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** EDITION — 005

Hey, I’m Jared Henriques. You are receiving this because you signed up for my weekly newsletter. If you didn’t do that, it means someone else signed you up. Sorry about that.

** People vs Process

Earlier this week I was speaking with someone about our brand workshop. I mentioned that we often receive feedback like:

“I’ve done something like this before, but it was definitely not this clear or actionable”

He asked me if I believed that we had a special process that set ours apart. I quickly answered “Nope.”

I went on to explain that what makes our workshop different is the amazing team that we have. It’s about the common threads that we hear and the ability to follow up with pointed and insightful questions for that business specifically. I would happily share the outline of our workshop with anyone, it’s embarrassingly simple.

1. We ask them about their business, how they describe the company and what makes them different. We’ll ask about what the future plans and the exit plan. We’ll look at the contrast between day one and today and see what caused the evolution.
2. We then have an activity where we get them to pick 150 adjectives from 150 cards we have laid out
3. We talk about specific attributes, finding contrasts and interesting selections. It’s important to determine why these adjectives resonated and hear them describe the selection.
4. From these adjectives we build out a fictional person. They create their whole story, name, age, job, how their friends describe them, etc.
5. Repeat this activity for the customer.
6. Talk about how these two fictional people interact with each other and if appropriate with the specific products and brand elements of the business.

That’s it. It can be anywhere from 1.5 - 3 hours depending on the team and how deep they want to dive. A workshop we did a few weeks ago, the business owner while walking us out said “So did we get where you wanted us to get to?” We laughed and told him that we had no destination, we had the framework that I laid out above and that’s it. Matt chimed in and said “Ya, we just wing it.” Although this response might give off the impression that we don’t care enough to plan, it’s the exact opposite. We care too much about what the brand really should be that we would never script out the persona because we can never know the brand as well as those who are building it. It’s our job to facilitate self discovery. It’s why we call ourselves a “brand therapy group.”

Before every workshop I have done, I have a strong sense of who the brand is and should be. Without fail this changes after doing the workshop. Brand identity has to be specific to the story of the business and its stakeholders. The nuances of each brand are different and needs to be discovered together. This has allowed us to work in any industry, one day we’ll be working in blockchain, cannabis, insurance or even b2b distribution. The results are dramatically different but the process is the same. Brand is important across all industries.

For all you businesses minded folks out there yelling about how unscalable this is. You’re right, this model is intentionally unscalable. We’re playing the long game at Renga and I’m blessed with a team that is willing to share a similar perspective. Our goal is to provide value for everyone that does our workshop. It’s not a clever way for us to do a sales presentation, in fact we have told multiple workshop participants that they shouldn’t be hiring us, or anyone. If we don’t believe that it’s the right business decision for you to hire a branding studio to help build out your business, we’ll tell you.

I absolutely love hearing about businesses and their current challenges. I believe that a solid brand identity is the beginning of most solutions, the difficulty is trying to uncover what that identity is.

For the next month or so, I’m opening up my calendar to talk with as many businesses that I can to try and find some common branding challenges.

Please tell anyone in your network who is running or building a business that I’d love to chat about their current business challenges. I promise that there will be no sales pitch, I’d love to evaluate the current challenges and offer any insight or direction that I can.

At this point you might be wondering, “What’s in it for Jared?” Hearing about what common challenges brands are having is going to help me better position our messaging and product offering. I just get to provide value while I’m accruing some data.

If you’d like to book a 30 minute call with me to chat please do so here Book A Call (https://calendly.com/renga/30min)

** FIND OF THE WEEK

There has been so much good music released in the last couple months. Loyle Carner (https://open.spotify.com/artist/4oDjh8wNW5vDHyFRrDYC4k?si=5Y9wZtr5QveU1bA9KvWwFg) released his second album Not Waving, But Drowning (https://open.spotify.com/album/1kokRXXxrJzhxdMo0vsVDV?si=_0c58vBxQ0aDM9okEPcKvw) . The single Ottolenghi (https://open.spotify.com/track/64I9byMYBlS1ARsC3vtpgW?si=Jz3k7zYKTGy132i8flYVeA) , was released a few months ago, and quickly became on of my favourite tracks over the last year. The song feature soulful vocals with another one of my favourite artists Jordan Rakei (https://open.spotify.com/artist/24icoQNJSEWNu3XvqKBR68?si=Zy70qDHDQKykoJeKPhzsZA) .

You might recognize Loyle’s voice from several Tom Misch (https://open.spotify.com/artist/1uiEZYehlNivdK3iQyAbye?si=UgIKImQYQFK4aWrnsr3OoA) songs. These three artists seem to do a lot of work together and I hope it continues! If all of the names I’m mentioning sound foreign to you, take a listen and enjoy. Thanks for reading, you’re neat

Jared

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