1 - 2 weeks + revisions
Phase #2: Your Story
After all the fundamentals are taken care of in the initial workshop, it’s time to craft your story — after all, what’s a product without a powerful brand image and story behind it?
The phase is really about uncovering the Unique Value Proposition(s) of your product and brand (i.e. your Brand Promise) and articulating them effectively.
Furthermore, this phase is about creating Brand and Content guidelines that ensures your communication efforts are consistent and spoken in a manner your customers resonate with.
Then, once the above is done, it’s a matter of actually writing out the specific content and producing all the required media assets such as photos, icons and videos.
This gives us everything we need to work with when jumping into the visual design.
1. Unique Value Proposition (UVPs)
WHAT
This exercise is all about uncovering the unique value your product and brand has to offer.
WHY
Without understanding your unique value in the marketplace and how to articulate said value to prospective customers — and without being able to differentiate yourself from competitors — you will struggle to capture a niche, gain a following and own a segment of the overall market.
HOW
We will walk through a framework known as Points of Difference (PODs), Points of Parity (POPs) and Points of Irrelevance (POIs) to uncover Unique Value Propositions (UVPs). In essence, this is simply understanding where you do better than your competitors, where you match them and where you fall short. What remains is your unique value.
From this point, it’s a matter of matching your unique value with the needs of your prospective customers, to capture their interest and keep them as customers.
OUTCOME
A document that outlines your UVPs and written descriptions of how they should be articulated.
2. Brand Identity
WHAT
This exercise is all about creating a brand image; a personification of your company, what you stand for and how you want to be perceived by the world.
WHY
Without a strong identity and a personality that people can get on board with, as an organization you will be unable to appeal to people on a crucial emotional level — unable to stand out in a highly competitive marketplace.
HOW
Establishing a brand identity is in and of itself a whole Branding workshop, where we walk through a series of exercises.
Note: This is not a workshop I will run, personally. I like to stay focused on the areas I have the most experience in. These workshops will be run by a colleague of mine who’s branding workshops I’ve sat in on before.
OUTCOME
A full Brand Identity guideline, produced from the exercises in the workshop, as well as all the raw information collected for reference.
3. Tone of Voice guide
WHAT
A simple guide that outlines the communication style of your brand and more specifically a guideline around how content should be written.
WHY
You need to speak the language of your customer — so to speak — and similarly carve out a communication style that makes your brand feel authentic and aligned with your identity.
HOW
This simply involves you filling out a Tone of Voice guide for each persona, as well as a generalised guide that combines all your persona’s.
For example, your voice for Persona X is: “Community Driven”; your voice sounds like: “Barack Obama”; you should write like X and not like Y.
OUTCOME
A Tone of Voice guideline that will be used as the basis for all your content.
4. Content
WHAT
All the specific text, video and imagery that goes on each screen/page, word-for-word.
WHY
Without any content, there’s not a lot to say. Compelling content that tells a story and articulates your value propositions effectively will make a huge difference when it comes to converting prospects into customers.
HOW
Content writing / copywriting and media assets will be provided by you. Ideally you draft all the content and get a professional copywriter to finesse it; likewise, when it comes to photography and videography, it’s highly recommended that you hire a professional and create your own content. People can see stock images and footage from a mile away and these sorts of shortcuts will damage your brand image.
Note: once I’m provided all the assets, I do post-production work to make the imagery, for example, align with the style of your brand.
OUTCOME
A full document that has content for every single screen/page, which will be used to inform how everything is designed, visually.