Design Sprints for Branding
Branding needs to take an agile product development approach, and running sprints is a great step in the right direction. GV’S design sprints are a great way to answer crucial question about a product through prototyping and testing with customers. While this is great for design challenges, here is why it makes sense for branding.
Introduction
Most traditional branding approaches are stuck. Let me explain. Developing a brand often starts from business, market and competitor perspectives, factoring in what is believed to be customer segments. Then a narrative is built around these insights: Called a brand strategy. This obviously is radically simplified, but the general approach usually is along these lines.
And usually this feels right, because from one perspective it certainly is: The inside–out perspective. And this is great. Great for inspiration and divergence. Not for validation or convergence. But often it is mistaken as such. Yet some actual validation is important in order to converge to an actual strategy.
Validation happens from outside-in. That’s what traditional branding doesn’t do early enough, or not at all. And that’s why it’s stuck.
Generally inside-out means to develop from the brand’s perspective and with insights generated around the brand, their business and competitors. While outside-in means to prototype and develop iteratively with the help of customers.
In agile product development for example validation is key: Make an assumption, prototype and then test to break & learn. And repeat. Of course you don’t get everything right and fully validated, and most things can’t be proven before a product actually is released in the wild. But at least you get pointed in the right direction.
Why an agile development process makes sense for branding challenges.
The roles of brands change. Constantly. And that’s a great thing. In recent years there was a shift from brands talking about themselves, their products and services (Inside-out) to brands facilitating customer needs beyond the stuff they offer (Outside-in). This is crucial, because the former fails as soon as their stuff becomes outdated, while the latter might still be relevant then.
Many branding agencies though aren’t quiet there yet with the ways they operate. Their approaches and practices are built around common issues: Positioning brands in their desired markets and categories with the desired result of becoming an indispensable part in customer’s lives. This is often seen as a path from awareness to loyalty. Slowly and steady from the inside defined brand values and promises, and a lot of advertising are the means to get there. This is often a long and static process.
How does a static process sit with a changing business?
Right, not that great. And while the shift from inside-out to outside-in is happening and traditional means don’t resonate that well with customers anymore, opportunities to go beyond are opening up. New approaches need to be lean and fast, so they can keep up with the changing business.
This is why branding needs to take an agile product development approach, and running sprints is a great step in this direction.
Sprints are a format developed by Jake Knapp and practiced at GV and probably a ton of other organizations since they published their great book. And rightfully so. It is fast, cheap and effective. It is a “five day process for answering crucial questions through prototyping and testing ideas with customers” where designers, prototypers and most importantly relevant stakeholder are involved. We also do sprints. But we are no startup, innovation firm or tech company. We are a branding agency. And we use sprints to solve branding challenges.
Everything we do is pretty much the same as it is for other sprints described by Knapp et al. We are just shifting and adding some exercises that are relevant when it comes to branding. These exercises point towards one core aspect crucial for brands (and products): The big idea, the compass that guides all actions of a brand.
Running a 5 day sprint can answer many crucial questions.
A sprint starts on a Monday with defining goals, from shorter to long term goals. To start everything from an outside perspective, we like to use exercises like “First tweet”, “First email” or “Future headlines” for this. All these exercises aim at looking from somebody else’s perspective at the brand after it successfully launched. With this the goal and the related questions are being set from an outside-in perspective and can be mapped. This means to get an idea of what steps roughly have to be taken to reach this goal. In the next step we interview people who, depending on the process, are either experts and bring in some brand insights or customers who inform us about their experience with the brand or the brand’s category. Following the sprint process all participants phrase relevant insights as “How might we” questions that then get voted to select the most relevant ones.
On the next day we start with lightning talks, where we have a look at some Best-in-class cases that can inspire our thinking. What follows differs slightly from design sprints for products and business ventures. Since we now sketch for branding, we sketch brand scenarios. Each following one big idea. This means following the narrative of “What if…”. What if your brand was… The big ideas are results from the HMWs and initial interviews. On each single scenario sketch all that is relevant to each big idea is posted: Ambassadors, audiences, tone of voice etc. Each scenario also sets a frame of reference or challenges an existing frame of reference. We also take inspiration from Kees Dorst’s book Frame Innovation for this step.
We then start on the next day with the decision process in order to determine which scenario wants to be prototyped and tested. After art museum-ing (pinning up everything like in an museum) and voting we continue to storyboard the prioritized scenario and park the others for maybe later.
From here on prototyping starts. We divide and conquer, decide which tools and what level of fidelity we want to achieve and get down to work. The most important aspect today is be clear about what and how we want to test on the next day. Depending on the prototypes this can be heavier skewed towards observation or interviewing. During the day of testing it is important to note down common concepts and patterns. We use methods from Grounded Theory to pin these down while the memory is still fresh.
After the sprint is before the sprints.
Even when a comfortable level of insights have been reached, it is crucial to keep up the fast and lean work after a sprint. With more sprints. While stakeholders leave, agency people have to stick to iteratively prototype and test. Sprints are a great way to get in the right mode from the get-go. Don’t loose yourself (and your team) in too much inside-out analysis and pseudo strategic development. Prototype, learn and validate.
I Hope you enjoyed this. I publish ideas illustrating how UX and Branding can join forces and learn from each other. I am looking forward to feedback, ideas and inspiration.
