Brand Takeover Drill
Fake It.
Use when perceptions of what is and isn’t possible for your organization are holding you back.
Imagine you’ve been taken over. The challenge you are working on remains the same, but you now have the assets, relationships, strengths, customers, products, services, reputation, and culture of [BRAND X] to use at your disposal. Suddenly, teams are relieved of solving as the organization they work for and start imagining solutions that are outside of their current consideration set by asking what Pixar, Netflix, Lego, or Red Bull would do to take on this challenge.
You see, even if we feel free to problem-solve and generate ideas, our culture often snaps us back to the status quo. Part of the Let Go Practice is to break the synaptic connections that lead us to problem-solve in the same ways. Borrow a brain and see how the Brand Takeover Drill will allow you to arrive at solutions that you wouldn’t otherwise imagine. This drill is particularly useful drill when a group is stuck on solving with existing resources, within the boundaries of cultural norms, and without letting go. By looking at the problem through a completely fresh lens, with wildly different assets at their disposal, the team might be able to imagine the unimaginable together. Try this at your next meeting or brainstorm — what might happen if you solved your next challenge as another organization? We think it’s worth a try.
Outcomes
Convention-bending ideas freed from internal assumptions, orthodoxies, and biases.
Materials
Blue Tape
Sharpies
Post-its
Instructions
Step 1
Prior to your session, use the Brand Takeover Tool in the Think Wrong Lab to set up the brands you want to use.
Step 2
Introduce the Brand Takeover Drill.
Step 3
Assign each team a different brand and place the name of the brand at the top of their Brand Takeover poster.
Step 4
Announce that the brand they’ve been assigned has taken over their organization. The good news: the new leadership thinks the work they’re doing is vital—and they have agency to use all of the brand’s assets to solve the challenge.
Step 5
Have teams generate ideas for how their new brand owner might solve the challenge.
Tips
Select brands that are well known to participants—and be sure to think about using regional and/or global brands for groups from different countries.
Also, try to select brands that are outside of your team's primary industry or business. You may be surprised at how an entirely different set of assets might inspire brilliant solutions to the challenge.
Prompt teams to use all of the attributes associated with the brand that has taken over their organization.
For example: The Lego product line includes amusement parks, animated programming, characters, games, apps, education products, discovery centers, and partnerships with major entertainment brands. These assets are now all at their disposal for solving the challenge.
When to use the Drill
How to introduce the drill
Tips for facilitating the Drill