brand-discovery

The saved excerpt is a snapshot from when this skill was listed. The external source remains the complete and most current version.

---
name: brand-discovery
description: >-
  Use when a brand needs to discover or articulate its identity through
  structured multi-session interviews. Covers purpose, positioning, audience,
  personality, voice, narrative, and founder-brand tension across 8 modules
  using laddering, 5 Whys, and projective techniques. Produces a resumable
  session with disk-persisted state and a master brandbook (90_SYNTHESIS.md).
---

# Brand Discovery

Use this skill to conduct a structured, adaptive brand identity interview.
The goal is a complete `90_SYNTHESIS.md` — a master brandbook the
organization can use to brief designers, writers, and external
collaborators.

The interview runs across multiple sessions. Capture answers to disk as you
go so that no elicited knowledge is lost when a conversation ends, and so a
later session can resume from where the last one stopped.

## When to Activate

- A brand is being created, repositioned, or needs a written identity reference to brief collaborators.
- Multiple sessions are expected — the conversation will span days or weeks.
- Multiple founders or stakeholders need individual interviews before a reconciliation pass.
- The user wants a structured, repeatable method rather than an ad-hoc chat.
- Existing brand documentation is scattered, implicit, or founder-dependent and needs to be made explicit.

## Session start protocol

On every activation, perform these steps **before** asking any interview
question:

1. **Check for prior progress.** Look for an existing set of module files
   and a `state.json` checkpoint in the project's brand-identity directory.
   If none exists, this is a fresh start — confirm the brand name,
   participants, and where to save the brand-identity files, then begin at
   the first module.
2. **Read the current module file** if one is in progress, and scan its Raw
   section for previously captured answers.
3. **Report to the user** in two or three sentences: which module we are
   in, its status, and what remains. Then ask: "Continue here, or switch
   module?"

## Interview discipline

Apply these rules throughout every module:

1. **One question at a time.** Never present a list of questions.
2. **After each answer:** short paraphrase → one deepening probe OR close
   the thread if the topic is saturated. Never move on silently.
3. **Laddering:** for every "what" answer, follow with "Why does that
   matter to you?" until a core value surfaces (typically two to four
   iterations).
4. **5 Whys:** for beliefs or positioning claims — push until the root
   reason, not the surface declaration, is on the table.
5. **Detect thin answers:** if generic, jargon-heavy, or vague, ask for
   one concrete example, a client story, or a number.
6. **Projective techniques** (use once per module to break a plateau):
   - "If the brand were a person, how would they walk into a room?"
   - Brand obituary: "If the organization closed in five years, what would
     customers miss? What would you regret not having said?"
   - Competitive contrast: "Name one peer you admire but would never want
     to become. What specifically makes them the wrong model?"
7. **Saturation signal:** when two consecutive probes produce no new
   information, summarise and close the module.
8. **End of module:** write a structured module file with two sections:
   - `## Raw` — verbatim quotes and examples.
   - `## Synthesis` — your interpretation, three candidate formulations,
     open questions, contradictions between participants.
   Then update the `state.json` checkpoint (see State protocol below).

## Module sequence

| File | Label | Frameworks used |
|------|-------|-----------------|
| `10_purpose-why.md` | Purpose / Why | Sinek Golden Circle, Lencioni |
| `20_positioning.md` | Positioning | Dunford "Obviously Awesome", Moore template |
| `30_audience-niche.md` | Audience & Niche | Baker "Business of Expertise", ICP |
| `40_personality-archetype.md` | Personality & Archetype | Mark & Pearson 12