The toolkit
Canvases, templates, checklists, worksheets and calculators to use today. Each one is built on a named framework, explained with its sources, and ready to fill in here, print or download. What you type stays in your browser.
Canvases2
One page that holds a whole idea, filled in together.
- The brand platform canvas: purpose, positioning, personality and proof on one pageEight boxes that write down what a brand stands for and how it shows up: purpose, vision, values, positioning, personality, promise, proof and distinctive assets. Drawn from Aaker, Keller and Kapferer, with distinctive assets after Romaniuk.
- The customer journey map: stages, touchpoints, needs, feelings and ownersA canvas that lays one customer's journey along a line, from discovering a need to recommending the brand, and fills in what happens at each stage: the touchpoints, the need, the feeling, the message and the team that owns it. After McKinsey's consumer decision journey and the touchpoint research behind it.
Templates3
The documents a plan needs, with the headings already right.
- The message house template: one umbrella message, the pillars and the proofA one-page house that turns a brand platform into messages every team can use: the umbrella message on the roof, three or four pillars, the proof points under each, and the values and facts that hold the foundation. A practitioners' tool whose origin is unclear.
- The positioning statement: for, who, is a, that, unlike, becauseOne sentence that says who the brand is for, what it is, what it does better than the alternative and why anyone should believe it. The fill-in-the-blank form credited to Geoffrey Moore, checked against Keller's points of parity and difference.
- The creative brief template: one problem, one insight, one propositionThe page a planner hands to a creative team: the problem the work must solve, the audience and the insight, the single proposition and its proof, the tone, and what the work should make people think, feel and do. From the account-planning tradition and the industry's briefing guides.
Worksheets1
Questions to work through, one decision at a time.