Introduction

First of, you will explore branding as more than just a logo—it’s an experience, a story, and a promise. You will learn how branding evolved from ancient marks to digital engagement and why strategy is key to standing out. By mastering brand strategy, you will create meaningful, lasting connections.

1m

Inspiration / Fabian Geyrhalter

All creatives have their influences. Here I share what inspired me over the years, from the Nike logo to Marty Neumeier's distinct way of shaping brands.

4m

Inspiration / Laura Busche

I’m sharing the books and resources that have inspired me along the way. I continuously reference them to learn where the field is and which emerging trends I could leverage in my practice.

12m

Inspiration / John Williamson

In this lesson, I will share with you who and what has influenced my passion for creativity, brands, and user experience. In my case, it's not just limited to individual people, but the contexts, attitudes, and culture that have strongly influenced my professional development. Note: In this lesson, I said: "objectivity" instead of "subjectivity" (minute 03:42). In the subtitles, you will see that my explanation is correct.

5m

Inspiration / Jessie McGuire

In this lesson, I will give an overview of the artists, individuals, books and influences that are major references for the work I do.

12m

Inspiration / John Williamson

Influences are important. I like the idea of looking beyond the typical design influences. In this lesson, I’ll tell you about mine, which are all about looking beyond digital screens.

6m

Gaining Brand Clarity

The first step in this journey will be to look at your current situation and define your desired outcome. Where would you like to be in your creative career? I will guide you in deciding what should change for you to be able to reach this outcome.

10m

Brand Positioning: Take One

To get started, I will help you write the first draft of your positioning statement. This will be the nuts and bolts of your rebranding strategy.

10m

How to Stand Out

Now that you took the first stab at positioning, let's determine if this differentiates you enough from other brands. To do this you must look at the benefits you provide to your potential customers. These can be functional and emotional benefits.

5m

Becoming "The One"

In this lesson, we are digging deeper and formulating an emotional connection with your prospective and current clients. You need not only to become the best option available to them but make sure they see you as the only one.

6m

Supporting Your Positioning

Is the name of your brand the best one to attract new, niche, and completely different clients? Your name and story need to reflect your positioning. This is what we will see in this lesson.

9m

Defining the Brand Personality

Here I will explain how you can take your storytelling one step further by clearly defining the values which you share with your audience and creating more empathy.

9m

Looking Ahead

I will guide you in defining your vision, visualizing your perfect clients, and seeing what your new competition may look like.

11m

The Final Positioning

What looks like a short lesson is a mighty important one. Here I will help you in your final take on your positioning.

2m

The Brand DNA

Next, we will be working on funneling everything we have done into one or two simple words that will define your brand DNA. Now that you have complete clarity around your re-positioned brand, do you have to go back and adjust anything you have done?

3m

What Really Needs to Be Changed?

Ch-ch-ch-changes! Let's see here how you can implement your vision and officially re-launch!

10m

How to Activate the New Brand

Are you ready to launch your new brand? Not so fast. Here I will explain how you can create some content and be ready to have some truly on-brand thoughts to share with your new audience.

4m

How to Gain Traction

Who will be the people spreading the word for you? You need your own brand advocates. To gain traction faster you need to know toward whom your content is geared. This is what I will discuss in this lesson.

7m

Creating a Brand Manifesto

A manifesto can capture your brand’s essential themes and values in a way that makes them clear to anyone creating content with or for you.

13m

Brand Storyboard

Writing your brand’s story shouldn’t feel overwhelming. Throughout this lesson, you’ll apply my proprietary brand storyboard to determine your ideal customer’s “once upon a time” and “happily ever after”.

8m

Defining Your Audience Persona

While you probably have a high-level picture of your ideal customer, it’s time to get specific. Persona development is about adding as much detail as possible to empathize with the audience you serve on a deeper level. You don’t just want to get their demographics right: this is about connecting with human beings. Details are everything.

11m

Brand Positioning

Based on what you know about your target customer and brand principles, it’s time to define which themes and keywords to focus on. Throughout this lesson, we’ll use my six-question technique to clarify the themes it makes sense for your brand to own and invest in. Then, we’ll consolidate what we’ve learned thus far in a clear positioning statement.

15m

Defining Your Brand’s Personality

Get personal! This lesson is all about infusing a unique perspective and character to your content. For example, if your brand was a human being, how would it express what matters most? How would it interject, say hello, or even wrap up a call? These questions matter because these real-life scenarios are spaces where you will have to make a memorable appearance.

7m

Voice 1

Now that you’ve crafted a personality, it’s time to release it into the world. Voice is a manifestation of one’s general attitude and perspective on life.

15m

Voice 2

As individuals, we express a distinctive voice whether we’re aware of it or not. As brands, it serves us most to be truly intentional about it: to define communication styles, including a general voice and a set of scenario-specific tones.

7m

Scripts and Scenarios

Every customer’s experience with your brand is a journey made of multiple touchpoints. Acquiring new customers and converting them in, e.g. social platforms is just one part of the picture. You are not done with customers after they’ve followed or even purchased once. If you’re building a brand for the long term, a well-conceived plan is a key to communicating effectively as the relationship progresses. This lesson is all about visualizing this journey, empathizing with your customers’ needs every step of the way, and crafting compelling content that genuinely supports them.

6m

Prioritizing

First things first: prioritize. Realistically speaking, you’ll never have all the time or resources you wished you did to execute content campaigns. In my experience, even when resources abound, there’s usually some other constraint that trumps that “ideal case” lingering in our minds. That’s why focusing on your why is so essential: what is the potential gain in crafting this content? We’ll set realistic, time-bound goals that clarify our intentions. We’ll also review some of the channel types available to us and determine which ones matter most and fulfill more of a supportive role.

11m

Editorial Calendar

In this lesson, you will learn how to create a detailed editorial calendar to plan and organize content effectively. We will explore how strategic scheduling improves efficiency, reduces costs, and streamlines production. By the end, you’ll be able to adapt this tool to fit your team’s unique needs and workflow.

11m

Systems

This part of the course is what I would call content engineering. How do you build a well-oiled machine that keeps giving? With an ambitious, exciting calendar ready and plenty of resources to get you started, it’s essential to establish the habits that will keep you successful beyond a one-time hit.

10m

Content Playbook

Game on! It’s time to compile your strategies into a shared Content Playbook. This simple, collaborative file keeps your plan accessible and adaptable. Since strategies evolve, real-time updates are key. The template is easy to edit, concise, and printable—ensuring your team stays aligned and agile.

8m

We Know You Fold up Your Boarding Pass

In this lesson I will explain to you what branding is and isn’t, and what a brand strategy is used for. We will look at why a new way of branding is necessary, the problems the old brand strategy has and what new problems we have to solve.

8m

What Is a Brand Route Map?

Previously we have explained what branding is, now we will focus on what brand strategy is. In this lesson we will discover that a brand route map is an illustrated version of a brand strategy. In our case, the brand route map is a final deliverable which is composed of the essential information and insights gathered in the 6 steps of the Brand User Experience Methodology.

4m

Key Elements for Defining Your Brand

We will discover how the key to defining a brand is all about asking the right questions. We will ask what brand owners REALLY want and also learn how to ask our stakeholders and our users what a brand should fulfill.

15m

Brand Sense and Soul

In this lesson you will learn about brand culture, how to create a brand promise and make a brand unique by using the step-by-step "Brand Pyramid" method.

16m

Audiences: Stakeholders and Research 1

If you don't know your audiences, your brand will have no direction. During this lesson, we’ll discover different types of stakeholders, which ones are the most important for our brand and what their needs are.

9m

Audiences: Stakeholders and Research 2

Let's continue with our exercise. In this second part of the lesson, you will identify the different stakeholders of your brand, filter the important ones based on their level of influence and interest, and discover their stimuli.

14m

Benchmarking and Positioning

The art of branding is knowing how to fit in a sector and at the same time stand out. In this lesson, we’ll discover how benchmarking and positioning complement each other and allow your brand to stand out and be chosen.

18m

Brand Ecosystem

We will now discover how your brand interacts with its stakeholders and also how they relate with each other.

11m

Personas and Their Customer Journey

In this lesson you will discover who the users of your brand are and how they interact with it in an emotional and systematic way.

17m

Touchpoints and Customer Experience

Here, you will learn how to discover your brand’s touchpoints and create a unique experience.

11m

Brand Route Map

In this lesson you will learn how to combine all the previous phases in a single, powerful, user-centric brand strategy.

19m

Brand Route Map

Congratulations! you have developed a brand route map… Now what? In this lesson we will cover the aspects which will make your brand route map a reality. From initial planning to its launch.

10m

Things to Bear in Mind

In the future you will probably carry out branding projects for new companies where the brand needs to be started from scratch. But what happens when you’re faced with a rebranding situation? What aspects should you bear in mind? Most of these aspects come under the banner of Change Management, and this is what we’ll be looking at in this lesson.

2m

Mindset: What Is a Brand?

Throughout history, a brand has always established value. In this lesson, I will share the many facets of branding and their effect on culture and our communities.

18m

Toolset: The Basics of Brand Building

Now that you have a firm understanding of what a brand is, I will teach you the tools needed to identify and build brands with meaning.

6m

Process: Brand Storytelling

Let's talk about divergent and convergent mindsets, before delving into the different processes used in design to help you identify your audience's wants and needs.

4m

Considering

I will help you to consider why a brand exists through research. You will conduct a comprehensive brand immersion to understand who the brand serves and the market they operate in.

12m

Creating

The next step is to apply your immersion findings to create unique and ownable stories and set the stage for big ideas, logo design, typography and other ownable assets. Let me demonstrate how it's done!

8m

Articulating

In this lesson, I will guide you in articulating a brand blueprint that can be used for alignment and briefing. This will help to determine the purpose, scope and context of the brand identity materials.

7m

The Brand Blueprint

It's time to bring your project across the finish line with a final presentation to aid the implementation of the brand identity (as dictated by the brand blueprint). I will explain how to develop a measurement strategy to determine the success of reaching the target audience and telling the right story, and create the brand and messaging guidelines to effectively hand over work.

8m

Presentation and Measuring Success

Great design starts with understanding how to serve the target audience. Anytime you create a brand blueprint you should always be thinking about the most effective ways to gain insights from the community, even after you think you're done. In this lesson, I will show you how to present your work and respond to the feedback you receive.

6m

Brand Messaging and Beyond

To conclude the creative process, I will walk you through key brand and messaging guidelines. You will learn the tools that can be used to allow for seamless implementation of the design solution by the business user to effectively reach the target audience.

5m

What Is a Digital Brand Strategy?

Let me explain how to develop a digital brand strategy route map for the brand of your choice. We will discover what a digital brand strategy is and how it is relevant to digital transformation.

6m

Brand User Experience

In this lesson, I’ll explain where brand user experience comes from and what it does. I’ll also show you how to use it to develop a digital brand strategy in just six easy steps.

5m

Step 5: It’s All about the Channels

Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, Telegram, video games, TV, music streaming, radio, podcasts: There are lots of digital channels a brand can adopt. We don’t want to be on a channel just for the sake of it. It takes up too many resources, time, and money. But which are the right ones for our brand? Here we will go through the most common digital channels as well as some not-so-common ones worth mentioning.

16m

Step 6: It’s All about the Contents for Digital Channels

Let me explain why content is still king. I’ll not only take you through the golden content rules but also the three different types of content. I'll finish with a handy matrix as a reference to digital content.

11m

Meeting Our Case Study

In this lesson, we’ll get to know our case study Aleksandra Kozawska, founder and senior strategy designer at ODIS – Design for Space.

9m

Who Are You?

Now we’ll learn how to discover the soul of any brand. We’ll use the brand construct pyramid method to develop a mission, culture, and promise. We'll also think about what's unique about your brand.

18m

Who Are You Talking To?

In this lesson, we’ll define and group stakeholders before finding out which are the top ones. We'll also think about how to discover their emotional and functional needs.

17m

What Are You Talking About?

Let's find the focus points between our brand and our consumers. They will guide us as to what to include in our brand strategy. We’ll also discover what our competitors are up to and, thereby, how to be unique.

14m

Where Is the Brand Talking to Its Stakeholders?

In this lesson, not only are we going to deal with where the brand is connecting to its stakeholders, but where it should be doing so and where stakeholders are connecting amongst themselves.

14m

Digital Channels

Let me show you how to build a brand’s digital channel profile. It's where your stakeholders get their first impressions from, so it’s important to get it right. As you probably know, first impressions are utterly important because they last well beyond just a single moment.

13m

Digital Contents

In this lesson, we’ll discover and develop lists of questions that will form the basis of the content our brand should develop.

20m

Your Visual Digital Brand Strategy

Now you will learn how to combine all the previous steps in a single, user-centric, and powerful digital brand strategy.

6m

Taking the Visual Digital Brand Strategy to the Next Level

Now we’ll run through how to plan and calendarise your digital brand strategy. We will also talk about how to prepare external and internal brand kick-offs.

7m

Measuring, Marketing, and Ads

In this lesson, I’ll show you how to take your digital brand strategy to even greater heights. We'll achieve this by making the most out of all the hard work and research you’ve put into channels and content. We will also discover how a digital brand strategy relates to a digital marketing sales funnel.

19m

Tips for Your Brand Strategy

Finally, I will share a couple of final tips to help you develop your digital brand strategy even further. We’ll be talking about atoms and bots!

11m