the Zagaya brand exercise

An exercise that I had a chance to be a part of early on during the summer was the Zagaya branding exercise. A brand consultant helped us think aloud, ask and answer some very important questions that would go a long way towards making Zagaya's mission and work more targeted and messaging more succinct and comprehensible. The broad framework used was based on a schematic from 'Designing brand identity' by Alina Wheeler:

What goes into a brand brief

A big part of the discussion revolved around what Zagaya did, and yet what was interesting was how much time was spent on what Zagaya did not do. This was very important as it impacted the message sent out both through our brand messaging channels and by everyone at Zagaya who were ambassadors of their work.

A challenge to the executive director at every stage was to continually keep track of all the changes in strategy and accordingly align the message sent out to all stakeholders, supporters and public in general. Having a chance to hear her thoughts and contribute towards possible ways to shape the communication strategy was a good learning experience for me. It helped us understand where Zagaya stood in contrast to competitors and what was the value proposition offered.