Branding projects are inevitably all about change. An organisation or product is usually wanting to improve what they do and create some greater impact in the world – from sales and awareness to love and affection.

In some cases the brand is failing and needs a reboot to reconnect with customers. In others, it’s doing well and wants to jump up to the next level of success. Sometimes it’s under attack from a new and aggressive competitor. And sometimes it doesn’t even exist yet and is waiting to get born with a new idea, name and visual identity.

Whatever the reason for change, the best place to start in any branding project is to identify and vocalise your brand’s ambition. You may think this sounds utterly obvious and you’d be right. Very few people set off on an important journey without some sort of destination in mind.

But the challenge is in choosing the right destination for your brand. You could articulate a hundred different ambitions that would take you off in completely different directions, a lot of which might be costly dead ends.

Often when we’re in a discovery phase of a project, we’ll find members of a very aligned and effective management team can hold multiple (and sometimes very conflicting) ambitions about the future of their company and brand.

That’s why the first thing we do at the beginning of any project is to run what we call an Ambition Session. It’s about getting the key people in a room to explore what ordinary success looks like in the short-term and the long-term, what outrageous success could look like, what you want to be in the world, why that is important and ultimately why anyone should care.

Getting the right ambition unlocks energy, galvanises everyone in your organisation, excites customers and gives you the north star to guide your decision-making along the way. Don’t start any branding project without one.