brand-discovery

1# Brand Discovery
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3Upstream of every brief, identity, and content plan. Discovery answers four questions: who the brand is for, what they need, who else is competing for that need, and where the brand could plausibly stand that competitors do not.
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7## When to use
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9- The very first phase of a new brand or website project
10- Understanding an audience before any creative work begins
11- Mapping competitors and category dynamics
12- Surfacing the problem space the brand will operate in
13- Generating positioning territories before brief or ideation
14- When a creative brief was requested but the inputs are missing
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16## When NOT to use
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18- The audience and category are already well-understood (jump to `creative-brief` or `brand-ideation`)
19- Validating a specific design or feature with users (use `usability-testing`)
20- Mapping the customer journey of an existing audience (use `journey-mapping`)
21- Generating brand names or visual directions (use `brand-ideation`)
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25## Required inputs
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27- The product, service, or organization being branded
28- Whatever is already known about the audience and category (often very little)
29- Access to existing materials (sales calls, support tickets, reviews, analytics)
30- Any constraints (parent brand, regulatory, geographic)
31- A timeline (a 1-week discovery looks different than a 6-week one)
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35## The framework: 4 dimensions
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37Discovery covers four dimensions. Each has its own sources, methods, and outputs.
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39### 1. Audience
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