Brand & Marketing Critique
15 minutes
By showing our brand, marketing materials, and product to the candidate, you can gauge how they think about design and approach learning by the questions they ask. The method is equal parts evaluation and a selling tool. Great designers are naturally curious and particular want to know where the experience is currently at to understand where they can provide value.
Also, pull up personality sliders, brand values, and competitive landscape to discuss similarities and differences.
Participants
Hiring manager and designer
Prep
- Pick a brand that’s representative of your industry / market so that it’s relevant to your brand.
- Provide instructions to the candidate ahead of time. See Email Template Below.
Have Your Thoughts on the Brand Identity Ready for Conversation
- Current. What are they today?
- Desired. Where do you believe they should go?
- Others in Market or Market Adjacent
Questions to Ask for Prompting
- What do you see? How would you describe the approach?
- What’s working? What’s not?
- What are commonalities across the comparables?
- Where do you think the brand is or should be differentiated?
Things to Look For
- Do they go past the obvious issues and critique more unique elements?
- How would they validate or invalidate issues?
- What would they be excited about changing?
- How do they think it could be improved?
- How would they work with you to figure out the best design and solution?
- How much do they focus on understanding the customer versus focus on design best practices?
- What do they key in on? Is it more Brand Personality? Graphics? Copywriting? UI? Marketing? etc…
Tips
- Provide context to the user while you present
- Critique it yourself as you present to make it more comfortable
Competencies Evaluated
- Marketing Fluency
- Copywriting
- Visual Design
- Proactive
Templates
- (Email Prep Template)[https://docs.google.com/document/d/14l65-bCickNOtHIouWmaVWVqtKsWb2J17eycYdhxokA/edit]