The brand truth workshop
Your product is evolving. Is your brand keeping up?
Four weeks to find what’s most true for your brand, cut what isn’t, and give you a plan to show up alive for your next launch.
The product gets the budget. The brand gets what’s left.
You spent a year on the product: the strategy, the positioning, the channel story. Yet the brand is set to follow the same time-worn path, never strategically evolving with the product. The Brand Truth Workshop builds a roadmap timed to your next launch or release, where the strongest thing about your brand moves with the product instead of behind it.
Can you explain your brand in a memorable sentence? Let’s get to work.
The offer
The Brand Truth Workshop
We find what’s most true and unique about your brand, and help you communicate it in original ways. Four weeks. Fixed scope. Fixed fee. Working directly with us. Your brand refocused for your next launch.
Listen
We talk to the people who know your brand best and audit where it stands.
Find
We find what’s most true, and the space your competitors aren’t using.
Shape
We turn it into words and a look, and you react to a few directions.
Decide
We choose together in a working session, then map your first 90 days.
How we work. It’s Nick and Ryan, working with you. We start by talking to you and the people who know your brand best. In week three we show you a few directions, and you tell us what feels right and what doesn’t. In week four we sit down together, settle it, and you leave with everything.
What you get
A brand platform built one-of-one, for your business and your products.
At its heart is a brand promise your people can explain, remember, and rally around. Then we surround it with three things that put it to work, all yours to keep and use however you like:
What we’ve seen. The worst outcome of all is that this work sits as shiny objects on your Desktop. In our experience, the best-performing brand platforms show up in ads, videos, social, billboards, sales meetings, partner deals, dealer kits, catalogs, and most importantly: in the ethos of those who believe in it.
If you’re already thinking about the possibilities for your brand, it’s a good sign you’re in the right place.
Recent brand work.
What comes next
Brand Campaign Design
A separate project, built on your brand truth and around your next initiative.
A campaign strategy and idea.
The one idea your project centers around, and the strategy to bring it to life.
Art direction that excites.
A cohesive, crafted look everywhere customers find you: digital, owned, paid.
The right assets built.
Planned and made in phases to match the campaign strategy.
Guidelines your team can run with.
So the work stays consistent after it’s complete and returning results.
We don’t concept and design a campaign until it has goals attached, knows what it needs to communicate, and has KPIs set, which is why the Brand Truth Workshop comes first. Campaign Design is scoped and quoted separately.
Who it’s for
For brands with something real to say.
A real product, a real customer, real market challenges, and a brand one step behind all of it. You’re the owner, founder, or marketing lead with the authority to make the call. This is foundational work brands are built from, not a logo or tagline by Friday.
The company we’ve kept:
Strategy and craft in one room.
We’re Nick Rudie and Ryan Ullery, the two creative directors behind mankind, and we reject the idea that strategy and craft belong in different rooms. Craft is how a brand comes alive.
Questions
What people ask.
What does it cost?
The workshop is a fixed $16,000. If you want to keep the momentum going, a separately scoped Brand Campaign Design project with mankind comes with 30% off.
Do we have to keep working with you?
Of course not. But we like people and hope you enjoy working with us.
We’re already mid-launch. Is it too late?
It’s never too late to be who you want to be. Sure, it’s ideal to start the workshop aligned to a specific launch or initiative, but it’s by no means a requirement.
Do we need an established brand?
No, because we believe in people before anything, and anyone committed to elevating their brand for the right reasons, in the right ways, already shares a mindset with us.
We take forever to get approvals through the c-suite and legal. Is that going to be a problem?
It can be, and we’d rather say so now. The workshop is tight and focused for a reason: it works because we work directly with the people who can shape your brand’s future. We’ll walk through exactly what we need from you. If you already know Steve from Accounting is going to be a tough cookie, and that’s before it reaches your lawyers, engage mankind for a more traditional project partnership instead. Either way, it’s worth discussing.
What do you need from us to keep it to four weeks?
Four weeks runs from kickoff. We need one decision-maker involved from the start, a few conversations with your team and customers booked in week one, and feedback within two business days. If anything slips, we’ll tell you right away what it does to the schedule.
If any of this sounds like the conversation you’ve been trying to have, we’d like to have it with you.
Book a 30-minute call with Nick & Ryan. We’ll tell you honestly whether the workshop fits.
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