Two thousand nineteen was a magical year for our community in Lisbon. We started from zero: the first Brand the Change Meetup in Lisbon was on the 28th of February. Nine meetups followed, 130 people attended, and we brainstormed and advised 30 brands. Wow! This is magical! 

Class Two hails from 10 different countries and represents an amazing set of talent and experience from the business world, social and creative sectors.

Class One hails from nine different countries and features people with very different experiences and skillsets: from marketing at a large entertainment company, to personal coaching for millennials, and everything in between.

Brand the Change continues to hit a nerve with lots of people across the world, and we think the best way for the book to make a real difference, is to bring people together so they can learn from each others experiences, lessons learned and expertise.

Online facilitation is an art in and of itself.

I am so excited to share this news, because it has been three years in the making: our book has been translated to Arabic, and contains two extra case studies from the Middle East!

On our quest to support thousands of changemakers worldwide, we now present the next chapter in our journey: Class Zero of our Train the Trainers Program! Meet our 15 future trainers.

In 2017, we ran an 8 month pilot to train trainers to work with our Brand the Change method. Here is what we learned along the way.

Walking our talk with the Manifesto Maker exercise.

Introduce the twelve brave souls who are joining us to test the materials and co-create the program.

Two years ago, in the summer of 2014, I packed my bags and started on my journey as The Brandling. Where do we go from here?

Two years ago, in the summer of 2014, I packed my bags and started on my journey as The Brandling. Am I moving closer to what I set out to achieve?

One of our toolkit readers, Ia Lising from Japan had a great question: where can we discuss our ideas, challenges and dilemma's with other toolkit users?

After years of dreaming, three months of beta-version development and testing, one month of crowdfunding preparation, 28 days of Kickstarter campaigning, four months of writing, interviews, research and editing, a month of design and production, four pro bono Brand Camps, 12 hours of individual brand consultancy and a week of packing and shipping we are thrilled to announce the official launch of the Branding Toolkit for Changemakers!

In October 2015, we ran a 28 day crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter to raise the funds to develop our Branding Toolkit for Changemakers. We received an incredible amount of support and managed to raise 103% of our goal. The toolkit was published last month, and now that we can take a step back and look at the process of developing a book and running a crowdfunding campaign, we thought it would be interesting to share our experience with others who might be thinking about crowdfunding as a way to fund their project.

“No one has ever asked us what our dream job would be.” The head of Alf Darb academy translates for me to english, gathering up feedback from 25 female participants in the pilot of a custom designed Self Branding Toolkit. “I feel like I was lost in a maze, and you have showed me the way forward.”. The smiles in the group radiate towards me. Even in something as functional as giving feedback, the poetic beauty of Arabic cannot help but slip through. And yet, it’s the end of a week of so many completely foreign impressions and deep emotions, that even such profoundly moving feedback isn’t the highlight.

Last year in October The Brandling was born, with the aim of empowering social entrepreneurs to increase their impact. We are now celebrating our first year anniversary, have worked with over 150 changemakers, and our conviction that branding is crucial for social impact has only grown. Here is what we have come to believe, above all, after the first 12 months.

Client, collaborator and friend Easkey Britton shared a message of support with me this morning. Easkey Britton is a professional surfer, scientist, artist and activist, and the force behind Waves of Freedom, Sustain the Stoke and the Surf+Social Good Summit. Together, we worked on Easkey's personal brand strategy in Donegal last year, using the Brand Thinking Canvas.