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.
Canvases3
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.
- The measurement framework: from objectives to organisational impactA canvas that links the organisation's objective to the communication objectives, then to inputs, activity, outputs, out-takes, outcomes and impact, with a metric, baseline, target and source for each. After AMEC's Integrated Evaluation Framework and the Barcelona Principles.
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.
Worksheets2
Questions to work through, one decision at a time.
- The PESO channel audit: paid, earned, shared and owned on one gridA worksheet that lists every channel the brand uses under paid, earned, shared and owned media, with the job each does, its budget or effort, its owner and its KPI, so gaps, overlaps and over-reliance show at a glance. After Gini Dietrich's PESO model.
- The integration RACI: who is responsible, accountable, consulted and informedA matrix of the activities in an integrated programme against the people and agencies involved, marking for each who does the work, who signs it off, who is consulted and who is kept informed. A general project-management practice, defined in PMI's lexicon, applied to marketing teams and agencies.