How & when to test market sentiment when branding

Great branding can only be built on strategic clarity: knowing why you exist, who you are for, and how you want to show up. That clarity cannot be handed down from the top or left to find it's own way – it has to be built top-down, with intention. Brand sprint workshops create a space where all stakeholders are present, and the big questions get answered in real time. Often for the first time, people hear each other’s perspectives – friction can often be part of the process – debate hard truths, and resolve the differences that would otherwise resurface later. Clarity and team alignment is key, and for that reason it's how we start all our branding work at Otherfolk®.

When you're appointing stakeholders, be clear on exactly why they're there beyond an additional opinion, and what unique view they bring to the table.

Who Needs to Be There?

Your agency/studio, and key decision-makers: founders, senior leadership, marketing leads, and anyone else with a stake in the brand. If someone is missing, decisions made in the sprint risk being undone once they weigh in. That said, it's important to keep the stakeholder group small – like any project, too many voices risk pulling the project apart, and creating more noise than neccesary. So when you're appointing stakeholders, be clear on exactly why they're there beyond an additional opinion, and what unique view they bring to the table. Attendance is non-negotiable for this group – it only works if the people who will see the project through is present to avoid suprises later on. Also: no devices, no distractions.

What Happens in a Brand Sprint Workshop?

The workshop runs through a series of structured exercises over the course of approximately three hours (with breaks). Each exercise exists for a reason:

1. The Five-Year Roadmap: This forces the team to think beyond today’s targets. Where does the brand need to be in two, three, or five years? What needs to be true in order for those targets to be met? Is it the same brand, products, or something different? This exercise sets ambition and ensures the brand is built with the future in mind, not just the present quarter.

2. Why / What / How: Starting with why you exist as a business defines the brand’s reason to exist beyond revenue. What problem are you here to solve for your customers? What impact do you want to have? What do you offer? How is that delivered? Are these clear and differential?

3. Values: Every brand claims to have values. A brand sprint cuts the list down to the three that genuinely guide behaviour. This makes them usable in practice, rather than wallpaper.

4. Audiences: You can't be everything to everyone. This exercise forces prioritisation. Who are the three groups that matter most? Decisions get sharper when you are clear who you are talking to.

5. Personality: Is the brand playful or serious? Modern or classic? Bold or understated? These simple scales spark debate and create agreement on tone and style.

6. Competitive Landscape: By mapping competitors, you see not just who you are up against but also where the gaps are. It is a visual way to decide where your brand should sit, and where it shouldn't.

Each exercise pushes the team to make choices, often tough ones. The point is not to avoid disagreement but to use it productively.

Summary

A brand sprint is three hours of focus that can save three months of drift. It gives you clarity, direction, and alignment, and it does it in a way that energises teams rather than drains them. The outcome is a clear foundation for brand, design, and content that everyone has a hand in shaping. If you're kicking off brand work, there is no better way to start.

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Before you dive in to creating a new brand identity, it’s worth pausing to think about what really needs to be in place for the work to succeed. A rebrand is one of the biggest investments a marketing leader will make, and the pitfalls are rarely in the creative output itself. More often, the problems come afterwards – when organisations aren’t ready to manage what’s been created. Here are some considerations before you begin.

Ownership and governance

Who will steward the brand day to day? Not at a strategic level, but in the detail. Making sure when new icons are introduced, their weights and proportions match; that photo treatments stay consistent; that “almost right” colours don’t creep into decks. Each of those things might feel close enough, but line them up against the brand you paid for and the drift is obvious. And the impact is rarely instant – it’s two years of small shifts that erode value. Brands should always evolve, and guidelines should be exactly that – guidelines – but making sure the integrity of the brand you've created remains in-tact is a full-time team job.

Brands should always evolve, and guidelines should be exactly that – guidelines – but protecting the integrity of the system is a full-time job.

Capacity

As much as you may want to have an identity that rivals your favourite brand, making sure what’s created is realistic for the team you have in place is paramount. If your internal team is small, the identity needs to be simple to manage, with assets and templates that can be applied quickly without heavy oversight. If the approach is too complex, it will quickly break down in practice. Be realistic and clear from the outset about how asset creation and updates will actually be handled, and approach the brand system accordingly.

Agency alignment

Beyond the work, is your chosen agency or studio people you can have the right conversations with? Branding involves decisions that are rarely black and white, and so clarity often comes from pushing through difficult discussions. The right fit isn’t about portfolio alone – it’s about whether you trust them to be in the room with you for those conversations.

Scope of Assets

Finally, be clear on scope. A rebrand is never just a website refresh. It reaches into email signatures, white papers, editorial grids, social templates, presentations, signage, even the way fonts are distributed internally. Each of those touchpoints has implications for time and resources. If you don’t map the full scope upfront, you risk discovering gaps mid-rollout when momentum has already slowed. Think about this upfront, and save yourself the headache later on.

Final thoughts

A rebrand lives or dies in how it is carried forward. The creative process produces the system, but it’s ownership, governance, team capacity, agency fit, and a clear view of scope that decide whether it stays intact in the years that follow. Put those things in place, and the work you invested in has the best chance of holding together and delivering value long after launch.