Branding
Training Exercises and Resources

This training exercise helps to emphasise the importance of giving open-ended instructions. Research shows that when the instructions are limiting or force a person or a group to consider only a subset of solutions, they are likely to produce less creative results.

In this exercise, delegates will go through a creative problem solving process and see the comparison between limiting and open-ended instructions for themselves.

This exercise is ideal for sales staff in a particular organisation. Rather than telling staff what to do, the aim is to get them to come up with the general goal of their department and its role. The idea is that if they formulate a goal for their department, they are more committed to follow it than if a manager tells them. They can also understand the goal better since they make it themselves.

We are exposed to many brands every day in our environment as well as direct advertisement. It is estimated that an average American sees as much as 16000 brands every single day! What does each brand mean to us? How do we respond to each brand? How should brands be marketed to have the highest impact? How do brands compare?

This is where marketing comes into place. With so many brands competing for attention, we have little time to notice them all. We have learned to filter out a lot form our complex environment so we can focus on what matters to us. Only a select few brands can stand out and become memorable or at the extreme end of the scale, come to define a particular way of life on a global scale.

This engaging exercise is designed to kick start a discussion on branding for delegates who attend a course on branding, marketing or a similar topic. It can be used for:

• Branding
• Logo design
• Brand familiarity
• Analysis on use of colour, shapes and common patterns in logos
• Typography
• Social trends
• Behavioural patterns

The exercise requires a pre-course activity where delegates have to prepare materials and bring them to the class.

Use this creativity exercise for team building. It is an ideal exercise for a group of people who are already working together or are about to start working together. Groups should work together to create flags that represent their teams, philosophy and their view of how they work together presented symbolically. They can then hang this flag in their environment and more importantly explain it to others to reinforce their thoughts and identity both for themselves and for others.

In this exercise, delegates get to define their group or personality and formulate their mission statement. Groups get to design a “coat of arms” which represents their value and mission. They can then use this deign much like a logo to remind themselves of what they want and what they stand for. They can decorate their environment with this and show their “coat of arms” to visitors as a way to show what they stand for and commit themselves as much they can to it. Continuously seeing the mission statement can have a significant psychological effect on the team and motivate them to choose wisely when making decisions so they can fulfil their mission.

You can run this exercise for teams who work closely together or get individuals to create a “coat of arms” for themselves.

Imagine if your company was a supermarket. Which one would it be? Supermarkets tend to have personalities. It seems that in any society certain classes prefer certain types of supermarkets, and supermarkets respond accordingly as well for supplying appropriate products to this kind of customers. In this exercise, delegates examine their company and decide on its qualities and how best it fits into the supermarket analogy. This analogy helps them to understand their company better.