Sweet Auburn Works: Idea to an Innovative Brand | SCAD SERVE x Sweet Auburn Works | 10 Weeks | 2021
Developing a Learning Toolkit For Small Business Entrepreneurs
Workshop Facilitation | Co-Creation Workshop Development | Toolkit Development | Brand Strategy | Recommendations
Jump To
Sweet Auburn Works, a local non-profit in Atlanta, Georgia, partnered with SCAD SERVE – the Savannah College of Art and design's volunteer arm that provides design-for-good solutions to communities in need.
Sweet Auburn, home to Martin Luther King Jr., and once known as the "richest black street in the world" and the epicenter of black culture due to its economic, spiritual, and political vibrancy in the 1950s, is now met with the consequences of decades of disenfranchisement eclipsing the vibrant history, culture, the spirit, and entrepreneurial essence of the neighborhood.
Hoping to revitalize the neighborhood through a retail innovation lab, we assisted in developing a learning toolkit that helps existing businesses in the area and potential entrepreneurs understand how to go from an idea to an innovative brand.
Overview
My role was to facilitate the workshops with the client, provide a unified strategic direction for developing the toolkit through combining workshops from three different groups, and ultimately guide the design of the toolkit's structure, flow, and content.
The Approach
The workshop consisted of several sequential activities to evaluate various aspects of the client's brand, like the messaging, competitors, and brand positioning. The workshop helped the entrepreneur identify and prioritize specific questions, issues, and opportunities for the short, mid, and long-term goals leading to an opportunity statement.
Our next step was to develop a co-creation workshop to help the entrepreneur solve their target objective of building a cohesive brand personality. The goal wasn't to create the identity ourselves but instead to facilitate Chisama Ku to create it herself. With this in mind, I suggested we start researching and organizing various activity ideas based on their purpose, outcomes, setup, flow, and time.
After evaluating each activity, we drafted the ones we picked into a co-creation workshop. The activities aided in the development of a strong core brand expression that is clear in its purpose, values, beliefs, and visual and tonal expression, and the workshop also helped the entrepreneur think through how to integrate each of these components in various aspects of the business such as the website, social media posts, offerings, etc.
Combining our workshop and two other teams provided a comprehensive basis for a toolkit that addressed various needs of a small business entrepreneur. Our challenge was to structure these activities into a toolkit that is easy to understand for entrepreneurs with varying knowledge bases and capabilities.
The toolkit was presented to Sweet Auburn Works, who were very happy with the results. This was a multiphase project, and the implementation part of the toolkit was passed on to the next team. Workshops, by their nature, require a facilitator. However, the adaptable nature of this toolkit allows it to be self-guided. Maybe even a collaborative endeavor where entrepreneurs can help each other in the retail innovation space.