking, when you're looking at rebranding, should you consider and spin off its own microbrand? Uh, would that make more sense, or would it make sense to just, I guess, brand it under itself? Yeah, maybe Clem, do you wanna take this one? I think you're the one that went through all the different examples.

Yeah, I can take a stab at this one. I, Jeremy, I think it depends on what situation you're facing with your company. The, like if you're expanding into, for example, like a new international market, you may not need to reconsider a rebrand for your full brand, but you may consider just minor tweaks for for something that's appropriate for that international market or that culture. If you're doing— if it's because it's a new product release and let's say you end up completely kind of like pivoting to that new product and then you feature and kind of discontinuing the old stuff, you should probably do a full rebrand. Now let's say you're like Spotify and you start releasing audiobooks as your offerings instead of just music and podcasts. That probably doesn't warrant a full rebrand unless you start just doing audiobooks. And at that point you're competing with Audible and you might wanna look at doing a rebrand that way because your mission and your values and your target market would be different. So it kind of different, like there's no yes or no answer. It's a bit of a gray area. Depends how much money you have to invest, depends on the ROI that you'd expect to see and that, that kind of stuff as well. I hope that answers your question.

Yeah, that was good. Yeah, you give a thumbs up in the chat, so that's good. All right, let's do one more question. I think I like this question by Celeste, which is— who wants to take it on the team? She's from Grand Junction. She's asking, like, how do you clearly, like, handle non-stakeholder feedback, right? Like a friend or relative that might undermine the process or cause us to feel insecure about the brand directions or end results. I guess another way of looking at this is like, obviously all feedback, like all feedback is not treated equally, right? You have customer feedback, you have non-customer feedback, you have supplier feedback and all that. So I guess from your perspective, like how would you folks process that internally? Right? Like, do you have a process? Do you just ignore it? Which would be very mean, but valid. But yeah, I don't know who on the CL team wants to take this. It's a tough one.

I'll start and then Clem, Ursula, feel free to jump in. Cause I know, you know, Clem went through this process with a client recently. So, so when, if it's a non-stakeholder, like for example, if I was to go to my mom, Okay. Random example here. I also go to my mom or like a family member. I'll be like, hey, what do you think of my, of this brand? It's, it's good to like get like an immediate gut reaction in terms of what they think of the logo, what it means to them. Like having like a very objective perspective on what we've come up with or what kind of like the results that we've created to date are. But at the same time, like if they, if they don't have like industry knowledge or, or they're not really aware of like what the meaning is behind it, maybe there's some sort of like background to how you kind of get to there. You know, I would kind of just take it as like a, with a grain of salt. Like when you have your stakeholders involved in your, in your workshop that you're doing from a branding standpoint, whether that's the founding team, whether that's other team members, whether that's investors, like whoever. Right? Like you determine who are the stakeholders. They're the ones who are kind of like living and breathing, you know, the brand identity daily. So they're always thinking about, okay, like how does this resonate with my target audience? Like, is it gonna be well received? Am I emotionally connecting with them? Does it really simplify, or sorry, does it really signify the why behind everything that we're trying to do? And like, you know, Obviously you wanna focus on like what kind of information you get from those stakeholders. There are different ways to go and like test it out after to like more of a public kind of like feedback loop session so that you get like more of like a, you know, objective opinions. But if they don't have the context or they don't know what the business is or is doing, like it'll be like open to interpretation, I would say.

Yeah, well, there's a famous quote that if Ford had asked people what they wanted from their transportation, they'd say a faster horse. So, you know, it's— it does come down to you have to also talk to people who are, you know, innovative, you know, thinking outside the box, who are, you know, experts in this industry, who, who also see a bigger picture and not necessarily just limited to like the little snippets of what they see from your workshops.

Yep. Awesome. Well, we're pretty much at the hour. Thank you so much, Crowdlinker team, Aram, Clem, and Ursula. This has been very insightful. I hope the audience learned something. I certainly learned a lot of different things. What we'll do is we'll wrap up the session right now and we'll break up for networking. Whoever can stick around, great. You'll see a bunch of virtual tables. Go join the table if you want to speak to one of the speakers or just want to talk to each other. It's good to just chat with each other to talk about what you learned, especially with a topic like this with branding. I feel like you guys can coordinate and talk about like, what does this mean to you? Is this statement— is this positioning thing confusing or whichever, use each other to gain different insights. Just a quick housekeeping, we will be sending out the recording and all the respective links after, so don't worry, we'll send it out hopefully within the next 24, maximum 48 hours. And as always, if you do not get the emails for whatever reasons, fi.co/youtube has all our recordings, so you can always visit the YouTube page and consume the content there as you deem fit. All right, with that being said, Aram, Clem, and Ursula, thank you so much. We usually do, is there one piece of advice you wanna sign off with? But Aram already did that, so he kind of stole the thunder, but it's okay. So we'll just kind of wrap up here. All right, thanks everyone. Enjoy the rest of your day.

Bye.

Thank you, everybody.