A Live Demo: Experience The Power Of A Brand Idea

What follows is a simple yet powerful exercise I designed for my “Channel The Brand” Workshop. The purpose of the workshop is to demonstrate the intense, positive influence a strong, single-minded brand idea can/should have on how a company not only goes to market, but how a company behaves in every way. Within this workshop is a breakout exercise that you can steal and do with your company (there is a download link of printouts at the end).

The exercise: one product, two brands, lots of ideas.

The name of the workshop is, “Don’t Just Brand The Channel, Channel The Brand,” and in it I make the following case:

“Channeling the brand” is the act of thinking, doing, and creating on behalf of a company, in a way that may not be what you would think, do, and create, but what the company’s brand would think, do, and create.

A marketing idea is only great if the idea proves a larger brand idea. Otherwise it’s just a random act of marketing. So the workshop covers what a brand idea is, why it’s important to have one, but then how people within a company can operationalize their brand idea.

This is where it gets fun and interactive. I have attendees break into groups of 6-8 people. I show them a product, in this case a cool looking but unbranded bike. And then I share two completely different brand ideas in the form of taglines with accompanying explanatory manifestos, as follows (click to enlarge):

Brand A: “Good health is like riding a bike.”

Brand B: The environment is riding on our bikes.”

One brand idea around health and another around the environment. Very different, but the product—the bike—is identical. Each breakout group is then handed a different brand idea/manifesto and they are given 30 minutes to “Channel the brand” and come up with ideas as follows:

Notice I didn’t say “How would YOU name the bike?” I said, “How would your BRAND name the bike?” Important that people understand the ideas are on behalf of the brand.

Once the 30 minutes is up we go around the room and one person from each group presents the ideas they came up with. Nothing formal, it’s literally on flip chart paper.

It’s like the brand idea tells you what it wants to do.

The best part: the ideas. The names the groups give the bikes are totally different (e.g. “Lifecycle” for the Health brand, “AirOut” for the Environmental brand), the social media ideas totally different (e.g. “Calorie Counter” for the Health brand, “Emissions Eliminated” calculator for the Environmental brand. And so on, yet the product for each is the same.

Each group channels their brand idea when coming up with ideas. Most importantly, the groups experienced first-hand what it’s like when the brand idea is the boss.

As Boston College Professor, Pam Hamlin, put it after a recent live workshop:

“Will’s ‘Channel the Brand’ workshop was such a powerful way to demonstrate how a brand idea creates meaningful differentiation for the same product. We all know products in most categories are virtually the same. It’s the idea and how a brand channels that idea across all its communications and brand behaviors that separates one brand from another. This interactive, fast-paced workshop showed how that idea is both a catalyst and a filter for everything the brand does.

The experience left a lasting impression on the students in my marketing class, in a way that reading a textbook never could have!”

Now it’s your turn.

Below are t here links. One link to download the Breakout Materials described above so you can conduct your own session with your team. Below that is a second link to request a Live “Channel The Brand” Workshop, which includes the breakout described above and much more. And below that is a third link if your brand isn’t speaking to you and you’d like to explore developing a brand idea for your company through Ideasicle X (our Ideasicle Experts love these projects).

DOWNLOAD BREAKOUT MATERIALS