We had the pleasure of meeting the team from science.lu for one day in an intensive Brand workshop with the aim of improving the existing Brand strategy and to organise communication in such a way that it achieves broad social acceptance for science and research.
The starting position: A strong brand with a new claim
science.lu is not an unknown brand in Luxembourg. The platform has been communicating research results, scientific projects and initiatives from the Grand Duchy for years - in a way that is understandable and accessible to the general public. Behind it is a dedicated team of science communicators at the FNR, including Jean-Paul Bertemes (editor-in-chief of science.lu), Joseph Rodesch (better known as „Mr Science“), Linda Wampach, Lucie Zeches and Michèle Weber.
But as with many established brands, a crucial question arises at some point: Is what has brought us here enough for the next step?
The demands on science communication have changed. In times of fake news, social media bubbles and growing mistrust of institutions, it is no longer enough to produce good content. A brand like science.lu must be clearly positioned, connect emotionally and assert itself in an increasingly noisy media environment. This requires a strategic sharpening - and this is exactly what we designed the workshop for.
What is a Brand Foundation Sprint?
We call the format that we have implemented in Luxembourg a Brand Sprint - a condensed short form of our brand workshop AI Brand Foundation Sprint, The brand management team is a team that develops or refines the strategic foundations of a brand in a single day.
The brand sprint differs from a complete branding process in one key respect: it focuses on the Strategic substance - and deliberately excludes the storytelling level. This means that at the end of the day, there are no finished campaigns or slogans, but a sharpened foundation on which everything else can be built.
What this workshop delivers:
Brand positioning: What does the brand stand for - and what does it deliberately not stand for? What distinguishes it from other players in the same field?
Understanding the target group: Who do we want to reach? What moves these people? What language do they speak - figuratively, but also literally in a multilingual country like Luxembourg?
Value proposition: What is the concrete benefit that the brand offers its target groups? Not abstract, but tangible and communicable.
Brand personality: If the brand were a person - how would it appear? What tone does it strike? What values does it embody?
Key messages: What are the three to five statements that everyone in the team should know and be able to communicate?
What a Brand Sprint does not deliver:
The sprint deliberately contains No storytelling - In other words, no elaborate narratives, no brand story in the classic sense, no content strategy. This is not an omission, but a method: the strategic foundation must be right before stories can be built on it. If you reverse the order, you may tell beautiful stories - but without a foundation, they sound arbitrary.
In a complete brand process, the storytelling part would follow as the second sprint: Brand Story, Messaging Framework, Content Guidelines. For science.lu, the foundation sprint was the right first step because the brand already existed and communicated - but the strategic basis needed a refresh.
Why a workshop - and not a strategy paper?
A question we often hear: „Can't you just write a brand strategy?“ Of course we could. But a document that someone has created externally rarely becomes the centrepiece of an organisation. It ends up in Sharepoint, is presented once - and then forgotten.
A Brand workshop works differently. And for three reasons:
Ownership through participation. When the team develops the brand strategy together, something is created that no external paper can achieve: genuine ownership. The results don't feel contrived because they come from the team's own thinking - moderated and structured, but not dictated. This is particularly important in organisations like the FNR, where the people who bring the brand to life on a daily basis must also be the ones who understand and represent it.
Implicit knowledge becomes visible. Every team has a lot of knowledge that has never been written down: About target groups, about impact, about what works and what doesn't. A good workshop makes this knowledge visible and usable. A common picture emerges that previously only existed in fragments.
Fast, binding decisions. Decisions are made in the workshop context - not postponed. This is one of the biggest advantages over traditional coordination processes, which can take weeks or months. At the end of the day, there is a result that everyone is committed to.
This is how the day in Luxembourg was organised
The workshop took place in what is probably the best-known science lab in Luxembourg - a location that could not have been better suited. Co-moderated and designed by Jihee Hwang and myself, the day followed a clear dramaturgy:
Morning: stocktaking and target group work
We started with an honest stocktaking: Where does the science.lu brand stand today? What works well, what less so? What are the perceptions of internal stakeholders and target groups?
To do this, we played through different perspectives with the team - from the student who lands on science.lu for the first time, to the researcher who wants to communicate her findings, to the politician who is looking for arguments in favour of research funding. These Target group empathy exercise is an essential building block because it takes the team out of its own expert perspective - out of the curse of knowledge and into the shoes of the people you want to reach.
Afternoon: Positioning, values and core messages
In the second part, we got down to business: What is the one sentence that describes what science.lu stands for? What values guide the communication? And what are the messages that should resonate in every interaction - whether on the website, in social media or at an event like the Science Festival?
This shows the value of a moderated process: In open discussions, teams often go round in circles. In the workshop we work with structured methods - Silent brainstorming, dot voting, forced ranking - which ensure that all voices are heard and that real decisions are made at the end, not just opinions.
Result: A sharpened brand foundation
At the end of the day, the team had a result that felt concrete: an updated positioning, sharpened core messages and a shared understanding of how the science.lu brand should appear in the future. Not an 80-page strategy document - but a living, shared foundation.
Science communication as brand work: Why the topic is bigger than it sounds
The workshop in Luxembourg showed once again: Science communication is brand work. Anyone who wants to communicate science to the general public faces exactly the same challenges as any company that has to make a complex product understandable.
The parallels are striking:
The curse of knowledge. Scientists and SciCom professionals know a great deal about their topics. This is exactly what makes it difficult to communicate on a level that people without prior knowledge immediately understand. The same challenge that we see with tech start-ups, B2B companies or healthcare brands - just in a different domain.
Trust as a currency. At a time when disinformation is flourishing, trust is a science brand's most valuable asset. This trust does not come from more information, but from clear, consistent and authentic communication. In other words, through good branding.
Create emotional relevance. Facts alone do not move anyone. People are interested in science when they understand why it is relevant to their own lives. This is essentially a storytelling task - and therefore a brand task.
Visibility in the digital space. Even a science brand competes for attention - with news portals, social media content, podcasts and YouTube channels. Without clear positioning and a recognisable brand identity, it gets lost in the crowd.
When is a Brand Foundation Sprint the right format?
The Brand Foundation Sprint is particularly suitable for organisations that are already communicating - but notice that the strategic basis is no longer sustainable or has never been explicitly formulated. Typical signs:
Everyone in the team describes the brand differently. If you ask five colleagues what the organisation stands for, you will get six answers. That's not a communication problem - it's a strategy problem.
Content production feels tough. Texts are endlessly revised because nobody is sure what „the right tone“ is. Coordination takes longer than writing. This is almost never due to the copywriters, but to a lack of guidelines.
The brand has grown, but not intentionally. Many organisations - especially in the public and non-profit sector - have a brand that „just happened“. This is not bad per se. But at some point, a conscious decision needs to be made: Is this how we want our brand to be perceived? Or do we want to actively manage it?
A new phase of life is about to begin. Website relaunch, new target groups, changed funding landscape, political change - there are many triggers that make a strategic sharpening of the brand sensible. The sprint is the most efficient way to get started.
What happens after the sprint: From strategy to implementation
A Brand Foundation Sprint is a beginning - not a conclusion. The results of the workshop form the foundation for everything that follows. Depending on the organisation and ambition, these can be various next steps:
Storytelling and messaging framework. Building on the positioning, narratives are developed: the brand story, product stories, target group-specific messages. This is the part that we deliberately left out of the foundation sprint - and which can follow as a separate workshop or project phase.
Visual identity. Logo, colour scheme, typography, visual language - the visual translation of the strategy. For established brands such as science.lu, this is often not about a complete reboot, but about an evolution: careful sharpening instead of a radical break.
Content strategy and editorial planning. If you know what the brand stands for and who it wants to reach, you can systematically plan content - instead of reactively producing what is currently available.
Brand Guidelines. All decisions are recorded in a living document: Tone of voice, do's and don'ts, visual rules, messaging building blocks. The brand playbook becomes a reference point for the entire team.
Our relationship with Luxembourg: more than a single workshop
The brand workshop for science.lu is not our first project in Luxembourg. We have previously worked with the FNR on projects such as ƒLux, a brand concept for a TV format, which was designed to inspire young people to study STEM subjects. The name „ƒLux“ combined maths (ƒ = function), physics (Flux = river) and the region (Lux = Luxembourg) in one word. Although the project was not realised in the final pitch decision (it now runs under the name „Take Off“), it shows how we combine creative brand development and strategic thinking - even under time pressure and in a pitch context.
This experience and the trust that developed were certainly one reason why the FNR team invited us back to Luxembourg. And it was a pleasure for us to work with such a passionate team - people who work every day to make science understandable and exciting for everyone.
Conclusion: Branding is not a luxury - not even for science communication
Whether you are a start-up, a medium-sized company or a publicly funded research organisation: anyone who communicates has a brand. The only question is whether this brand is consciously designed or left to chance.
The Brand Foundation Sprint in Luxembourg showed that a single focused day can be enough to sharpen the strategic basis of a brand - provided the right people are in the room, the moderation is structured and the goal is clearly defined.
For science.lu, this means a clearer positioning, jointly supported core messages and a foundation on which science communication in Luxembourg can continue to grow - in an environment that urgently needs precisely this clarity.
Many thanks to Jean-Paul Bertemes, Joseph Rodesch, Linda Wampach, Lucie Zeches and Michèle Weber from the FNR for the invitation, trust and creative collaboration. And to Jihee Hwang for co-moderation and workshop design.
Would you like to sharpen your organisation's brand strategy? Whether in one day or in a more comprehensive process - we will find the format that suits your situation. Book an appointment →
