A workshop is really a casual reference to an engaging and interactive strategy session. It
should not be viewed as hokey series of icebreakers and games. The best workshops for B2B brands are designed to be inspiring, productive and help move a team forward with consensus building around a company’s WHY or ideation with generating new product concepts. Yes, it will include games, interactive exercises and pre-work for attendees.
Depending on the objective, workshops can be as short as 2.5 hours to brainstorm on how to design your company’s Spring customer summit, a full day of finding your brand’s why or 3.5 days for a product innovation sessions.
Often times we find B2B leadership teams discuss the same challenges without progressing
with their decision making. In other words, they hit a wall with how to break out of their same
internal dialogues.
Reasons a Branding Partner Should Custom Design Your Next Workshop
A company’s leadership team is too close to the challenge and needs a new framework and perspective for discussing it.
Workshops aren’t a brainstorm where everyone just shows up; they take preparation to craft the right exercises that build upon one another to achieve the session’s objective.
A workshop should be custom designed to address your brand’s distinct challenges - by an objective and experienced third party partner – a branding firm.
A professional moderator holds expertise adapting sessions on the fly to cater to different work styles and personalities ensuring the workshop objective is met.
Tips for Planning Your Next Brand Workshop
Leading B2B companies depend on us to design their brand workshops since it takes significantly more time than running one. Here’s just a few of the considerations for a B2B brand workshop.
Establish a Clear Objective: Workshops can be designed to meet many different objectives. For example, a workshop could focus on articulating a company’s purpose - its WHY. (Note: For more on this see our recent post, Purpose: Does Your Brand Need a Soul?). A Brand Vision workshop might focus on the need and steps to reposition a company after a merger/acquisition. Or, a multi-day workshop might focus on product innovation
Participants: Who should attend? We recommend clearly identifying attendees before designing the flow of the workshop. For example, if we have 16 attendees, the exercises will be designed differently than if we have 6-8. Also the number of participants could influence if more than one moderator is required and the size of the space (e.g. Are two rooms needed? How many tables and soft seating?)
Space: What type of space is needed? The brand workshop space is critical. It should support individual thinking, and have space for coming together to collaborate in pairs and as a group. It should be inspiring, allow for movement, and offer plenty of wall space for posting flip charts and posters.
After one of our recent brand vision workshop, one of C.E.K. & Partners global B2B clients stated:
“Thank you for the wonderful work you facilitated on Monday. We were all impressed with the process and felt as though you did a masterful job in guiding us to our final objective. It feels so good to have such a strong outcome.”
-VP of Marketing
Ready to learn how a workshop move your brand forward?
About C.E.K. & Partners
As an Atlanta-bases brand and strategy consultancy we build B2B brands that meaningfully connect with audiences to accelerate business growth. If your leadership team needs to make better decisions, articulate a value proposition, innovate or find your why, contact us to learn more about having a branding firm design and professionally moderate your session.
Building a brand requires expertise – that’s why we’re here to help Atlanta-based B2B and B2C companies with our Brand Workshops. To start planning your workshop emails us at carolyn@cekpartners.com or call +1.404.345.6447.