"Spiritual Kickoffs" or "brand therapy" sessions begin a project by asking deep, existential questions to clients, setting the stage for building their desired brand identity.
Kicking off a project—especially a project focused on creating, altering, or dramatically shifting a company’s core identity or brand—is a subtle art. Why so? Because a project kickoff is, in our humble opinions, a sacred ceremony that marks the beginning of a collaborative journey toward a desired future state. But it requires walking a line. You don’t want to set up expectations that you’re going to solve all of your clients’ problems (we see the strategists and designers nodding their heads in the back). You want your clients to feel seen and heard, to feel deeply understood by the agency they’ve selected to nurture a set of insights into actionable vectors of change. That said, you don’t want to give them the impression that you’re going to do whatever they tell you to do (there are a lot of excellent design memes on this very subject).
We refer to these initial brain dump sessions—different from Onboarding, the more house-keeping “welcome to the family” focused meeting that happens right after a contract is signed) as “Spiritual Kickoffs” because they are designed to collect the emotional and intellectual building blocks of a project, the words and ideas that become our guiding light. After a few years, our clients started calling them “brand therapy” sessions because our line of questions often revealed deep-seated considerations, previously unexplored territory, and visions for the future that occasionally surprised the clients themselves.
So, what do we actually do during these sessions? Quite simply, we ask questions. Big, broad, existential questions designed to let our clients start riffing. We try not to do a lot of talking during these sessions and instead allow the client to sound off and lead us towards stones that need to be unturned. The questions we ask occasionally shift or evolve if we feel we need to gather more specific or technical information, but in general, they are as follows: 1. Why do you exist? 2. What do you hope to become? 3. What makes your team passionate about their work? 4. What makes your customers excited about your product or service? 5. What are the big ideas that drive your company? 6. What makes you different from competitors? 7. What are the tools you need to be successful? 8. What’s holding you back?
I’m going to let you in on a little secret. We did not make these questions up, we learned them from a peer or mentor or read them in an article on LinkedIn; we honestly can’t remember where we discovered them, but the moment we did, we realized they were perfect for any session designed to gather high-level insights. And when you ask questions, shut up and listen, and then do a little poking and prodding, your clients will open their minds and tell you what’s really going on. We typically follow up these sessions with either site visits that focus on more technical aspects, or targeted team member interviews that provide greater specificity and clarity around products, services, benefits, and features.
The journey to a brand is long and winding. Some may claim it never truly ends. But one thing is for sure, it starts with more questions than answers, more listening than talking, and the ability to create space for exploration and dreaming. Brand Therapy, Spiritual Kickoff, the Creative Workshop—whatever you want to call it, the goal should be the same: discover the raw materials you’ll use to build the future.