Sort the List: Is This Brand or Marketing?

Marketing Academy · Field Work●Brand Strategy

All projects·From: Brand vs Marketing vs Advertising

MiniAudit· 20 minutes

Casper Sleep

Objective: Given a mixed list of 12 real activities from a company's operations, correctly sort each into the Brand Layer or Marketing Layer per the lesson's framework, and flag the one item that sits in both.

You're onboarding as a marketing coordinator at Casper. Your manager hands you a messy list of 12 things the team is 'working on this quarter' and asks you to sort what's actually brand work versus marketing work before the planning meeting.

Classify each of 12 real activities as Brand Layer, Marketing Layer, or both, using the lesson's two-layer model.

Before you start

What you'll need

Free path (everything below is enough to finish)

Google Sheets

FreeClassify each activity into Brand Layer or Marketing Layer

Free, fast, no setup needed for a 12-item sort

The process

1 step

Step 01 of 01

Brand Layer vs. Marketing Layer classification

The lesson splits the Brand Layer (positioning statement, brand voice, visual identity, core values) from the Marketing Layer (campaign strategy, channel mix, creative execution, performance measurement), operating on different time horizons.

Sort this list: (1) new tagline, (2) this month's Instagram ad budget, (3) core mattress-firmness positioning, (4) an A/B test on a landing page headline, (5) the color palette refresh, (6) Q3 email send calendar, (7) customer service tone guidelines, (8) a Black Friday discount code, (9) the founder's mission statement, (10) an affiliate partnership program, (11) the logo, (12) this week's paid search bids. Which layer does each belong to?

Google Sheets— A 2-column sheet: Item, Layer (Brand / Marketing / Both).

Procedure

List all 12 items in column A
Classify each against the lesson's two lists (Brand Layer items vs. Marketing Layer items)
Flag any item that genuinely straddles both layers and explain why

Sample output

1. New tagline -> Brand (voice)
2. Instagram ad budget -> Marketing (channel mix)
3. Core mattress-firmness positioning -> Brand (positioning)
4. Landing page headline A/B test -> Marketing (creative execution)
9. Founder's mission statement -> Brand (core values)
7. Customer service tone guidelines -> BOTH: brand voice applied through a marketing/CX touchpoint

Healthy

9 of 12 items sort cleanly into one layer; the 1-2 that straddle both are explicitly flagged with a reason, not just guessed.

Unhealthy

Everything gets labeled 'marketing' because it's happening inside the marketing team's sprint board, regardless of its actual time horizon or function.

What this means

Team ownership (who does the work) and layer classification (what kind of decision it is) are two different questions; a marketing team executes plenty of brand-layer work.

So what do I do about it?

Symptom	Action	Effort
Planning meeting treats a positioning change with the same urgency as a discount code	Use the sorted list to separate the quarterly brand review from the weekly campaign standup	5 min

YouYou can do this yourself, no engineering access required.

Final deliverable

A 12-item classification sheet sorting each activity into Brand Layer, Marketing Layer, or Both, with a one-line reason for each 'Both' flag.

See a reference example

Sample output

Lenskart, classification excerpt

1. In-store frame styling guidelines -> Brand (visual identity applied at a touchpoint)
2. This week's app push notification copy -> Marketing (campaign execution)
3. 'Vision for a billion eyes' mission line -> Brand (core purpose)

Success criteria

You're done when you can:

At least 10 of 12 items are correctly classified per the lesson's two lists
Any 'Both' classification includes a specific reason, not just uncertainty