(This course is Pre-order and delivery within a few days!)Each session of Masterclass 3 will feature a different brand client, and your performance will be evaluated by them, just as your thinking and prototyping will be considered for use in the client’s day-to-day business.
Martin Neumeier – Level C Branding Masterclass
Masterclass 1
BRAND SPECIALIST
Masterclass 1 kicks off brand mastery with principles, definitions, and techniques that fuel DISRUPTIVE THINKING—the foundation for modern branding. This interactive workshop is designed to get you comfortable with being uncomfortable, and confident with rapid and provocative ideation.
Explore core disciplines in differentiation, collaboration, innovation, validation, and cultivation. Set yourself up for strategic thinking with the Brand Commitment Matrix, and the positioning principle of Onlyness. Practice applying what you learn in competitive pressure-cooker team exercises.
Speak the language of brand to discuss, defend, and impact the branding process. And, expand your professional network with fellow international brand-masters-in-the-making.
Who Should Attend
Level C is an open exchange of perspectives for skills in branding and business management:
For creatives who want to be more strategic, and strategists who want to level-up with disruptive creativity.
For marketers to amplify their efforts with smart branding, and managers who want to keep their charges “on brand.â€
For entrepreneurs who want to build a brand-driven organization, CMOs who want to evolve into CBOs (Chief Brand Officers), and CEOs who want to create cultures of nonstop innovation.
What You’ll Learn
Definitions and meanings: the language of brand
Rapid and disruptive ideation
Introduction to brand valuation
Navigating the shift from marketing to mattering
Powerful ways to differentiate a brand
Bridging the gap between right-brain and left-brain thinking
The difference between branding and marketing
Customer identity patterns
The law of collaboration
The needs of collaboration
Techniques for creative collaboration
How you can lead a brainstorm
How personality type relates to roles you could play
Divergent vs. convergent thinking
How to design for a “natural reading sequenceâ€
A simple definition and process for design thinking
How to quick-test prototypes
Effective approaches to making presentations
Masterclass 2
BRAND STRATEGIST
Masterclass 2 drills down into the most powerful discipline of brand-building:Â DIFFERENTIATION.
Learn how to define a compelling difference between your brand and competing brands, so that the company and its customers have a clear understanding of the brand’s competitive advantage.
Define what brand strategy really means and how it drives differentiation. Sharpen your problem framing and landscape mining so that the solution drives the right decisions. Focus on the structure of both strategy and storytelling, how they’re related, and the implications for tactics and execution.
You’ll finish Masterclass 2 with the tools to compete and win against any size competitor. And, you’ll wear a new badge of strategic mastery.
What You’ll Learn
A new definition of strategy for a hyper-connected world
The brand combatant’s approach to Strategic Judo
Why brand is now the strongest barrier to competition
How to use radical differentiation to cut through market clutter
The importance of categories in determining brand strategy
How to combine brand strategy and design thinking for dynamic outcomes
How to frame a problem so the solution drives the right decisions
The power of emerging trends to give brands free momentum
How to apply the five Ps and five Qs of agile strategy
How to find an untapped white space in the market
How to reveal and use Onlyness to create a testable value proposition
The power of tribal loyalty in strengthening brands
How to predict success or failure of an idea
The role of sacrifice in keeping brands and companies focused
How to use opposition research to inform and update strategies
The strategic importance of the right pricing model
How to manage the “gives and gets†of the brand ecosystem
The benefits and dangers of First-Mover Advantage
How to compete and win against any size company
What can turn loyalty programs into disloyalty traps
The four dangers faced by brand portfolios, and how to avoid them
How to build a “two-stage rocket†to escape a dying market
Why a “brand ladder†works better than a sales funnel
How to extend a brand without breaking it
Who Should Attend
This next-level workshop is for Level C Certified Brand Specialists who want to dial up their strategic talents and play a more strategic role within a company or with their clients. If you want to plan and lead successful brand initiatives, this is the masterclass for you.
You’re already ahead of the branding game, and you have a drive to to apply critical thinking and storytelling to the challenges of brand building.
Masterclass 3
BRAND ARCHITECT
Masterclass 3 sets you up for higher-level brand management by exploring the structural and functional elements of brand, and framing brand architecture in the context of customers.
You’ll explore how and why brand architecture goes beyond a 2-dimensional concept of brand extensions and their positions relative to each other in a company’s portfolio of products. Using the core principles from Marty’s ahead-of-its-time book, METASKILLS, you’ll learn how to see brand in 3 dimensions—across products, within internal structures, and with depth of field as you consider the customer’s perspective. And, you’ll roll up your sleeves to practice these new principles using the Swarming method of creative collaboration, designed to attack a challenge from multiple angles at once.
To raise the stakes in this workshop, and to make it as valuable for you as possible, Masterclass 3 will challenge you to master the principles of brand architecture by applying them through a collaboration with a real-world brand that will be your guest “client†in the room with you. Each session of Masterclass 3 will feature a different brand client, and your performance will be evaluated by them, just as your thinking and prototyping will be considered for use in the client’s day-to-day business.
Who Should Attend
The midway point of Level C’s brand mastery program is designed for creatives and strategists who want to direct brand building at senior levels.
You’re able to see bigger pictures, greater depths, and potential structures. You embrace the empty space to position and design brands that tower above their categories and competitors.
What You’ll Learn
The architectural relationship between brand and business
Customer perception and interaction with brand architecture
How brand architecture influences customer experience
Using defensive design to withstand challenger brands
Planning and creating a Tower brand
Scaffolding, portals, and modularity—architectural nuances to command as the driver of all things brand
Masterclass 4
BRAND MASTER
Our brand mastery workshop is targeting 2023.
Stay tuned for updates and announcements!
Masterclass 5
CHIEF OF BRAND
Level C’s mission is to share with working professionals the principles of modern branding that they can command to lead brands at the highest levels of business, and from within the C-Suite.
Our vision is of a business landscape led by companies with category-dominant brands—driven by Chief Brand Officers who put customers first, and creativity on the same pedestal as strategy.
Coming in 2024.
Stay tuned for announcements and updates!
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