Building a brand from scratch can be frustrating. But don't be afraid, if you do it the right way it can be fun.

You have an idea, you have a vision, you are full of enthusiasm, and have big plans. You just have to find the right name for your project that encapsulates all those emotions and … you fall flat on your face. You simply can’t find the right words and you get so frustrated you turn to brand name generators for inspiration. And let me tell you, it doesn’t get much worse than brand-name generators. I know this because I have been there. I really struggled to find the right name for my marketing consultancy back in 2021 despite having spent 15 years in Marketing and having accompanied plenty of brand development projects. And I can’t come up with a decent brand name?

The reason I struggled so much was that I was trying to take shortcuts. The thing is that when we are excited about an idea it is just natural that we want to give it a name.

“We name to identify, symbolize, refer, describe, simplify, organize and, most importantly, to tame. Through the act of naming, we make ties and emotional bonds with people and things” (Source).

Naming something makes it real. So, in the start-up context giving your project a name gets you a step closer to turning it into reality.?

But building a brand is a process where you can’t take any shortcuts. Because the brand name is the very last thing of the brand-building process, the distilled essence of your values, your vision, and your mission. An efficient and fun way to go through this process is a brand workshop which will help you separate the wheat from the chaff. An expert in this area and the person who guided me through this process is George who was supported by his brilliant designer-wife Sous.

In the following couple of minutes, I want to take you on a journey through the brand-building process for my marketing consultancy “mrkt’in - Simply Cut The Crap”.

HOMEWORK

As preparation for the workshop, George gave me a little homework and asked me to describe the 3 Ws of my consultancy:

1. What do I want to do?
2. Who am I doing this for?
3. Why am I doing what I do?

This gave George the opportunity to understand the nature of my project both from a pure service perspective as well as an emotional perspective. At the same time, it helped me identify pain points, areas where my brand lacked a clear profile.?

THE WORKSHOP

The workshop took place in person at George’s office near Linz, Austria.

Storytelling

As far as I remember we kicked the workshop off with me talking about why I wanted to found a consultancy. In my case, the idea of offering an alternative to traditional marketing agencies had been there for quite some time. As I had been on the client-side for more than a decade I had made my fair share of experiences with agencies, unfortunately, many negative ones as well. While rambling about my experiences, George and Sous already took notes and turned them into early insights:

Think of the first insights as a cloud of thoughts and emotions. After this storytelling session, the workshop got more concrete, addressing the three defining components of a brand:

1. What are you doing?
2. How are doing it?
3. Why are you doing it?

I don’t want to go too far astray here but let me just add, that those seemingly simple questions are not that simple at all. Just ask managers from random companies. While most will be able to tell you what they are selling, and maybe how they are selling it, many will struggle when asked why they are actually doing what they are doing. It’s not a coincidence that the terms “marketing with purpose” or “purpose-driven organizations” have become a fixed component of every marketing bulls**t bingo.

Many organizations lack a true purpose which makes them vulnerable internally (high employee turnover) as well as externally (stronger competing brands with a true purpose).

But back to the topic. George used several techniques to dig deeper into those three components (What, How, Why) and I want to show you a few of them.

Onion Peeling?

This is a well-known technique that focuses on the WHY. We started with my initial Why-statement and removed layer after layer by asking further Why-questions, to get to the core of my purpose statement.?

This way we got from “Because many companies have a good product but not good marketing” to statements such as “Because good marketing is a matter of approach rather than money” and “Because we want to see innovative brands maximize their potential” which got us already way closer to a proper purpose-statement.

ABC Avalanche?

The ABC Avalanche is a really effective technique where you write down the letters from A to Z and try to come up with as many nouns, adjectives, and verbs as possible to describe your brand. This enables you to sculpt your brand and get closer to a clear brand profile.

The WOW

Described by George as the “Action transformed to How” I actually came up with the cooler name “WOW” which stands for What and HOW. As the name indicates it touches on how your brand is going to deliver value.

Build your superhero?

I highly enjoyed this exercise where you are thinking of your brand as a superhero with unique powers and abilities. It helps you define the unique USP of your brand.

Following the workshop, the outcomes were then summarized in a document which is a great resource for future brand development as you can come back to it whenever you need guidance or need a basis for a briefing.

THE BRAND DESIGN

The brand workshop serves as the briefing for the actual brand development, which includes defining the brand name, the visual logo, color patterns, and other brand elements. Think of it as the visualization of the brand workshop. You will probably realize that the names you came up with initially have nothing in common with the name which you are going to choose after the brand process.

Here are some examples from my brand design document:

You see, building a brand is a process that you have to commit to. But I guarantee, the results will pay off as they did in my case.

Tell me in the ??comments ??about your experiences with brand building. If you enjoyed this edition of the mrkt'insider, please SHARE IT with your peers.?

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