[Sigia-l] Brand Creation

[Thomas Quine]

Jenine Lurie wrote:

>I am interested in learning about exercises that have been found
>successful in creating a new brand? The client is beyond the
>"white-board" brainstorm.. What are some other techniques that have
>been used to get the creative juices flowing?

I am leading a re-branding effort in my organization, a $100 million
annual budget non-profit society.

This is not a product-branding exercise, but a renaming of the
organization and a redefinition of the mission, vision, and values, to
be represented by a new logo, color scheme, look & feel, the whole nine
yards. All to be pushed out to six websites and over 100 publications by
the fall.

We are taking the opportunity to build on our corporate culture through
training sessions for staff that involve group and departmental reviews
of the mission, vision, values, and strategic objectives, followed by
brainstorming on the theme of "Who are we now?"

Feedback and concepts arising from the group sessions will be turned
over to the graphics department for development. A set of potential
visual approaches will then be posted on our intranet for comment and
review, out of which final decisions will be made by executive
management and the graphics team themselves.

The idea is that interpersonal experience with our staff is a key factor
in how the public perceives our brand, and our people need to
internalize the mission, vision, and values in order to be effective
ambassadors for the organization. Generating the visual aspects of the
brand internally as a by-product of what we hope will be an organic
process of self-definition will, we hope, help us to achieve a shared
vision.

I'm very interested in the ideas and experience of others with similar
initiatives!

- Thom