Following on from our communication and branding session last week we had another workshop with Alison. The purpose of this was hone our message and come to a united statment on what Busara should stand for. We spent about four hours in the workshop with some superb results at the end.

Step 1: Vision Brainstorm

To start the session myself and Kin were joined by the guys from Diamond who are stakeholders in the business. We started with a brainstorm answering the question:

“What do you want Busara to do/ be in 2011?” and then “We will get to this by being…”

The first question allowed us to come up with all of the things we are aspiring to, it was interesting to see the wide range of answers. I tended to put quite concrete outcomes e.g. have revenue of £5m, to work for 50 of the FTSE 100 companies, and have operating profits of £3m. Where as Jonny had more philosophical outcomes such as to be united and happy.

It was very interesting to see how aligned our vision for the business was. Luckily there were no real surprises and overall we were all on the same page.

The outcome we all came to was that we are in business so that: “We prosper and are happy”.

Step 2: Vision Statement

From the themes we had generated above we distilled it down into a vision statement. These are the guiding principles for the business what we are aspiring to. It outlines the strategy for the business and makes no guesses as to how we get there (tactics).

The themes that we all had in common were:

• Award winning/ recognition
• Happy/ fun place to work
• Personal growth for the team and ourselves
• Financial objectives for revenue and profits

From these we came up with:

“We want Busara to be a recognised, award winning agency that is a great place to work. A place that nurtures personal and financial growth.”

Step 3: Brand Values/ Culture

Using the vision statement and my having a look at our individual personalities from our last session we tried to draw out the key values for the business.

We came up with a list of values for the business that we want the business and us as owners to embody:

• Creative
• Inspiring
• Happy
• Challenging
• Thoughtful
• Expert

Step 4: Elevator Pitch

Finally we came back to the elevator pitch for the business. This time round we were much more productive and came up with a really concise statement:

“Busara is a creative led agency.
We believe in exceptional design with thoughtful technology.

We are experts in our field.
We produce engaging, elegant solutions to a range of clients that include global brands.”

In the end we decided to keep the reference to technology in the background as I believe that good technology should not be seen; it should just work seamlessly and effortlessly.

Conclusion

Since the workshop we have changed the third sentence to the one shown above, if you look at the image of the flip chart you can see the original one. After testing it with some people and clients the overall consensus was that the use of the word “problem” was not a good idea.

Overall we have come to a really good starting point that we can refine over time. The copy perhaps needs to be cleaned up by a copywriter but the core essence is in there.

This text will be used on static media such as our website, leaflets or brochures. When we talk about the business it will be less rigid and more conversational, but we will try and get across the key ideas which are:

• Creative agency
• Exceptional design
• Thoughtful technology
• Engaging and elegant solutions

Now we need to start living and talking about the brand values, we need to make sure that we embody them and talk about them. A good example of this is the Google philosophy where they really get people to display their values on t-shirts and always talk about what they believe in.
We are going make our values very prominent in the office and make a montage of our vision and values that we can put on the wall so that they are there to hold us to account every day, our client can see them and the people who work for us.

Now the hard work begins …

This is a bit off the topic,  but I believe in a holistic approach to technology and business and one of the most important aspects of your business is how it is perceived and what is stands for.

The message of my company Busara is currently very muddled; if you go to the home page of our website you will see it says that we do digital, web, branding and print. If someone asks me what Busara does I cannot articulate it and this shows itself in the messaging of our website and printed collateral. Looking at the business from a detached point of view, the messaging is very confused and this is the case with a lot of small companies that have grown very fast; they have not had the time to decide what the company stands for. Larger companies have people or even whole departments dedicated to promoting, developing and communicating brand values.

Rationale

So today we had a workshop with Alison Down who is an Executive Coach specialising in brand engagement and has worked in many iconic companies including Apple. She came in to help us distil what Busara does and what our brand values are to help us communicate to clients. The session lasted about four hours and in that time we got feedback from our clients and colleagues to see what their external view of the present brand values are.

Busara has recently gone through a major transformation where by myself and the creative director Kin are now major shareholders in the business. This means that Busara has gone from 100% sole ownership to more of a partnership with multiple owners. As such this is a chance for us to really take the bull by the horns and put our stamp on the values, vision and direction of the company. We all want to create something we are proud of and that will flourish for years to come.

Step 1: About Us

The first step before we even considered the brand was to find out about ourselves. A company reflects its owner’s personality, aspirations and dreams. Through a series of questions we found out what makes us tick when we are in the zone. Alison asked us to recount a time when we worked at our best, when we really enjoyed ourselves and what brought out the best in us.

The result was the image on the right which showed our top three or four characteristics for each of us A (is me Arif) and K (is Kin). This was very interesting as myself and Kin have always worked so well together and the that was reflected in the cross over and complimenting of our best skills.

Step 2: What Busara Does Well

Now that had established what made us tick we moved on to what Busara currently does well. This gave us an idea of what strengths we should be highlighting and shouting about to clients.

We went through some of our case studies looking at successful projects, we analysed what people remember about us, we looked at the strengths of the team and also their individual strengths. We looked at our existing collateral to see if there was any phrases that we liked that highlighted what we are good at.

Step 3: Big Buckets

Then we wanted to find the big areas that we wanted to focus on from our strengths. These big buckets highlight the main three or four areas that we want to hang our hat on. They were very raw and not very refined but we were slowly honing in on what we are.

We ended up with the following buckets:

• Strategic/ lateral thinking
• Exceptional design
• Beautifully crafted technology solutions
• Credible experience with big brands
• Solving client problems with creative solutions

Step 4: Elevator Pitch

Then after a short break we each had a go at writing a mission statement based on the big buckets listed about. We did it very quickly myself and Kin had about two or three minutes to write something very raw.

I came up with:

“Busara is a digital creative agency that delivers exceptional design with beautifully craft technology. We have expertise working with big brands solving problems with creative ideas.”

Kin wrote:

“Busara are creative thinkers who solve client problems. Our credible expertise is backed up with the exceptional work we do with big brands.”

Conclusion

At the end of the session we then tried to combine our elevator pitches and ran into real problems. The reason is that myself and Kin have different visions for the business I see the company as a digital, technology company and Kin really enjoys the print and branding side of the business. This session was a very healthy way of finding out that we are pulling in different directions, this must be resolved before we can really move forward and grow. We spent about half an hour chatting and finally came to the conclusion that we cannot distil the vision of the company until we are both agreed on the direction we want to go. We are going to have another session with Alison in a week’s time to find some common group for moving forward.

Personally I really enjoyed the session and got a huge amount our of working in such a structured way with Alison, she brought a lot of experience to the meeting and acted as an independent facilitator when there were details to iron out.

I must stress that I am not a marketing expert and do not have a large amount of experience in this but as a business owner it is one area that I am really going to concentrate on, on a daily basis. Marketing, brand, culture, messaging and communication are the life blood of new and repeat business, they also help create a guiding vision for the people who work for you and build a culture where people enjoy themselves everyday.