I am giving a full day workshop on "building a brand for your business" for start your own business and micro business participants.
Would anyone have any good group/paired exercises for participants, who don’t know each other and are all from different small business backgrounds.
Normally my branding workshops would be for individuals all within the same business, and I would do things like pick an image (from a collection of magazine cut outs) which best represents the brand, or which one of these famous personalities best represents your brand, which one is too extreme for your brand etc.
This is a bit more challenging given some of these participants are not all from the same organisation and might not want to share too much information about their own business/brand as its in the early stages. So trying to think of stuff that will underline the importance of branding but yet get them to each start thinking about there own brand. I have all the theory just need the exercises.
Thanks in advance
Aisling
5 Responses
go for the common denominator
Get some examples of fairly well known brands on powerpoint slides, you can go for really well known ones such as Microsoft and MacDonalds, through to ones that are common but perhaps less well known, such as SITA or Valeo.
As you flash up the slide of the brand/logo, ask delegates to write down the name of the organisation and what it means to them.
Then in pairs get them to compare what they KNEW (ie what is the logo the brand of and what do they do) and what is MEANS (ie their individual perception of the brand, eg some will see MacDonalds as wholesome and consistant food providers and others will perceive it as a faceless global conglomerate with an insatiable appetite for causeing obesity and crushing regional cuisine)
This can then give you the opportunity to look at the evolution of brand image to brand experience.
Today’s paper has an interesting story about Yell rebranding to become "hibu" as a strategy to turn around a £1.4 billion loss……..this may be a bit more than you want to go into but it kinda puts branding into perspective!
I hope this helps
Rus
http://www.coach-and-courses.com
PS Dragons’ Den, Start Your own Business, From Idea to Income, has some interesting material on branding for small businesses
HIBU
How much did that little gem cost them? Enough to make you Yell!!!
Branding
Hi
I have a resource you can have which has points of convergence with what you seek – I noticed you had used the word "extreme". Our placement student Tom has completed a big research project on branding/adverts going back to the 50’s to the present day. Basically it’s ADman and Eve -all sexist stuff. Vance Packard wrote a famous book in the 1950’s about the Hidden Persuaders and 8 principles around branding. Anyway to cut a long story short, we get groups like your cohorts to look at their branding/ads from the perspective of Tom’s research/Packard and say from an equality/diversity perspective what would and would not work for them – eg cost benefit analysis and the recent hard headed quantifications of the brown,the pink,the silver and the other £££s. Plus an equality/diversity checker. Finally, our lead trainer looks at CULTURE and branding,inter alia body language/symbols from a Western AND non Western point of view. Why does a THUMBS UP sign in Manchester offend someone from another country OR why does a shaking head in a picture mean the very opposite -lol lol
You will have great fun but it is high risk if the cohorts go into things cold. I can tell you eleohant traps to avoid.Drop me a line at trainingqed@aol.com for the stuff and I will "talk you " through it.
Dominic
QED Training qedworks.com
Thank you
Thank you Dominic Steve Rus
All great stuff, I wonder Dominic would some of what you are suggesting work with my cohorts some of whom may not yet be in business or if they are have yet very little brand communications activity. So I wouldnt be able to get them to look at their own brands (which might not exist). What I am hoping to get them to believe at the end of the session is the importance of branding and developing their brands.
Aisling
branding
yes most certainly! Just needs tweaking and adapting – in at the groundfloor is often a good start
QED Training qedworks.com