By Mehdi HassanWhat is the three-hour brand sprint?
The three-hour brand sprint is a workshop format from GV (formerly Google Ventures) that helps a founding team agree on what its brand stands for in a single afternoon. It's a sequence of six short exercises, each forcing the team to choose and rank rather than brainstorm.
It's the most widely shared brand sprint format, and today it mostly lives on Miro templates, SessionLab facilitation guides and founder write-ups on Indie Hackers. It's popular because it's free and it works. What it isn't is a complete branding process. Our hub on what a brand sprint is explains the difference between this workshop and a full sprint that ends with an identity.
Who should be in the room: the two or three people who will make final brand decisions, usually the founders. A facilitator helps, but anyone neutral can do it. Bring sticky notes or a shared whiteboard, a timer and a willingness to cut ideas you like.
What are the six exercises in the GV brand sprint?
The six exercises move from the long-term vision to the brand's personality and position. Each one narrows choices, so by the end the team has a short list of agreed priorities instead of a wall of adjectives.
1. The 20-year roadmap
Each person writes where the company could be at several points in the future, ending with a distant horizon. The team then agrees on a version. It separates what the company does today from what the brand must be able to grow into.
2. What, how, why
Based on Simon Sinek's golden circle. Write what the company does, how it does it differently, and why it exists. Keep going until the why is a belief a customer could share, not a revenue goal.
3. Top three values
Everyone writes values the company holds, then the team votes and ranks. Only three survive. The point is the ranking: when two values conflict, the higher one wins.
4. Top three audiences
List every audience the brand speaks to: buyers, users, investors, candidates, press. Rank them and keep three. The top audience decides tone when the others disagree.
5. Personality sliders
Place the brand on spectrums such as friend to authority, young to mature, playful to serious and mainstream to elite. Each person marks a position, then the team agrees on one. These become direct inputs for type, color and copy.
6. The competitor map
Draw a two-by-two grid with axes such as classic to modern and expressive to reserved. Plot competitors and the alternatives buyers use, then mark where you want to sit. An empty corner is an opportunity; a crowded one is a warning.
Run the exercises in order. The roadmap and what-how-why give context for the values; the values and audiences give context for the personality; and the personality makes the competitor map meaningful.
How do you run a three-hour brand sprint well?
You run it well by time-boxing every exercise, voting silently before discussing, and naming one person who breaks ties. Most failed workshops fail because discussion expands to fill the time and the loudest voice decides.
- Write first, talk second. Everyone writes ideas alone before sharing, so the first speaker doesn't anchor the group.
- Vote with dots, then discuss the outliers. Spend time on disagreements, not on things everyone already agrees on.
- Name a decider. Usually the CEO. When the team is split after discussion, the decider chooses and you move on.
- Capture the exact words. Photograph the boards or keep the Miro file. The specific wording matters later.
- Keep the room small. Two to four people. Share the summary with the wider team afterwards.
Running it remotely
The workshop works well over video with a shared whiteboard. Set up one frame per exercise before the call, use private sticky notes for the writing phase and reveal them together. Take a short break between the audiences and the sliders, because the second half needs the most energy.
Record the decisions in a single summary frame at the end, in the team's words. That frame is what you'll hand to a designer.
What do you have at the end of the workshop?
At the end you have a one-page summary: a future direction, a why statement, three ranked values, three ranked audiences, a personality profile and a position on a competitor map. That page is valuable. It is also all you have.
Exercise | Output | What it feeds later |
|---|---|---|
20-year roadmap | A long-term direction | How far the identity must stretch |
What, how, why | A belief statement | Positioning and the homepage headline |
Top three values | Ranked values | Voice rules and tie-breaks |
Top three audiences | Ranked audiences | Who the website speaks to first |
Personality sliders | A personality profile | Typography, color and copy tone |
Competitor map | A target position | How different the visuals must look |
There's no logo, no color palette, no typeface, no headline and no web page. "Authority, mature, serious, elite" points in a direction, but there are thousands of ways to express it visually, and that's where most teams stall.
How do you turn brand sprint exercises into design?
You turn the exercises into design by translating each output into a concrete decision, starting with words. Write the positioning statement and the homepage headline first, then let the personality sliders choose typography and color, and check every visual direction against the competitor map.
- Write positioning from the what-how-why. Who it's for, the problem, and why you over the alternatives. Our guide to brand positioning has a template.
- Write the homepage headline. One sentence. If you can't write it, the workshop isn't finished.
- Map sliders to type and color. Serious and elite tend toward restrained type and fewer colors; playful and friendly toward rounder forms and warmer palettes.
- Design two or three directions. Each one on a real website hero, not a moodboard.
- Test against the competitor map. Put each direction next to competitors' homepages. If it blends in, it's wrong.
- Write it down as guidelines. Logo use, color roles, type sizes and voice examples. See what brand guidelines should include.
If you're handing the output to a designer instead, put it in a brief. Our brand design brief template has a section for each workshop output, so nothing gets lost between the sticky notes and the design.
What comes after the three-hour brand sprint?
After the workshop, you either design the brand yourself or run a full sprint with a designer that turns the decisions into an identity. In a full sprint, the GV exercises are the first session, and the rest of the time goes into directions, a decision, applied screens and handover.
That's how we use the workshop. We run the exercises with the founders, write the headline before any design starts, then spend the remaining time on visual directions shown on real website and product screens. Our brand sprint agenda shows the day-by-day order, and brand sprint deliverables lists what you should have at the end.
- Designify brand & design sprint, fixed price
- $3,000
- Website or product explorations included
- 10
- Freelance brand sprint prices we found
- $249–$2,300
If the workshop gave you clarity and you have a designer on the team, you may not need outside help at all. If it gave you clarity and no way to express it, brand sprint cost shows what a full sprint includes at each price point.
