Brand Lab: Strategic Co-Creation for Complex-Product Teams
Built for marketing, communication, product, and leadership teams in technology-driven and complex-product organizations.
Your product is exceptional. But its value gets lost in translation.
Technology-driven teams spend years building powerful solutions and struggle to explain them in a way that actually lands.
Brand Lab is a series of strategic co-creation sessions designed to help complex-product and B2B organizations turn that complexity into clear, differentiated, human value.
Does any of this sound familiar?
If you recognized yourself in any of these, you’re in the right place.
Strategic Co-Creation Workshops for Brand Innovation
Find the session that solves your challenge.
Your product’s value gets lost in technical language
Your solution is powerful, but your pitch, your web, and your presentations don’t reflect it.
Teams struggle to explain what they do without sounding like a manual. Clients don’t connect. Sales cycles stretch.
Value Proposition Lab
Working together, your team surfaces and articulates the value that already lives inside the organization, the knowledge, the differentiation, and the real reasons clients choose you.
The kind of clarity that’s been there all along but never made it into the room at the same time.
Often, what surfaces in this session isn’t just a messaging problem, it’s a misalignment about what the product’s real value actually is. That’s the most important thing to fix first.
You leave with: A Value Proposition Map and key messages ready to activate across marketing, sales, and product.
4 hours · In-person · 5–12 people
Want to validate your value proposition against real market data? Ask us about our research input service.
Every department tells a different brand story
Marketing says one thing, sales another, product another.
Clients feel the inconsistency even when they can’t name it. Internal friction slows everything down.
Team Brand Alignment & Value Narrative Workshop
Your cross-functional team maps the gaps, finds the common language, and builds a unified value narrative together.
One story. Every department.
You leave with: A Brand Alignment Map and a narrative foundation your whole organization can use.
4 hours · In-person · 5–12 people
Your team has lost connection with why you exist
Your brand is defined somewhere in a document nobody reads.
The team executes but doesn’t feel the why behind the work.
Every new campaign starts from scratch because there’s no clear north star.
Brand North Star Reconnection
Your team reconnects with the brand’s purpose, values, and personality, in their own words.
Not as a corporate exercise, but as a genuine act of alignment.
Often, what surfaces in this session is that the north star exists, but nobody owns it. This session makes it visible, shared, and actionable.
You leave with: Your brand’s core in your team’s own words; purpose, values, personality, and voice, plus a bank of ideas to activate the brand from the inside out.
4 hours · In-person · 5–12 people
Not sure if your organization has a solid strategic brand foundation to reconnect with? Sometimes the issue isn’t alignment, it’s that the foundation was never fully built. Ask us about our Brand Platform development service.
You need a powerful message and you need it now
A launch, an event, a new market entry. The message needs to land fast, feel different from every competitor, and actually move the people in the room.
Innovation Message Sprint
A focused sprint that goes from challenge to message to creative angles in one session.
Fast, strategic, and built to activate immediately.
You leave with: A Message Activation Pack; central message, three creative angles, storyline, and quick activation ideas for events, web, and campaigns.
4 hours · In-person · 5–12 people
This session works best when the team has a clear picture of their audience. If that’s something you’re unsure about, consider combining this sprint with the Audience Profiling session.
Your understanding of your audience is based on assumptions, not evidence
You’ve been talking to who you thought your audience was.
But markets shift, cultures change, and assumptions get expensive, especially in complex B2B and international contexts.
Audience Profiling & Integration Workshop
Your team maps what they know, what they assume, and, critically, what they don’t know about their audiences.
You surface the gaps, challenge the biases, and identify the real questions that need answers.
You leave with: An Audience Hypothesis Map; audience assumptions made visible, key gaps identified, emotional and rational drivers explored, and strategic opportunities surfaced.
4 hours · In-person · 5–12 people
This session delivers its full value when combined with qualitative audience research. Ask us about our research input service.
Your sector is shifting and you don’t know where to take the brand
The market is moving. Competitors are repositioning.
New technologies are changing what’s possible.
You need to innovate, but can’t tell which direction is the real signal versus noise.
Future Scenarios for Brand Innovation
Using real cultural signals, trend intelligence, and collective foresight, your team builds 2–3 plausible future scenarios and identifies the innovation territories where your brand has the most to gain.
You leave with: A Brand Futures Pack + 2–3 future scenarios, a signals and cultural tension map + 3–4 innovation territories, and first strategic angles ready to explore.
4 hours · In-person · 5–12 people
This session is most powerful when fed with real cultural signals and trend intelligence. Ask us about our research input service to ensure your scenarios are grounded in evidence, not assumptions.
Your team‘s creativity is stuck and ideas aren’t coming
You know you need fresh thinking for your next campaign, activation, or brand story.
But the usual brainstorm produces the usual ideas. You need a different kind of energy in the room.
Ideation Lab for Marketing & Communication
A structured creative session that transforms the insights your team already has into prioritized, actionable ideas. Bring your best insights. Leave with your best ideas.
You leave with: An Idea Deck of 10–20 prioritized concepts for marketing, communication, events, and brand activation, with next steps mapped.
4 hours · In-person · 5–12 people
How Brand Lab Works
One session or a full strategic journey… you decide.
Sessions can be booked individually to solve a specific challenge, or combined for deeper and more lasting impact.
- Single Session One focused challenge. One powerful outcome. The right starting point when you know exactly what needs to shift.
- Double Session Pack Two connected challenges, sequenced for clarity. Ideal for teams that need both internal alignment and external activation.
- Brand Sprint Three to four sessions for organizations ready for full strategic alignment across multiple dimensions of their brand.
- Custom Program We design the right journey for your team — combining strategic co-creation sessions with research and brand strategy development when needed. For organizations that understand the value of having brand strategy and teams working in sync, and want to cultivate that value from the inside out.
Every session includes:
About the Facilitator
Erlin Salgado
Creative Intelligence Director & Founder, TRENDSform
For over 12 years, Erlin has worked inside the rooms where complex-product organizations struggle most, where brilliant technology and innovation meet the inability to explain it, where teams know their value but can’t find the words, where strategy exists on paper but not in people.
What makes her approach different is how she connects things others keep separate: research and creativity, technology and human behavior, brand strategy and team dynamics. This cross-disciplinary lens is what turns complexity into clarity. She sees the brand as an umbrella for continuous innovation, cultivated from the inside out.
Her clients include global connectivity organizations, industrial companies, and innovation-driven brands across Europe and LATAM.
Erlin works with a curated network of specialist collaborators across research, design, and creative direction.
Brand Lab answers the needs detected in over a decade of real sessions with real teams, distilled into a methodology that works from the inside out: Creative Intelligence for Complex Products.
Ready to turn your complexity into value?
Book a discovery call and we’ll help you find the right session for your challenge. No templates, no guesswork, just a conversation.
FAQs
What is a Brand Lab workshop?
A Brand Lab session is a strategic co-creation workshop designed to help marketing, communication, and product teams in technology-driven and complex-product organizations turn their value into clear, differentiated messaging. Each session tackles a specific challenge and ends with a concrete deliverable.
How long does each Brand Lab session last?
Every session runs for 4 hours, including structured co-creation, synthesis, and a formal deliverable with activation recommendations.
Who should attend a Brand Lab session?
Sessions are designed for strategic groups of 5 to 12 people. This keeps the conversation focused and ensures every voice contributes meaningfully.
Can we book more than one session?
Yes. Sessions can be booked individually or combined into packs for deeper impact: Double Session Pack, Brand Sprint (3–4 sessions), or a Custom Program for organizations with broader needs.
What format are sessions delivered in?
Brand Lab sessions are delivered in-person. This is intentional: the quality of co-creation, team dynamics, and collective output is significantly richer when teams are physically together.
Can sessions be delivered online or in hybrid format?
Brand Lab sessions are designed and optimized for in-person delivery. The quality of co-creation, team dynamics, and collective output is significantly richer when teams are physically together and that’s what we recommend.
That said, we understand some situations require flexibility. If your team is distributed or an in-person session isn’t possible, get in touch and we’ll explore what’s feasible.
Do we need to prepare anything beforehand?
Every session includes a pre-session briefing where we align on your context, goals, and what to bring to the room. Preparation varies by session, some require existing brand materials or internal insights, others just need the right people. Don’t worry, we’ll tell you exactly what you need before we start.
We’re a large organization with multiple teams. Can Brand Lab work for us?
Sessions are designed for strategic groups of up to 12 people. For organizations needing alignment across multiple teams or at a company-wide level, we offer custom programs. Get in touch and we’ll design the right approach.
How is Brand Lab different from a regular workshop?
Brand Lab sessions combine qualitative insight, strategic facilitation, and creative co-creation specifically built for complex-product organizations. The methodology has been developed over 12 years of real sessions with B2B technology, industrial, and innovation-driven teams. Every session ends with a concrete, actionable deliverable, not just a post-it wall.
Where are Brand Lab sessions delivered?
Sessions are delivered in-person at your location. Based in Barcelona, Erlin travels across Europe to facilitate Brand Lab sessions.
For Latin America, sessions are available during scheduled facilitation seasons throughout the year, primarily based in Mexico City with travel across the region. If you’re interested in a session in LATAM, get in touch early to check availability for the next season.
All sessions can be facilitated in English or Spanish.