The Brand Interview: How to Provide High-Quality Input for the Best Results
The Brand Interview is the first and most important step you will take on the Markolé platform. The answers you provide here are the "seeds" from which your entire brand identity—from your mission statement to your logo—will grow.
This is not a test, and there are no "wrong" answers. However, the depth, authenticity, and thoughtfulness of your input will directly impact the quality, power, and accuracy of the brand narratives our platform generates for you. Generic, surface-level answers will lead to a generic, surface-level brand. Passionate, specific, and honest answers will lead to a powerful, authentic brand.
This guide is designed to help you understand the purpose behind our questions so you can provide the highest-quality input possible.
The Guiding Principle: From the Heart, Not the Head
The biggest mistake users make during the Brand Interview is answering from a purely "business" mindset. They talk about market share, features, and competitors. While these things are important, they are not the source of your brand's soul.
Your brand's Core Code must come from your passion and your purpose. For this initial stage, we encourage you to take off your "CEO hat" and put on your "Founder hat." We want to hear from the person who stayed up all night sketching ideas on a napkin, the person who felt a deep frustration with the way things were, the person who has a burning desire to create something new and better.
Our questions are specifically designed to bypass corporate jargon and tap into this authentic, human core. When we ask you to "describe the future you are trying to build," we want you to be idealistic. When we ask "what problem are you most passionately solving," we want to hear the emotion. This is the raw material our AI needs to work with.
Best Practices for Answering Interview Questions
To get the best results, keep these four principles in mind as you write your answers.
1. Be Specific and Vivid
Avoid generalizations. The more detailed and sensory your answers are, the more material our platform has to build a unique identity.
- Weak Input: "We want to help businesses be more efficient."
- Good Input: "We want to eliminate the soul-crushing drudgery of manual data entry for small business owners, giving them back 5-10 hours a week to spend with their families or on growing their business."
See the difference? The second answer paints a picture, identifies a specific pain point ("soul-crushing drudgery"), and provides a tangible outcome ("5-10 hours back a week").
2. Focus on the "Who," Not Just the "What"
A great brand is obsessed with the people it serves. As you answer, constantly bring it back to your ideal customer.
- Weak Input: "Our product has more features and is more powerful."
- Good Input: "For freelance creatives who feel overwhelmed by project management, our product provides a sense of calm and control, unlike complex tools that feel like they were built for giant corporations."
The second answer identifies the "who" (freelance creatives), their feeling (overwhelmed), and the benefit they receive (calm and control).
3. Tell a Story
When a question asks about your motivation or history, don't be afraid to be personal. Share the "aha!" moment. Tell the story of the customer who transformed their business using your beta product. Stories are rich with detail, emotion, and personality—all essential ingredients for a powerful brand.
- Weak Input: "We identified a gap in the market for automated reporting."
- Good Input: "I used to spend every Friday night manually compiling reports for my boss, missing dinner with my family. I knew there had to be a better way. I built the first version of this tool for myself, simply to solve my own frustration."
The second answer is instantly more relatable, memorable, and authentic.
4. Talk Freely, Don't Edit for Perfection
This is a creative, exploratory process. Don't worry about perfect grammar or sentence structure. Write or talk freely in a stream of consciousness. The goal is to get your raw, honest thoughts onto the page. Our platform is designed to take these authentic, sometimes messy, human inputs and structure them into polished, professional narratives.
You can always refine the AI-generated outputs later in the DNA Studio. The interview stage is all about providing the most genuine and heartfelt source material possible.
Conclusion: You Are the Expert
Remember, you are the world's leading expert on your business and your vision. Our platform is simply the expert on the process of branding. The Brand Interview is where we bring those two areas of expertise together.
Take a deep breath, forget the corporate buzzwords, and answer from the perspective of the passionate founder who started it all. By providing thoughtful, authentic, and story-driven input, you are laying the foundation for a brand that will be a true and powerful reflection of your vision.