I compare how we approach creating Brainzooming strategic thinking workshops to how a band develops a live music set list for a concert. For example, I read somewhere that when Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band go out on tour, they have more than two hundred songs ready to slot into any one concert. They play some songs nearly all the time; other songs might only appear once.
That's comparable to how we select specific strategic thinking questions and exercises from among our large (and always growing) repertoire for a client session. We include some exercises (in one form or another) in nearly every workshop. These are supplemented by less frequently used strategic thinking exercises serving a particular role to address a client's needs.
Similarly, we select specific exercises to teach at conference workshops to best address a particular conference topic or learning objective. For the Brand Strategy Conference in San Francisco, we used the Outside-In Innovation Fake Book of Strategic Thinking Exercises as the basis for a brand innovation workshop. We concentrated on how companies can use customer, market, competitor, and other external, outside-in looks for brand innovation.
8 Strategic Thinking Exercises for Brand Innovation
Among the sixteen exercises in the Fake Book, we picked eight that were most relevant for brand innovators. Want to apply them to your own brand innovation needs? Here is the set list we used in the workshop (along with the Fake Book page numbers):
1. Looking at Your Brand as a Set of Benefits (Page 7)
This brand innovation exercise is central to most of the following benefits-based exercises that unlock innovation opportunities.
2. New Ways to Enhance Benefit Delivery (Page 8)
Using your audience’s needs, this exercise lets you imagine new ways to address them through the brand experience.
3. Innovating Brand Experience Proof Points (Page 12)
This exercise explores ways you currently deliver and could potentially strengthen your brand experience backstage and onstage.
4. Determining Your Benefit-Based Competitors (Page 8)
Your competitive set looks dramatically different when you identify competitors based on brands delivering comparable benefits (instead of simply picking those that look like your brand).
5. Identifying New Markets (Page 10)
If your brand is seeking growth, where else can you deliver benefits central to your brand in new markets? This exercise yields the answers.
6. Messaging Benefits in New Ways (Page 9)
There may be many brands in diverse markets providing benefits comparable to yours. Go to school to discover new ways to sharpen and improve your messaging.
7. Deconstructing What Your Brand Does (Page 22)
One of our favorite exercises (What’s It Like?) provides multiple strategic and brand innovation ideas to change the game for your brand.
8. Disrupt or Be Disrupted (Page 20)
There’s no one way to disrupt your brand or others in the marketplace. These strategic thinking questions are a starting point, however, to imagine a range of potential disruptions.
If you have brand management responsibilities in your position, download the Outside-In Innovation Fake Book today (it’s still free to download!).
Then you can use this set of exercises to start thinking about your brand in a dramatically new way.
Chances are, there will be a million dollar idea in there for your brand too! – Mike Brown
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