A brief explanation of what your business does, and who you do it for. Be as specific as you can;As a suggestion, can you frame what you do in the following sentence?We do ________ (the thing you do) for _________ (your target customer)

Let us know the direction you would like to see your brand head in. Do like simplicity, skeuomorphism, caligraphy, etc.

If you have some (3 -4) colours that you prefer, let us know. Alternatively you can use a service like Coolors (https://coolors.co) to generate some colour palettes.

Where are you based? Where are your customers based? Are there areas/regions/countries where you don’t operate at the moment, but you’d like to in the future?

Use bullet points if you wish, and be as objective as possible.How are you seen at present? If you ranked your competitors in order of best to worst, where would you put yourselves? Where do you think your target customers would put you, based on your current brand and reputation? Is your brand in line with where you want to be on that list?

What are the mid and long-term goals for the business, and how will you achieve them?  For example:What are your growth targets for the next three years? (turnover and profit) What will the business look like when you get there? How many staff will there be, how much business will you be doing Will this be achieved by attracting new customers? Maybe you want to do it by attracting a different type of customer Or by selling something new Or simply selling more to existing clients Do you need to improve efficiency to help you get there?

Again, use bullet points if you want to, and try to put yourself in your customer’s shoes.What image do you have at the moment, do you think? What’s the image you want the business to portray? What sets you apart from your competitors? Are you friendly and approachable? Professional and efficient? Big or small?

Give us a list of maybe 3-6 competitors… The name of the competitor company and their website address would be useful. Tell us in a couple of sentences what they’re like, and how you compare to them. For instance: ABC Consultants (
www.abc-consultants.co.za) Well-established local company, quite good knowledge but poor customer service. Invest quite a lot in their brand and marketing, but we think we offer a better service than they do, and we have more knowledge and experience in X.

Refer back to the question “Where do we want to go?” How does this project help that happen? Where do you want to be at the end of the project to set you up to achieve those big goals?

We want to establish who your perfect customer is. There may be a few types, but the more specific we can be, the better, so try and be as detailed as possible. Your description could include typical age, sex, background etc.

Tell us what you need the brand to be used on, so we can keep this in mind during the creative process. If the brand needs to be used on something very large (like a billboard or signage) or something very small (like a pen), this needs to be taken into account. If you have any existing brand materials, do these need to be replaced? If you have existing assets or collateral, how will the new brand work alongside them? What other plans for the business might need to be considered when creating your new brand? Are you planning to move to new premises, or to start showing at exhibitions in the future?