Can I skip the brand discovery phase?

Yes, but ultimately it will be to the detriment of your brand’s success. Some discovery is always better than none at all, and our methodology (honed and developed over 25 years) is both practical and scalable, so we can ensure it’s fit for purpose.

What exactly can I expect from a brand discovery workshop?

Besides potentially a sore head (the workshops are deliberately designed to challenge and make you think), you can expect to leave with greater clarity around what your brand really stands for, why you do what you do (beyond financial return), and why anyone should care. Essentially the building blocks for your brand story.

Does mark-making* work with established brands?

Absolutely. Every brand we work with is at a different stage – from dynamic start-ups, to ambitious scale-ups, to established giants. Even with well-established brands, revisiting positioning and brand identity is necessary for long-term success. Brand discovery is as important to a brand refresh or revitalisation as it is to creating a new brand.

Brand Discovery Services

What is brand discovery?

The most enduringly attractive brands are built on solid foundations – a strategic bedrock shaped through a deep understanding of what the brand stands for and why anyone should care.

Brand discovery, the first step in defining a brand, is about truly getting under the skin of your organisation, your competitors, your audience, and understanding any wider cultural context.

Why is brand discovery so important?

Whether you’re an ambitious start-up or global giant (we work with both and everything in between) understanding your audience is particularly critical. It’s a natural inclination to think we know what our audience wants, and if we happen to be an established brand, what our audience most like and value about us. However, rarely is that the case, and it’s a mistake to make any assumptions.

Taking the time and making the effort to understand how your organisation is perceived by its customers is fundamental to the brand purpose and discovery process and your brand’s future commercial success.

Why mark-making*?

With close to three decades building brands we’ve honed our brand discovery services to be practical and efficient, as well as effective, with a suite of activities that may be dialled up or down to suit businesses of different scales, at different stages and with different budgets.

What does brand discovery involve?

We employ a number of techniques to gather the information, detail and insight necessary for valuable output. Our brand discovery services focus on understanding your organisation, how your organisation is perceived by your stakeholders (customers in particular), and your competitor landscape – primarily how your competitors are positioning themselves and expressing their positioning.

Specific activities typically include;

communications and marketing audits
positioning audits
leadership team interviews
wider team workshops
employee surveys
customer interviews
customer surveys
competitor analysis.

Brand discovery workshops

Brand discovery workshops are a highly effective way to gather a huge amount of information in a short space of time. We craft and facilitate workshops with teams of all sizes, with just the right dose of challenge to ensure healthy debate and discussion.

The practical and engaging format of our workshops typically revolves around a framework of questions designed to explore brand values, personality, positioning and purpose. Heads can hurt a little afterwards, but that’s always a sure sign of a valuable exercise.

Insight, insight, insight

So important we’ll say it three times. Brand discovery leads to customer insight, and customer insight fuels creativity. Insight should drive every element of brand creation and brand building – from brand positioning and brand strategy, to the crafting of meaningful and distinctive identities, to the most imaginative, compelling and effective campaigns. It’s business critical and we’ll help you find it.

Deeper consumer insight

As described we use a wide range of qualitative and quantitative techniques as appropriate to your organisation’s individual circumstances and goals. This is typically conducted by our inhouse team. When specialist market research input is required, specifically consumer insights research, we engage the most appropriate agency from our network of expert partners.

Brand discovery in practice

Brand discovery is the start point for all brand development – the first step towards defining a brand and shaping brand strategy. In comparison to brand articulation (brand identity) and campaign creative, it can seem a little dry, but behind the most compelling brands is a platform built on robust discovery. Here are just a few examples from very different sectors, for more visit our work page: