Brand Sprint: unlock your uniqueness in 3 hours
Let’s Talk About Your Brand
It's becoming easier than ever to build a business. However, with that comes saturation of various markets and growing changes in how you build your brand, market yourself, and scale your company.
While the tech world is chasing unicorns (billion-dollar valuations), many business founders and owners want to do a few things:
Help others by providing a meaningful product or service.
Change the way that things are done through micro-innovations that disrupt their industry.
Make enough money to create a level of freedom that enables flexibility in their work and lifestyle.
While many service businesses, like consultants (hi, it's me 🙋🏻♀️), are looking to help corporations and executives, small businesses continue to be underserved.
One thing that I’m here to do is change that. I want to ensure that first-time founders, business owners, and entrepreneurs are provided with the tools and support they need to grow a business they love. So, I’ll be sharing my tools of the trade. And to be honest with you, sometimes, they're not even mine, like this one.
The Three-Hour Brand Sprint
Google Ventures developed the Three-Hour Brand Sprint, a simplified version of how brands define themselves. This intensive and collaborative workshop has become a game-changer for startups and established businesses, offering a condensed yet highly effective process for crafting a brand strategy.
What is the Three-Hour Brand Sprint?
The Three-Hour Brand Sprint is a structured and time-boxed workshop designed to rapidly distill a brand's essence, align teams, and create a foundation for further brand development. Originating from the design sprints popularised by Google Ventures, the Brand Sprint specifically focuses on defining the core elements that make a brand unique, memorable, and impactful.
The concept draws from the principles of Design Thinking and Lean methodologies, emphasising a collaborative and time-efficient approach to problem-solving. In just three hours, individual founders or cross-functional teams can make significant strides in shaping a brand's identity, allowing for quick decision-making and immediate implementation of critical insights.
Development of the Three-Hour Brand Sprint
The Three-Hour Brand Sprint evolved from the broader framework of design sprints, first introduced by Jake Knapp at Google Ventures. Design sprints were initially conceived as a five-day process to solve big problems and test new ideas. Recognising the need for a streamlined version, Google Ventures adapted the concept to create the Three-Hour Brand Sprint specifically tailored for brand development.
This condensed format maintains the core principles of the design sprint—rapid ideation, prototyping, and testing—while focusing on the unique challenges and opportunities associated with crafting a brand. The goal is to enable teams to make critical decisions quickly, minimising the time spent in lengthy, indecisive discussions.
Benefits of the Three-Hour Brand Sprint
Efficiency and Speed
The primary advantage of the Three-Hour Brand Sprint is its speed. Individuals or teams can accomplish what may take weeks or months in just three hours. Time constraints force participants to prioritise, resulting in focused discussions and swift decision-making.
Broad, yet Focused
The sprint format encourages you or your team to think beyond the day-to-day. It broadens your thinking across the potential growth horizons while bringing you back to the origins of the business - your “why”. By doing this, you start to look at the business from different angles and discover new opportunities and ways of expressing what you do.
Alignment and Clarity
By the end of the Three-Hour Brand Sprint, teams have a clear and shared understanding of the brand's core elements. This alignment is crucial for consistent messaging, visual identity, and overall brand cohesion.
Cost-Effectiveness
The efficiency of the Three-Hour Brand Sprint translates into cost savings. Traditional brand development processes can incur substantial expenses in terms of time and resources. The sprint model minimises these costs while delivering impactful results.
Cross-Functional Collaboration
If you have a team, the sprint format encourages the involvement of cross-functional teams, bringing together individuals with diverse perspectives and expertise. This collaborative approach ensures a holistic understanding of the brand and facilitates the emergence of well-rounded ideas.
Facilitating a Three-Hour Brand Sprint
If you can't afford to or don't want to engage a brand consultant like The Royal Phoenix Lab, don't worry - you don't have to. You can actually facilitate the Three-Hour Brand Sprint yourself. Yes, you read right. The tools are freely available, and here's how.
Preparation
Before the sprint, it's essential to gather key stakeholders, including marketing, design, and leadership representatives. If you're starting your business and it's just you - hooray! This will be much easier because you don't need to reach a quorum with anyone else and can skip some of the steps below. Define the sprint's goals and ensure everyone understands the purpose and potential outcomes. Go to Miro, sign in or set up an account. Then search for “Three-Hour Brand Sprint” and get going!
Assemble a Team (if you have one)
Diversity is vital to the sprint's success. To foster a rich exchange of ideas, bring together individuals with different perspectives and skills. This could include marketing, design, product development, and customer service individuals.
Define the Brand Challenge
Clearly articulate the brand challenge or question that the sprint aims to address. This could range from defining the brand's values to refining its visual identity. The more specific the challenge, the more focused the discussions will be.
Individual and Collective Ideation
Throughout the sprint, participants will be encouraged to generate a wide range of ideas individually and collaboratively. This ensures that all team members will be heard and can contribute equally. This promotes creative thinking and lays the foundation for the subsequent discussions. If you’re a team of one, go HAM with all of your ideas!
Group Discussion and Decision-Making
Facilitate a structured discussion where team members present their ideas. Encourage constructive feedback and guide the team toward converging on the most promising concepts. The goal is to make critical decisions collectively.
Your Future Point of Reference
You will have captured key decisions, insights, and any actionable next steps on your Miro sprint board. This board serves as a reference for future brand development efforts. If you engage with a brand consultant, we will develop this into a set of recommendations and next steps based on our observations and the discussions within the facilitated workshop.
Keep Chipping Away
It is recommended to schedule a follow-up session with yourself or your team after the sprint to review the outcomes and discuss how to integrate the newly defined brand elements into ongoing initiatives. This will ensure that the insights gained from the sprint are translated into tangible results. If you're starting a business, the next step is to create a brand brief to bring your ideas to life.
Creating Brands in Three Hours
The Three-Hour Brand Sprint is a testament to the power of focused collaboration, creative thinking, and efficient decision-making. By compressing the brand development process into a short and intensive workshop, businesses can swiftly define their brand identity, align teams, and pave the way for successful implementation.
Sure, there’s more to do after this, but the Three-Hour Brand Sprint is a great start, and that’s what matters. Embrace the sprint, unleash creativity, and build your brand in three hours.
“I had a great experience with Ann, who helped guide us through a brand strategy that aligns with our vision. Ann is extremely generous and has a unique ability to identify opportunities and unlock effective solutions. She particularly understands the unique challenges that startups face in establishing a strong brand presence. Ann’s brand sprint was easy, thought-provoking and fun! Her guidance has given us the tools to progress our vision.”
Would you like help running a Brand Sprint?
This is one of my favourite workshops to facilitate. It’s inspiring to hear why businesses exist, what challenges or gaps they’re solving, and uncover those ‘aha’ moments.
Let’s start with a chat and see if the Brand Sprint is what you need. If it is, I’d love to facilitate it for you.
