Why You Should Ditch Your Questionnaires
By Levina Kusumadjaja
A strategy workshop is a time when you meet the brand’s decision makers to outline who or what the brand is, who needs to know about the brand, and how we are going to bridge the gap between the two.
I never knew how valuable a strategy workshop really is until I met Melinda. I didn’t know that as a creative, it was so crucial to have these discussions with my clients before even starting the project. I thought as a creative, we were meant to be order takers—the ones who make deliverables and that was it. Turns out, we really can solve bigger problems. But to do that, we have to first ditch our questionnaires. Yes, ditch the questionnaires. How can we solve those problems if we don’t even know what those problems are and what we would be solving those problems for? We cannot get the context and understanding we need to find those problems and produce solutions based on a questionnaire—there’s no way. That’s why we need strategy workshops.
Strategy doesn’t work without context.
The strategy or the final product you develop will only be useful if they fit the context of the your client. When you sit down with your clients and dig deeper into the business and what they want to build, you are building context. Every business and every brand are established within a specific context; such as: the people they are serving, the methods to serve these people, and the reason why they want to serve these people in the first place. If we don’t understand these things, we can’t help our clients solve their problems because we won’t have enough context to develop the best possible strategy.
We cannot uncover this context through a questionnaire, we can only do it through meaningful discussions.
These meaningful discussions happen in a strategy workshop.
In a strategy workshop, you have all the key decision makers of the brand in one room. This room can be a physical meeting room, or an online one—it doesn’t matter. What matters is you have all the founders, CEO, CMO, CFO, important stakeholders, and you in the room to unpack everything about the brand. This can take from only a few hours of conversations, to two full days of workshop, or maybe even longer.
You want to ask a lot of questions about purpose and goals. Every person in the room should share their goals and why they are there in the business. Help build alignment among the different departments present in the workshop, so that everyone understands the common purpose of the brand. At the end of this strategy workshop, you and your clients should know: what or who the brand is, who needs to know about the brand, and how we are going to bridge the gap between the two.
Do you have a better picture now of what a strategy workshop is? The workshop is the first thing you need to do in your entire process. It must happen before any strategy or deliverables are decided. If you want help your clients communicate the brand to the customers, you need to know the context of the brand. I can’t emphasize enough how valuable a strategy workshop is for you and your client. Always go back to this principle: you can’t strategize for something you can’t articulate. We want to understand more accurately to help our clients more effectively.
Cheers!
Levina
Get the Brand Strategy 101 FREE Mini Course
Tired of being an order-taker? Start getting paid to think. Subscribe now to receive helpful content, plus instant access to this free video course. 6 days. 6 videos. 10 minutes a day.
About the author:
Levina is a writer based in Indonesia. Because of Melinda Livsey, she recognized the power of brand strategy for every creative. She is sharing about her learnings as she goes to help creatives have fun in their growth and journey of building brands. Connect with her on LinkedIn and say hi!