Branding Exercise: What is My Company Like?

Purpose

Companies develop different cultures. It is important to know how the company is seen both internally and externally. Internally, it helps to bind the team and make everyone coordinate their efforts so they can produce consistent results. Externally, it leads to a solid brand where customers know exactly what the company represents and how the company’s products and services are provided. Customers can relate how a company conducts with their own specific character which in turn forms the brand identity.

In this exercise, delegates get to analyse their company on a number of categories and choose a specific style for each type. They can then analyse this data to see if this is indeed how they want the company to be seen and what may need to be changed.

It is ideal to run this exercise for delegates who are from the same organisation. If not, you may need to adjust the exercise accordingly by putting delegates from a company in the same group.

Objective

Analyse your company based on a number of categories and examine its style to make a number of conclusions.

What You Need

• A number of small cards (size about A6). On each card, write one of the following. These will be the category cards.
  • TV
  • Animal
  • Country
  • Comedian
  • Car
  • Music band or singer
  • Actor
  • Football team
• A number of blank cards (size about A6). You need about 5 cards per each category.

Setup

• Divide the delegates to groups of 3.
• Distribute one category card to each group.
• Make a stack of blank cards available for everyone so they can use as needed.
• Ask each group to consider each category and then identify the top five common or poplar items that belong to that category. These can be their favourite or simply famous entities. For example, in the Animal category they can select Lion, Dog, Dolphin, Panda and Monkey. In the Actor category they can pick their current favourite stars.
• Explain that the objective of the exercise is to analyse their company as if it was that entity. For example, “What would your company be like if it was a Lion?”, “How would it look like if it was a BMW?”, “How would it behave if it was Madonna?”
• As the discussions unfold, ask groups to write down the attributes and qualities that they like and think that the company can benefit from.
• Allocate 10 minutes for this part.
• Optionally, you can provide a new category card to each group and ask them to repeat the exercise by identifying five entities and then analyse the company based on them.
• Bring back all groups together and ask them to present the best qualities found in their discussions along with their choices of entities.
• Encourage other groups to provide feedback to collectively generate a number of conclusions.
• Follow with a discussion.

Timing

Explaining the Exercise: 5 minutes

Activity: 5 min choosing entities + 15 min analysis + 15 min group discussions = 35 minutes (with optional second round = 50 minutes)

Group Feedback: 10 minutes

Discussion

How did the entities help you to see your company differently? What did the discussions lead to? Was there a pattern between different groups’ analysis on behaviour or image? What grand conclusions did you make in this exercise? What other categories would you consider helpful for this kind of exercise?