Summary How User Profiles Can Make or Break Your Designs (Brand Strategy for Designers Pt.3) (Youtube) www.youtube.com
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Instructor Have you ever wondered how top designers and strategists get into the minds of their users to create groundbreaking products and services? Imagine unlocking the secret to truly understanding your audience, dive deep into their minds to create something they didn't even know they needed. That's what we're exploring in today's video. We'll break down the real process behind building user profiles that aren't just data points, but gateways to genuine connection. So we don't expect to be good or fast the first time.
Instructor But with practice and repeated exposure, you're gonna get better and faster. You're gonna build better profiles. The way I look at it is like this. Do you know why, the Lord of the Rings, JR Tolkien's books are so good? Do you know why?
Instructor There's a there's, like, a little reason, but there's lots of reasons. But 1 of the reasons is he created a whole universe, a history, a backstory, a language, traditions. His characters had history. They weren't 2 dimensional cardboard characters. So when we get into who this person is, there's a lot of things you have to think about.
Instructor So I left it open to see where you would go with it. But when you type in their education, many of you just Started at college. Well, what school? And then now you have to make a decision. Were they a transplant?
Instructor Have they always lived here? Were they from another country? You have to answer all those questions, and then the profiles become much clearer. And what did they study? Why do you think they studied that?
Instructor So you're really trying to fill, to complete deep profiles of people because every decision leads to another decision. And then what you have to check for as a facilitator is logic traps where things don't work. How could she be 22 years old and make $300,000? It makes no sense unless she's a trust fund baby or something. You have to keep it in align in alignment with what you know to be relatively true.
Instructor Otherwise, all your data is bad. So you wanna think about that. Okay? How is someone with a liberal arts degree making this kind of money? They're probably jobless.
Instructor Let's just be real. In the real world, that's probably what's happening. Okay? So I can try this with you, and then we'll compare. Okay?
Instructor Does anybody else have any other questions as they're going through the exercise?
Student 1 The question is, how would you make that, like, not an exercise and be, like, a real, because, I mean, I feel that we could go
Instructor Anywhere.
Student 1 All yeah. Anywhere, and there's no base on reality for for that.
Instructor So Right.
Student 1 That that's the danger.
Instructor The Profiles is we don't have a client in the room, and this is a fictitious business. But it's a business based on businesses around here as far as I can tell. So what we'd have to say is, okay. So when you're working with a client, you're going to say, we want to schedule a brand strategy session with you. It's, you can do 2 parts.
Instructor You can do 1 Started, however long they can commit the time to. We need at least 1 person in the room who has intimate knowledge with the customer. Oftentimes, the CEO has no idea who the customers are at that point. So we need some boots on the ground, somebody who has actual interaction with customers. Otherwise, we're screwed.
Instructor It has to be a request. Otherwise, who knows what's gonna who's gonna show up?
Student 1 What about if they are a a new company? They have no customers yet.
Instructor They steal customers from somebody else. So who you gonna sell this comes up. They're a Started. They have no customers. Well, what market are you going after?
Instructor We're going after Uber's market. What do we know about them? They need to bring that with them. And if you are preparing, which you should prepare for the facilitation, because it's scheduled at a certain date, people have to fly in, they have to block out their schedules, all that kind of stuff, you might want to ask them these kinds of questions ahead of time. Since you're a Started (Brand we need you to find out who your customers are, bring some data.
Instructor Make sure it's validated. Okay? This is not a work of fiction. We can use our imagination to fill gaps, logic gaps we can fill, but we're not just trying to, like, create some fantasy character. Okay.
Instructor Good question. Anybody else?
Student 2 I remember earlier, you did say in terms of user experience design, you have to keep the user in mind, but also everyone that plays a part. Say, for instance, the employees as well as the users. So, how would you create your profiles based on that? The internal as well as the external.
Instructor Yes. What you would do is you would ask how many profiles do we need to build. K. That's the first question. And then you write them up on the board.
Instructor Well, these are very similar. Let's group those together. So we have the back end developers. We had to build a profile for them because they had different use cases. We have the travel agents, and they they need something very different.
Instructor So we need to give different tools to different people.
Nate Okay.
Instructor Okay. So that's very specific to web dev web web development. Mhmm. Right? So does that make sense?
Instructor Yeah. And you would group together or you say these are not actually related. We need to create 2 more Profiles, and you can do that. Okay. Typically, we just go for 3.
Instructor Okay. By the time I do 3 profiles, I'm really tired. I can imagine. Right? K.
Instructor Thank you. You're welcome. Excellent question. Anybody else? Nate, you feel like you wanna say something?
Instructor You wanna argue give give Nate. I could I could see a twinkle in his eye. I could tell. I can see. I told you.
Instructor I can
Nate get way back there.
Instructor Microexpression, man. I'm all about it.
Nate Okay. So I think there's something interesting here when it comes to the conversation around, like, fears, pains, gains. Right? Negative outcome stakes. Like, the bottom 5.
Nate Right? And I think there's 2 ways of thinking about it. 1 is what are their generic pains, gains, stakes, and fears in life. Right? Like you said, maybe they don't like global warming.
Nate Maybe they hate the fact that there's kill shelters in Austin (Brand they wanna get rid of them. Right? But the other way to think about it is what are those 5 things as directly related to this company and its product? Right? And I and I think that that often people make the mistake of going too broad on it and saying, no.
Nate No. What is it specifically about this company and its product that causes a pain, a gain, a negative outcome, or a high stake for this person? Right? So for example and maybe this is a stupid example. You can tell me if you think it is.
Nate With raw food, maybe they're afraid that I'm not gonna get enough protein and way too much fiber, and that's gonna make my day in my life uncomfortable. Like, to me, that's very strongly correlated to this specific product. Whereas, if I eat raw, I save the turtles is almost too big and too broad. What how would you work with that? How would you massage that?
Instructor So there is a danger with going too broad. There's also a danger with going too narrow. Because what people generally do is they create profiles exactly who their customers are (Brand they learn nothing. Uh-huh. There's no opportunity for growth.
Instructor What what what profile are you building?
Nate We're building growth.
Instructor Growth would you wanna go a little broader because you're gonna you're gonna identify patterns. So here's the other thing too. Let's say we had 15 employees in in this room (Brand we're failing, and they know their customers really well, and they give me exactly what it's supposed to be. And I'm like, okay. I'm not gonna go anywhere this.
Instructor I don't know what to do here. But someone was like, you know, they're really into science fiction movies and blah blah blah. I'm like, no. Really? So that would create a marketing opportunity to (Brand something that we would have never have discovered if we didn't create space for that conversation to happen.
Instructor You see?
Nate Love that. That's great.
Instructor That's where you go with that. Okay. So, yes, please. It's up here. Our teacher.
Student 3 My question is for personal branding, would this translate the same way or would it differ in any way?
Instructor You wanna make this workshop really complicated for me, don't you? This is corporate (Brand, and it's similar but different enough. When we create our personal brand, we don't really create it for people. We create it for us. That's the difference.
Instructor When we create it for other people, we're not even being ourselves anymore, and that's the danger. So here's the weird thing. Corporations wanna be more like people. People should not want to be more like corporations. That's where it gets all fuzzy.
Instructor So I get into debates with my friends who are (Brand Strategy, and they're like, it's the same. I'm like, the way you do it might be the same the way I do it. No. Because I would not look like this. I would not express these opinions.
Instructor I would not dress like this if I cared what everybody thought. Right? I would come in in a suit. That'd be just boring. I wouldn't say anything that was borderline gonna get me canceled.
Instructor But, you know, I'm a person, so I'm gonna say what I'm gonna say. Okay. Go ahead.
Student 2 For personal brand, would you use the same techno? No. Totally different.
Instructor When I do a personal branding workshop, it would look totally different than this. Similar concepts, but application radically different. It's about who are you? What are your fears? I would do purpose mapping for you.
Instructor And then you're like, oh my god. This is the meaning of my life? Yeah. And how do we communicate? How are we showing up in the world?
Instructor And I would get into shadow shadow words with you. Like at Neil's conference, I would get into that vulnerability. It's a whole different game. Makes sense? Alright.
Instructor Hey. Real quick. If our content has brought you value in the past, it would mean the world to me and the team if you can drop us a comment with your thoughts or subscribe if you're new here. It'll help us with algorithm. Alright.
Instructor Go ahead. Oh, wait. Hold on. Mic's coming.
Student 4 So, when you're creating these profiles, for example, the influencer profile, how much would it be dependent on a primary profile or the growth profile?
Instructor How much dependent? I don't know how to answer that question. Do you want a percentage?
Student 4 Would you well, how what how much do you take into consideration the primary and the growth profile when you're building the influencer profile?
Instructor Well, I would take into consideration for sure that they're not the same profile with an influencer attached to it. The primary profile has to be based on fact, research, and data. When you talk about the growth, it's a guess, but it can also be backed up by data. To say, like, we wanna go after Tender Green's audience or Equinox audience or Soho House audience. Well, we can find data on them.
Instructor So many of you got stuck because you didn't use bionic tools. You didn't use Chatibiti to help you. You can pull up that data. It's like, I have a hypothesis that we should go after the customers who work out at Equinox. They're affluent.
Instructor They're very self conscious. They're image conscious. They care about aesthetics. All the things that were written in your profile, who are they? And we wanna create a female version of that.
Instructor Okay. Okay. This is what she does. You can ask it. All those things, pains, fears, wants, needs, desires, you can punch it in.
Instructor And then you would come to the meeting and say, is it the Equinox customer? If it is, I have that profile. Then that's the debate. Like, we think Equinox would be at this other restaurant that's 1 of their competitors and not at ours. So then we have to figure out how to steal them.
Instructor Make sense? So fact based, some hypotheses, educated guesses, filling in a couple of gaps. And you need to check-in with yourself. Like, when chat gbt or someone says, hey. They're like they make this money, but they they went to this school (Brand you're like, what?
Instructor They don't compete in my world. Somebody explained this to me. So you need to resolve those. Somebody else wanted to say something up here up here.
Student 5 When when you do the the profile, sometimes you you get to, like, the deepest question or the deepest struggle of of the character. And from there, is it okay to build towards the superficial things? Because I feel like when you need to get to the the core problem, the core tension, the core conflict, which will be aligned with the why. And from there, you can build using data and (Brand hypothesis to build the character. Is it okay to go towards that deep feeling in the beginning or not?
Instructor Yes. And I wanna get to that. Ricky, can you help me? Can you, flip that over or remove that? I need another piece of paper that's clean.
Instructor Okay. You know Simon Sinek has a famous hawk. It says Started with why. It's an idea. It's not a practical way because it's very hard to know your why.
Instructor So when you go straight to the core without going from the outside in, it's a it's a big giant gamble. I I I designed (Brand and I've seen it successful this way. It's like you're peeling back the layers of an onion. So we start with, like, basic data first, and then we get into, like, why do you exist in the universe? Those are very hard questions to answer.
Instructor Does that make sense?
Student 5 Yeah.
Instructor So we go from outside in. That's why it's structured as demographic, psychographic, and then core beliefs and values. And we have to go all the way back up and say, wait. These no longer align. They're a little bit out of whack.
Instructor And we have to say, like, what is the truth? And we wrestle with it until we feel like this is a pretty good profile. Oftentimes, what happens in a brand strategy session is you'll build a profile (Brand a day or 2 later after the session, everybody's gone home. You're like, why didn't I say this? Something was not right about this profile.
Instructor And then you'll fix it, and then you'll send a summary document a week later. I like to have at least a week to gestate and think because now your brain is fully saturated. And as you're walking around, you'll be looking for information in the real world to confirm. And then you see something, you need to have the ability to revise that. Your clients won't even remember.
Instructor It's totally okay. So there's about a week, like, 5 full working days between when you do the session and when you turn in the summary document. This is where they say this is what we agreed to, and you you have to then extract the data. You don't present them raw profiles. You highlight insights.
Instructor You say, oh, here's a pattern. Here's a pattern. We notice something here. Notice I didn't show you all the Tango documentation to make your head hurt. It's not valuable.
Instructor Your job is to pull out the insights. Makes sense? Summary document, 1st page, here's the insights, key findings. Here's all the data, the profiles we built, the customer journey, the goals and prioritization, the all that stuff. That's where you would do that.
Instructor Make sense? I'm only gonna do this a little bit. Let's go with these guys. I believe Zach may have the most audience, even those 3 dudes. This could be totally wrong.
Instructor So everybody, we're gonna participate in this. Okay? It could be good. It could be a disaster. We don't know, but we accept and love Zach and his entire team of boys.
Instructor Let's go. Unfold your paper. Alright. You (Part the primary no. You're a growth?
Instructor Growth. Okay. So we'll we'll put a g here for growth. Okay?
Jennifer Oh, wait, man. Yep.
Instructor Jennifer. Okay.
Jennifer Okay.
Instructor Does Jennifer have a last name? No. Okay. Those of you guys (Part from Miami, what's Jennifer's last name or indicator ethnicity? What's that?
Instructor Huge Latin community here. Like, you can go to places where they don't speak any English at all. Right? I'm not even I haven't spent that much time here, but there's so much influx of Latin culture here. Valdez.
Instructor Valdez. What what did you call Jennifer? You didn't give her last name? Lopez. Okay.
Instructor Jennifer Lopez. I forgot it. Jenny from the block? Okay. Valdez.
Instructor Okay. How old is is Jennifer?
Jennifer 30.
Instructor Okay. Why'd you guys pick 30?
Jennifer That was the, median age for, like, the individual that we were going after.
Instructor Okay. Alright.
Jennifer So we we had a range at first, but then we narrowed it down further to 30. We did have,
Instructor That's fine. Okay. Cool. If you don't have a giant reason, it's fine. Just say Cool.
Instructor Because we said so. That's fine. It's okay to say that too, by the way. Alright? Let's not be s wrong with each other.
Instructor Where did Jennifer go to school?
Jennifer We didn't put where she went. We put what she went for. Marketing communications.
Instructor Okay. She's a Marcom person?
Jennifer At, bachelor's?
Instructor She's got a b batch BFA?
Jennifer B a. Yeah. B a.
Instructor B a. Okay. So far, everybody who's (Part is does the profile sound okay so far? Yeah. Nothing crazy.
Instructor Right? If you hear something crazy like, just make a sound More beautiful than that, but say something so I know. Okay? Let's let's pick a school. So did Jennifer grow up in this area, or did she is she a transplant?
Jennifer She she's from here. Yeah.
Instructor So where would she go to school, those of you guys that are local? Miami. University of Miami? Is it UOM or Okay.
Speaker 8 Is that okay? Locals? Yeah. Yeah? Yeah.
Instructor Okay. No? Don't try okay. Oh, so what's what what kind of job does she have?
Jennifer She's a product manager at Spotify.
Instructor Spotify's here. Right? In Wynwood. Yeah. Yeah.
Instructor Wynwood. Okay. People are paying attention. This is so see? My logic okay.
Instructor Oh, alright. It works. A product manager for Spotify. Everything seemed logical? Everything makes sense?
Instructor Okay. So far so good. We'll we'll skip the nickname for now. How much money is Jennifer making?
Jennifer 100 k.
Instructor So how much a product manager make?
Jennifer 75 to a100.
Instructor It sounds a little high. Yeah. Right. 80 ish? Yeah.
Instructor But it's you know, you never know with these Started and these companies. They have so much freaking money. Like, all our okay. Let's just say 85. I think a 100 sounds like a lot to me.
Jennifer We we had it low end, and then we changed it to high end.
Instructor Okay. So So okay. It's fine. And you guys can easily check this information, by the way. How much does a project manager or product manager at Spotify make in Miami?
Instructor It'll tell you. Okay. And he you're gonna find out? Is that what you're doing? Okay.
Instructor Find out. Correct me. Okay. Is Jennifer married?
Jennifer Yes.
Instructor Okay. Why do you say yes like that? Because I'm married to her?
Jennifer No. She's, she's married because we kind of reverse engineered, where she lives, and the highest percentage of people who live in that area are married at that age bracket.
Instructor Okay. Where'd she live?
Jennifer She, Coconut Grove.
Instructor K. I don't know this area well enough to be able to participate in this part. This is where people in this area would have to say, yeah. That sounds about right or wrong. Okay?
Instructor It's about right. So she's married, so she's a dual income household. What does her husband do? How much money does he make?
Jennifer We did not go that far.
Instructor Okay. Alright. So you'll see, like, how I will do this. I'll go in asking very basic questions. I wanna connect all the dots and make sure I have a really good backstory for Jennifer, not Lopez.
Jennifer So, like, in the future, we should do these household income instead of individual income? What Well,
Instructor I wanna know. Is she married? Yes. What's her husband do? What's his title?
Instructor Because I understand. Does she have kids? What do you think? Does Jenny at at 30 have kids already? No.
Instructor No? Possibly.
Speaker 8 She's
Instructor Okay. Okay. What kind of Latin is she?
Jennifer Yeah. That's us.
Instructor Do we know? She's either Cuban or Venezuelan. It goes in that order. I've only spent 2 days here. I already know this information, you guys.
Instructor Come on. A lot more. A lot more. Right? Okay.
Instructor Beautiful. So see see how this goes here? You can see, like, a person making 85 k cannot afford Coconut Grove. Is that like the Beverly Hills of this Bel Air, Coconut Grove? No?
Instructor Sir. Mid it. Is this, man? Okay. We won't get into this.
Instructor More soccer. Okay. Okay. But but if I were running this and we had all this time in the world, I would say, like, what's the median income, house price out for? And then then we could say, like, no.
Instructor This doesn't work. Something's off here, you guys. You're too aspirational here, not real enough, or something is off. I'm not saying that this is the case. Okay?
Instructor Now wait. Before you guys say you're a bit, I need to tell you a stupid funny story first. I went to is it ceviche 105? Something like that? 305?
Instructor Okay. It's a Peruvian restaurant. I sit down. There's a young lady who's helping us. She's Latin of some sort.
Instructor She tells me she's Italian, but also Venezuelan. Okay? Pretty young. I'm like, how old are you? She's like, I'm 30.
Instructor I'm like, oh, a little bit older than I thought. Looks really young. And I get into this whole thing. I don't know how this turned out to be an insult to me, but I'm like something about your father. And she goes, oh, my father's really old.
Instructor He's like 45. Like, what? And I and I told her, I'm 51. She's like, oh, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean like that.
Instructor Well, take the tip-off, please. I'm just messing around. So she's, like, everyone who is, like, her age already has kids. Like, by 23, they're already married and have kids, all of them. Now that's just 1 sample size.
Instructor I do not know that that represents everybody, but she's, like, all my friends. So if she's telling the truth, that's happening. What's up? When we find out that we are all a little bit, what should we change? Like We do it just like like how I'm doing right now.
Instructor We massage it. We can change it. We can change it. It's a piece of paper, and it's ink. You can change anything.
Instructor Yeah? Somebody else had a thing. Go ahead.
Speaker 8 The average rate salaries for Spotify is double.
Instructor Okay. That's why the the the it's all messed up. Right? Okay. How much?
Instructor Double. A 150.
Student 2 Yeah. Yeah.
Instructor That's what
Student 2 I was I was like, 85.
Instructor Okay. It's because it's Spotify. If you're a project manager and product manager anywhere else, it wouldn't even No.
Student 2 I am. Yeah. I mean, we live close to
Instructor your Oh, you do? There there we go. 150 k. She's got a pay raise. That's awesome.
Instructor Good for Jenny. You well, no. It wouldn't work like that. I'm literally showing you how I would do it. I would be on a board, whiteboard, or flip charts.
Instructor Sometimes they have glass offices, so we we just paper over the entire office so I can just write from 1 thing to the next. Okay? Typically speaking, it's in a boardroom. We usually go to their office, so they have a big boardroom, and they're all sitting down. And I just move through it.
Instructor And I would do it just like this. I would crack jokes. I would make fun of people to create a light a light atmosphere where everybody feels safe to say something. So, typically, I will be the biggest idiot in the room so that people don't stiffen up. That's the that's the last thing I want to happen.
Instructor So he wouldn't have a piece of paper because it would be here. There's no paper. There's no prework. We would just do this live together. But we had to do this because you have to pretend to be a client and a facilitator at the same time.
Instructor That's where it's not representative of the real world. Does everybody understand that part? K. Alright. So we would just keep through going through this Coconut Grove.
Instructor Okay? And I would say that so she's married. Her husband does x. He's interested in this, and they have 2 kids. Let's just say, whatever.
Instructor And then we would know, well, how old are they? Well, based on her 30 years old, she got 1 when she was 24 and 1 when she was 27, then we know that their ages have to be this. So all of it lines up. This is really important because later on when we get into what her needs and wants are, well, she's a busy project manager, and we if she works at Spotify, what kinda hours is she working? Is she working remotely now?
Instructor Probably because of what's happening. So her needs might be very different today than they were just 3 years ago. Okay? This is important. When you build this, all this stuff will make sense.
Instructor So that's why we start from the outside in. These these are the easy questions to answer, but when these are clear, everything else becomes super clear. Okay? The nickname, we save for last. I always save this for last, and it's out of order, but that's how it's usually written.
Instructor Because once you have the clear profile picture, you can create an archetype for her right away. And usually, we'll use alliteration, like jumping Jenny. It makes no sense, but that's what we'll do. Like, Rambo real estate broker, that's what we'll do because that creates a clear picture in our mind, like, who this ego driven alpha type person is. Okay?
Instructor Makes sense? Alright. So hobbies and interests, what did you guys write down?
Jennifer Oh, do we skip affiliations?
Instructor Oh, affiliations. Go ahead.
Jennifer We we have, Lululemon, Whole Foods, and Apple.
Instructor You'll notice that these things tend to go together. I think we we like shopping blocks and are very tribal in what we do. Right? Because you can almost imagine that Whole Foods, somebody's gonna be walking with Lululemon, probably using an iPhone.
Jennifer Drinking Starbucks.
Instructor What kind of car is she driving? Vespas. A what? You said a Vespa? Oh, I was like, probably a Tesla.
Instructor Is that is that okay? No. You know who the rich people are in the room. We're like, that's not enough money, babe. That's not the kind of car.
Instructor I promise you. It ain't gonna happen. Yeah.
Student 5 It's a BMW.
Instructor Is it Beamer? Yes. Okay. What what model? 3 series?
Instructor You're you're a Tesla guy? Go ahead, Liz. Well, I don't know. I just made that part up. But yeah.
Student 5 Well, we're going on that.
Instructor Yeah.
Student 5 She's driving
Instructor Bemer. 5 series Bemer. She's driving an SUV probably. You see? See the profile starts to work.
Instructor This is why we do what we do. It starts to become clear. Right? So you have to massage this for a little bit. Like, oh, we messed up here, and we kinda keep working on this until it becomes really clear.
Instructor At some point in your mind, you'll be able to draw Jenny. Even if you're not an artist, you're like, this is what Jenny looks like. Tomorrow, when we build a style scape, you're gonna have to find a picture that looks like Jenny doing something that Jenny would do. This is why generic profiles equal generic assumptions, generic, insights. Everything becomes super generic, and I just wanna do a little bit of this to show you how I would do it.
Nate Okay. So here's a question for you, Chris. Not about the technicality of going through a profile like this, about dealing with a client's attitude toward investing time in creating this. Because I've had experiences where you're working with clients who are very much, type a personalities. They're very driven.
Nate They wanna get to answers. They wanna get to nuts and bolts and numbers and quant, and they think this is a gigantic waste of time, which you and I both know it is not. What do you do when you get to that point in a conversation where the client's like, I'm glazing over. I don't think this is relevant. Who gives a crap if she drives an X5 or a Tesla?
Nate This isn't helping me solve my business problem. How do you respond to clients who may have that type of attitude toward this? Are you a designer? I a very small part of what I do. I'm a business consultant, mostly.
Instructor Okay. You have the same problem he has, and the relationship's been set up all wrong. Okay. So, typically, the way we onboard clients is, like, we love what you did here. This is the reason why we're talking to you right now because it's a competitive space.
Instructor Okay? And I'll give you some information in a second to to answer that. So it's like, if you love what we did, you gotta do what we do. Otherwise, it cannot guarantee any results. If you wanna rush through any customer insight, well, why does the business exist?
Instructor CEO Mary, why? To serve a customer? What's the number 1 rule in business? You have to have customers. You have to have profit.
Instructor Those are like, that's it. So if we don't wanna take the time to do this, I'm not the right person for you. Now they can say this, and they will say this. We've been burned in the past. What you're doing is just like what everybody else is.
Instructor Okay? This is fair. When I say send me the documentation oh 0, you don't have any. Oh 0, you do. Okay.
Instructor Let me read it through. Let me see if there's anything of value here because not everyone that does what you do is the same, not everyone that does what I do is the same. We have to make a decision here together. Okay. Now I'll just give you this really quickly for the designers in the room.
Instructor When I first did this, I did this for literally $0. I just found a client who I was already doing identity design for. I volunteered to do the brand strategy for them for free. I told them, I just learned this literally a week and a half ago. I wanna offer this to you.
Instructor So we did it for 0. It was a little bumpy. They would ask me questions like, what do you mean? Why why did you ask me that question? I'm like, I don't I don't know.
Instructor Let's just move on to the next question then. But I was fully transparent. The next time I did it, I did it for (Brand. The literally the next time I did it. Next time I did that, this is too valuable.
Instructor I Started $30,000 up until a point when we worked with a major university, and we charged them, I think, a $120,000 to do what I'm teaching you to do right now with no deliverables, just a conversation, 1 day. So by pricing it a certain way, they're already committed. Okay? The the the tangled clients, they said we have, like, around a $100,000. We need identity.
Instructor We need a website. We need all these things. And I told them, I'm not sure we can do any of that. I know we can do something. But before I accept this project, we must do a strategy session.
Instructor And they're like, okay. We're booking the flights now. And he said, the strategy will cost you this. Everything else, I do not know. And I'm gonna show you how to do the strategic part and talk about money and deliverables so that you reduce all of your stress at figuring out what that stuff is.
Instructor Now you have to realize this. You have a lot of power. The most powerful thing you can say is no. If you don't exercise that, then you have no power. You're giving that up.
Instructor That's on you. Okay? So if they said this is not important to us, it's a waste of time, you listen, you go through it. It's like, please send me your documentation. This has literally happened before.
Instructor Send me the documentation. I will read it through. If the insight's here, we don't need to do any of this. I don't wanna waste your time. Of course, there's no documentation.
Instructor The documentation is super generic, filled with generic marketing jargon. Okay? I've read these documents before, that they paid 100 of $1,000 for NBC. It's all garbage, but they're happy to pay for it. I don't know what to do with any of this.
Instructor Okay? Makes sense? Alright. Alright. So you you would go through this and you would kinda massage this until you get to point.
Instructor Now we know what our hobbies and interests are. All of it lines up. It has to line up. If there's something odd, something is wrong, and we would fix it. Okay?
Instructor Now there's another envelope within your envelope. At this point, you could open that envelope. Okay? I know. It's the first time I'm doing this, guys.
Instructor If it if it's not fun, don't tell me about it. It's fine. Alright. So within the envelope, you can open it up now. There are 3 profiles that I created for you so you can check how close you came.
Instructor Do you know where the profiles came from? They came from chat gbt. I gave it a an s ton of data. I said, you know, here's what it is. Tell me and update information, create these profiles.
Instructor I asked it to double check itself. There's a lot of information in there. Now our datasets might be skewed because we're all poor broke designers. Your dataset might be skewed because you're all rich entrepreneurs. We don't know, but we all we all walk in with own bias.
Instructor You know? We attract the kinds of people, so your brother is a manager. So it's a different data set. I'm not arguing 1 way or the other. I'm just saying I asked Chat CBD lots of questions to come up with these things.
Instructor Okay? And they're fairly generic. So whether it's accurate or you believe me or not, it's okay. The whole point of the exercise is to be able to build deep profiles that are backed in data and facts and things like that so that we can have an understanding of who the customer is. Because everything we do from this point forward builds on this idea.
Instructor If we don't have a clear picture, we have almost no shot of getting this done right. What what basically, unfortunately, is a lot of designers do brand strategy only to literally design the exact same thing they Started to before they even did that. Some of them are in this room. I'm just saying. Some of them in this room.
Instructor The whole point of it is to keep an open mind, and these guys up here said what? What'd you guys say?
Jennifer We were we were biased. We, created a profile of what we thought at a deep level would be the best customer for the Designers, even though that's not actually what they were going after?
Instructor K. So we all have bias. We're human. That's what makes us human. We're in our own audience, and oftentimes, we'll project our own thing onto whatever we're doing.
Instructor And that's okay. So this is just like a moment for you to see that. And and oftentimes, the best way you combat your own bias, you walk into a room failing, I am biased. I have finite audience, or I've been traumatized by this. And just check-in with yourself so that when that voice comes out, you're, wait a minute.
Instructor That's not really what this is about. I'm projecting right now. Makes sense? Both rich and poor people in the room. I'm just saying.
Instructor Okay. K. I love this. Alright. So do we have any other questions or reflections of this?
Instructor You're going to need to do this on a deeper level. Okay? Go ahead. Oh, hey. Hey.
Instructor Mike's coming to you. Just curious if you ever do this virtually with clients, or is it just better to do it in person? Almost everything is better than in person, but you can do this virtually. The the challenges with doing this virtually is you'd probably use Zoom, and you see people's faces, like, that big. So Nate's micro expression, I would not even be able to see.
Instructor I wouldn't even be able to see him shifting his his in his seat. I just can't see it. You're right. Yes. Yeah.
Instructor And 1 of the tools as a facilitator is for you to spot these little things and to draw the conflict out so that we can align. Very important. (Brand so oftentimes, the person with the least power in the room needs the most attention from you, and you'll know. You know who the big dogs are because they take up a lot of space physically, a lot of the oxygen in the room. So you just wanna make sure I I hear you okay okay.
Instructor And what do you have to say? And what do you have to say? Do you have anything to add to this? And if they're you have to listen for the pregnant pauses. Okay.
Instructor Now we know they're suppressing something. (Brand that's where you say, let's create safe space. Go ahead and say it. You know, we're not gonna hold anything against you. They need to say this because that's where the insights usually come from.
Instructor CEO wants to believe it's all great. Quality is job number 1. All our clients or customers love us. And that's when the usually, it's a young person. Oftentimes, it's female or a person of color who raised them like, you know, here's our Yelp reviews.
Instructor They're terrible, and this is a slap in the face. And the CEO has to see it now. This is where you get the hug. You get the hug from both, believe it or not. From the person who's never had a voice, feels unimportant that they're finally seen and heard.
Instructor And the CEO's like, we've been running campaigns that are antithetical to all of this. What a waste of time and money.
Speaker 9 So for us, the future facilitators, how important is learning about body language, in terms to be successful?
Instructor I think in all interpersonal communications, being able to to read body language, which you are naturally already tuned to, You just gotta turn that part on in your brain if it's been turned off. And then on the second level are the microexpressions. The 3rd level is tone of voice. The 4th is probably spacing (Brand language. Anytime somebody does this, you already know something's up.
Instructor The truth has only 1 answer. Lies have multiple answers. So when you ask a question, they start going on and on about stuff. It's like, they're not trying to lie to you, but they're just making stuff up. And you need to be able to spot that.
Speaker 9 So do you build that just by audience, or what would you recommend?
Instructor I I don't there's probably a better answer. I don't have a better answer. First of all, set the intention to pay attention to this. Right? And and you'll you'll be able to see.
Instructor Like, are you uncomfortable right now? No. Okay. You sure? Because your arms are all crossed and you just made yourself smaller.
Instructor I don't know. It's a little cold. Okay. You're literally under the air condition. So I have to check.
Instructor Sometimes I'll say, are you uncomfortable or is something making you feel uncomfortable? Again, don't make assumptions. Alright. Please.
Student 3 I'm curious about you said you wouldn't do prep. You would just start working with them. If you see the clients are very lost on this, element, at which point would you say, like, help them get it out during the meeting or just say, no. You guys need to do research. Let's reschedule this for another time.
Instructor Could you imagine how much money they (Part to be in this room for them to block out 4 to 8 hours? We're talking about c suite executives oftentimes flying in or clearing their entire schedule. That company probably lost $50,000 that day, probably. I would not start there. So I would start small, work with a smaller business where you have more where they have more intimate contact with the customers, and they know their business really well, work with them, and work their way up.
Instructor I would not walk into a multibillion dollar corporation like I'm a run strategy for the first time. It's gonna be a disaster, and you're gonna have a nurse nervous breakdown after. Right? We know how creatives are. Yeah.
Instructor Anybody else? Yeah.
Speaker 8 Go ahead. I was gonna say, so in that case, is there anything that you asked them to have prepared before coming into the meeting?
Instructor Yes. With Yeah. Well, remember how we said we're gonna invite a variety of people?
Speaker 8 Right.
Instructor Somebody new. Mhmm. So that they're unbiased, who are willing to tell the truth. We need all the key decision makers in the room. That's important.
Instructor And we need people who understand who your customers are today and have data.
Speaker 8 Do you allow them to decide who that person is, or do you yourself ever come in and say, I wanna talk to these people?
Instructor You wouldn't know. Okay. There's unless you're, like, doctor Strange, you would not know. It's their company. Got it.
Instructor And you can emphasize the importance of having clean data. Otherwise, everything is built on this. It's gonna be a disaster. Cool. Okay?
Instructor Now nobody's gonna wanna take that kind of time with their most precious brains to come in there and not prepare this for success. And the way that you also do that is you just charge an appropriate amount of money till they're fully committed. Right? So flying all the executives from the East Coast to LA to take that whole day off of work and clear their entire schedule was way more than what we Started them. They're committed.
Student 1 Yeah. So how you do, like, help them brief a better if they have no data, how could you help them brief, like, a market researcher to do Oh,
Instructor because they're a brand new company? Yeah. Okay. You can ask them beforehand. They're we're a Started.
Instructor We don't have any data on our customers. Then you say, well, who are you targeting to be your customers? Can you do some research on that? I'll do some independent research (Brand we'll bring them and we'll just be prepared for the meeting. And you're gonna tell them, I use a very user customer centric way of doing brand Strategy, so to not know who the customers are are gonna derail the whole thing.
Instructor If you're not ready to meet by Wednesday next week, we need to cancel and reschedule. But once they're in the room, you're all committed at that point. K? I know some people who do this virtually, I just don't know how they do it. Because for me, most of the energy's gone.
Instructor I feel really tired doing this via Zoom versus in a room. Everybody's muted. Sometimes people use a still frame. It's you're screwed. Teacher, you know.
Instructor It's terrible. Yeah. Okay. Anybody else? Really big corporations have, very fancy, telephone video conferencing technologies where they have cameras that zoom in and zoom out and all that kind of stuff.
Instructor That's probably a better experience. But short of that, just somebody's webcam, it's usually terrible. We're gonna talk about the task gap and opportunity. Okay? This is a thing that I learned from Nicole Smith.
Instructor Is that her it's Nicole. She does user experience design, and she taught me this thing called task, gap, and opportunity. I'll explain it to you and then you're gonna do it. Okay? Now if you guys tell me your your profiles are a complete disaster, the works of fiction, (Brand then we have to pause, but this is how this would work.
Instructor Okay? There's 3 columns. A task is a job they need to do, both personally and professionally. And the way that I usually map this out is I say, okay. Jenny from the block, her day starts at 6 AM because she's, like, super into fitness.
Instructor She's an early riser, whatever her demographic, psychographic profile is. And you try to think through the entire day what Jenny has to do in a typical day. Not on a day when somebody dies, not on a day when she has to travel, but on a typical day, and you'll get to see all the jobs we use the word jobs kinda loosely here, that she has to do. I gotta take care of the kids. I gotta drop this off, and I gotta do but whatever it is.
Instructor And then, you're gonna see, like, what's the gap? She's she's trying to, like, feed the kids. What's the gap? She doesn't have enough time. Or she she has them in grocery or whatever it is, you would just connect it.
Instructor She's got to get to work. Well, what's what's the obstacle there? Miami traffic's horrible. If she's doing remote work, work from home, what's the gap when she's doing whatever? Internet connection spotty.
Instructor Whatever the gaps might be. If there's no gap, don't worry about it. You're trying to identify gaps. The reason why we do it personally and professionally is they're connected. We don't wanna just do work related things.
Instructor Makes sense? And then when we're done with that, it's very linear. Like, for example, she's got a really tight schedule, so she's super busy and she's got to, have a kind of a staff meeting at, say, 2 PM. So the gap is she's got to be able to eat and be on time, and she wants to stay healthy. Whatever it is.
Instructor Right? You would just write that down. K? Just follow the order, the logical order here. Well, what's the opportunity?
Instructor Well, what if we had and this is where you get to really flex your creative muscles. What if we had, like, 5:5 minute meals where if you order anything on this item, it'll be ready curbside in 5 minutes. And that creates an opportunity for you to advise the business owner. Can we do that? Is that a possibility?
Instructor Can we make an app? Can we can we have stickers? This is an idea. Okay. You remember during the pandemic, there was just hyper, awareness and vigilance towards germs and food prep because everybody's afraid they're gonna get COVID (Brand they're gonna die.
Instructor So I saw some companies not react at all. They're probably not in business today. And some companies have reacted really quickly. 1 company I I thought was amazing was sweet greens. Does does anybody here know sweet green?
Instructor Okay. They're kind of I hate to say this because people are gonna feel insulted. They're kinda like the Chipotle of salads. I know you're all insulted now. Right?
Instructor Because how dare you compare those 2 things. But it really kinda is like the Chipotle of salads. Right? What they did was they immediately created alternate entrance where only you could walk in and pick up the order. I love how quickly they were doing this, and they would have your name on it.
Instructor And they printed special labels, prepared quality fresh ingredient, approved by this and this date, and it's sealed and not it's like, I know it's the same preparation, but it made me feel better. But I was impressed at their ability to respond. So when you have that kind of relationship with your clients and they hit a disaster like COVID had impacted so many businesses, their ability to respond in real time was just amazing. They changed the user experience. They changed the packaging and designs to communicate safety, sterility, best food practices so you're not gonna get sick because they needed people to go in and buy.
Instructor Other places did not respond, took an hour to make the food. It was just ridiculous. Okay? You know, curbside pickup became a thing because of COVID. It was a rarity in many businesses.
Instructor Now it just became a thing. So that's what you wanna be able to do. So list of jobs, usually, we go from the time in which they wake up into the time that they're done with their day. Just go through what are their jobs personally, professionally. What are the gaps?
Instructor What are they struggling with? And then you get to be super creative here and come up with amazing ideas that may or may not be realistic at all. This is the final video for our brand strategy workshop series. It's a small glimpse into what people really audience at a live workshop with me. If you don't wanna miss our next event, check out the link below to stay up to date.
Instructor Let us know in the comments what city you'd like us to tour next.