We were desperate for better ways to fill in that post-it plethora we find in most workshops. After some research and prototyping, we came up with a different approach. Instead of letting people write down adjectives, we hand them a deck of cards that have those adjectives already on them. Each side of the card has a word on it, both are the antonym of the other. By skipping the ‘thinking-about-the-word part’, the focus shifts to the true meaning of the word and it opens the discussion.

By framing our brand workshop as a game, it remarkably boosts the enthusiasm and engagement of all participants. Because we believe a workshop is not the right tool to let people be creative. The task is to select and develop something sustainable for the brand. Therefore we limited the task to a simple question: is this how the brand (should) behave(s)? Too pre-formated? Seriously, look at what most brands use as characteristics and values. The unique aspect is not in a single value, but in the mix. And even more in the way brands give meaning to these assets.

Once the brand characteristics are defined, it’s time to pull up Jung’s brand archetypes and figure out which archetype suits the brand the best.

1. The Innocent
2. The Hero
3. The Regular Guy
4. The Nurturer
5. The Creator
6. The Explorer
7. The Rebel
8. The Lover
9. The Magician
10. The Ruler
11. The Fool
12. The Sage

Identifying your brand archetype from this list will save you time and money and connect you instantly to your tribes. These all-too-familiar characters are called Jungian archetypes. Jungian archetypes have been adopted and examined by all sorts of groups. New Age spiritualists. Biologists. Even us at Gaga.

This type of workshop usually take no longer than 2 hours, depending on the size of the group (you never know what happens when you have the CEO, the Marketing Director and HR Director in one room). The output from the workshop is a meaningful underlying structure of the brand personality. How easy was that?