# Brand discovery Human Guide

## What This Is For
Use when a brand needs to discover or articulate its identity through structured multi-session interviews. It gives the agent a clearer input/output frame for brand and messaging: what context to ask for, what decisions to make, and what usable artifact to return.

Use this as a human-readable version of the Brand discovery agent skill. It is meant for marketers, operators, founders, and other non-coders who want the workflow without reading agent-specific implementation instructions.

## When To Use This
- Use this when you need a repeatable process for brand discovery.
- Use this when the task needs judgment, examples, constraints, or a clear output format rather than a one-off prompt.
- Use this when you want to hand an AI assistant enough context to produce a usable marketing artifact.

## When Not To Use This
- Do not use this when you only need a quick factual answer.
- Do not use this when the work depends on private data you cannot share with the assistant.
- Do not use this as a replacement for legal, compliance, financial, or medical review.

## What You Need Before Starting
- The goal or business outcome you want.
- The audience, customer segment, or market context.
- Any source material the assistant should respect, such as notes, briefs, examples, URLs, or brand guidance.
- Constraints such as tone, length, channel, deadline, region, or approval requirements.
- A clear definition of what a good final answer should look like.

## Step-By-Step Workflow
1. State the job clearly: "Use the Brand discovery guide to help me with..."
2. Add context: audience, goal, offer, channel, source material, and constraints.
3. Ask the assistant to identify missing inputs before producing the final output.
4. Have the assistant follow the skill-specific guidance below.
5. Review the result against the final checklist and ask for revisions where needed.

## Skill-Specific Guidance
- 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.
- **Check for prior progress.** Look for an existing set of module files
- **Read the current module file** if one is in progress, and scan its Raw
- **Report to the user** in two or three sentences: which module we are
- **One question at a time.** Never present a list of questions.
- **After each answer:** short paraphrase → one deepening probe OR close
- **Laddering:** for every "what" answer, follow with "Why does that
- **5 Whys:** for beliefs or positioning claims — push until the root

## Decision Points And Nuance
The original skill emphasizes: When to Activate, Session start protocol, Interview discipline, Module sequence, State write protocol, Multi-founder mode, Anti-Patterns, Related Skills, Supporting file: references/10_purpose-why.md, Raw.

Use these questions to steer the work:
- What is the intended audience or buyer?
- What source material must be preserved?
- What should the assistant optimize for: clarity, persuasion, accuracy, speed, creativity, or conversion?
- What examples represent the desired quality bar?
- What should the assistant avoid?

## Common Mistakes
- **One question at a time.** Never present a list of questions.
- the thread if the topic is saturated. Never move on silently.
- Competitive contrast: "Name one peer you admire but would never want
- **Starting without reading state first.** Every session must open by checking for existing module files and `state.json`. Skipping this loses all continuity from prior sessions.
- **Skipping multi-founder reconciliation.** When multiple stakeholders are involved, individual interviews must complete before reconciliation. Discussing the brand collectively first introduces anchoring bias.
- Competitive alternatives named by the founder (include "do nothing" / "hire in-house")
- What do they fear or want to avoid?
- One brand or public figure the founder admires but the brand should NOT become (and specifically what to avoid)

## Copy-And-Paste Prompt
```text
Use the Brand discovery human guide.

My goal:
[Describe the business outcome]

Audience:
[Describe who this is for]

Context and source material:
[Paste notes, examples, links, or existing copy]

Constraints:
[Tone, length, channel, timeline, must-include items, must-avoid items]

Before producing the final output, ask me for any missing information that would materially improve the result.
```

## Final Checklist
- [ ] The output matches the original goal.
- [ ] The audience and context are reflected in the answer.
- [ ] Important constraints and source material were preserved.
- [ ] The assistant made the relevant decisions explicit.
- [ ] The final artifact is ready to use, review, or hand to the next person.

## Source
This guide was generated from the affaan-m/ecc skill entry for `brand-discovery`.

## Source Skill Notes
These notes preserve the nuance from the original skill. Use them as supporting reference when the workflow above feels too generic.

# 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 archetypes, J. Aaker 5 dims |
| `50_voice-tone.md` | Voice & Tone | Brand voice guidelines |
| `60_narrative-story.md` | Narrative / Story | Neumeier trueline, brand story arc |
| `70_founder-tension.md` | Founder Brands vs Studio Brand | Enns "Win Without Pitching" |
| `90_SYNTHESIS.md` | Master Brandbook | Kapferer prism, Aaker brand system |

Complete modules in order. Honour a user request to jump modules and note
the skip in `state.json`.

## State write protocol