Building Your Brand

A Practical Guide for Nonprofit Organizations

Michele Levy

• Publisher: Morgan James Publishing
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN:
  9781614486756
• eBook ISBN:
  9781614486763
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Nonprofit Organizations & Charities
• Index: Business

An expert in the field shows nonprofits how to use branding and communications to deliver on their organization's mission.
 
Whether they acknowledge it or not, every nonprofit organization has a brand. Making that brand as strong as possible is a crucial component of delivering on the mission. 
 
As nonprofit leaders have begun to understand, building and managing a brand effectively is not reserved for large nonprofits or corporations with big marketing budgets. Regardless of the size of your organization, or the state and maturity of your brand, it is possible, and in fact, necessary, to build and maintain a strong, accurate brand . . . to have the "right" reputation with the people who matter most to your success. This practical, user-friendly guide is specifically designed to help senior leaders and marketing staff build and maintain that reputation.

Chapter 1

FIRST THINGS FIRST

What exactly IS a brand?

In my consulting practice and my prior life in advertising, I have found two common reactions from nonprofit leaders and board members to the concept of building a brand:

• “We don’t need a brand, we have a mission. Brands are for corporations and other big for-profit entities.”

• “Our brand is our logo, right?”

Thankfully for the nonprofit sector, those attitudes are slowly receding. In a world where more and more nonprofits are competing for diminishing resources and where professionals transition more fluidly between the corporate and nonprofit sectors, the importance of branding and marketing is better understood (but if you’re dealing with someone who STILL does not understand check out the end of this chapter for some help in making the point).

Even as staff, board members, funders, and others involved with the organization begin to understand the value of brand, however, in many cases they still don’t understand the definition of brand. It’s crucial for you, as a leader and primary brand champion, to be crystal clear as to what a brand is. Of course, it’s a little challenging to be crystal clear when there are a variety of different definitions in the marketplace! I’ve seen numerous definitions over the past 25 years, but one of my favorites comes from Mark Hurst, cofounder of Creative Good, a customer experience firm. Creative Good helps organizations deliver their customers the type of high-quality, fulfilling interactions that keep those customers coming back for more.

“The brand is what you tell your friends about afterwards. Think about it. When you have a great (or bad) experience with a restaurant/airline/hospital/website, what do you tell your friends about? Do you echo the messaging from their advertising? Do you say, ‘Hey, try them, because they had the coolest logo’? Of course not: you tell your friends what was important to you - the details about your particular experience.

And that’s the brand.

Nothing more, and nothing less, than the sum total of all the customer experiences served up by that company.”

And by the way, just because he used the word “company” here does not mean that this definition does not apply to nonprofits. Branding is branding regardless of whether you are an individual, a Fortune 500 company, or a nonprofit with a staff of three. The scope, spending, and communications tools may be different, but the foundational principles are the same (more on those foundational principles in the next chapter).

Essentially, when you build your brand, you are building and managing the perceptions of your organization, setting expectations about who you are and what you offer. That brand perception results from every single experience or contact a person has with your organization, or as Hurst puts it, “the sum total of all the customer experiences.” Branding and marketing professionals often refer to this as your “brand touchpoints,” essentially all the places where your key internal and external constituents “touch” your brand and where your brand touches them.

Right about now some of you might be thinking, “Hmmm, but I don’t really have customers, per se.” To a certain extent, it’s a matter of semantics. Every organization has internal and external constituents who matter to them. For a consumer product goods company, many of those “constituents who matter” are customers. Additionally, there may be shareholders, the media, and prospective employees. For a nonprofit organization, those “constituents who matter” are likely to include board members, donors, members, served population, the media, and prospective employees.

Another way to think about your brand perception is in terms of a simple metaphor. Consider your brand perception as a great suit of clothing. It needs to be comfortable and make you look good. It should set you apart from the crowd a bit, but not so much that you seem like you are completely out of place. Ideally, it’s a little large. Most brands are aspirational, something the organization needs to grow into a bit. But it can’t be so large that it looks silly on you!

You build your brand perception on four key foundational elements, or to continue the metaphor, you weave your suit from four threads:

• A set of consistent core messages that are relevant to your various audiences: how you talk about what you do

• A visual brand identity (including logo, fonts, color palette, and imagery used on brochures, invitations, websites, and newsletters) that effectively and efficiently communicates the essence of your brand: what your communications look like

• An agreed-upon set of consistent brand behaviors: how your staff and volunteers interact with each other and with the members of your various audiences

• An integrated plan to communicate the brand across all touchpoints: how, when, and how often you communicate with your various audiences

But wait just a minute! How do I know what perception I should be building across these touchpoints via these foundational elements? What should my suit look like? Chapter Two will help you understand how to define your unique brand opportunity.

REMIND ME AGAIN, WHY DOES BRAND MATTER FOR NONPROFIT ORGANIZATIONS?

Just in case you have a few unenlightened board or staff members who still don’t understand why a strong brand matters, here are some simple answers that generally make sense to those folks:

1.   Focus: Like an effective mission, a strong brand can help staff, members, and supporters stay focused on what’s most important to the organization. It provides a helpful framework for evaluating initiatives such as new programming and strategic partnerships. If you can’t show how an initiative supports the brand and is consistent with the mission, then you should not put resources toward it.

2.   Efficiency: A strong brand allows you to quickly establish who you are and why you matter, which is crucial when it comes to fundraising, membership, media coverage … you name it. If people have to work too hard to figure out what you are all about, they’ll move on to the next thing—and that next thing might just be an annual appeal from another organization! On a more tactical note, having effective, consistent brand tools such as a logo, visual identity, and standard messaging simply saves time. No more hunting on the server for the correct version of the logo, or making up yet another boilerplate paragraph for the latest grant application. Translation: a streamlined approach to your brand could also streamline your spending.

3.   Clarity: If the marketplace is making up its own stories about your organization, and/or your staff and board are creating umpteen versions of your messaging, chances are there is a great deal of confusion about who you are and where you are headed. That confusion is challenging for both internal and external constituencies, who are not sure “where the bus is going.” And if they are not sure where the bus is going, they may not want to get on or they may jump off in large numbers when presented with another, more clearly articulated option.

4.   Impact: With so many marketing messages (also called “noise in the marketplace”), consumers tend to be overwhelmed. And when consumers are confused, they tend to stick with what they know, which might not be you. Having a strong brand helps claim your space, gives your story a chance of being heard above the fray, and gives you a better chance of becoming the “safe” or “comfortable” option from which people don’t want to switch.

5.   Momentum: This one’s simple … and you see it every day in your own life. The strongest brands become increasingly compelling to their stakeholders. Think of the momentum around the Apple iPod or iPhone, or around a winning sports team. People want to connect with brands they see as successful.

You may occasionally be asked “What’s the difference between our mission and our brand? I don’t understand why we need both.” That’s actually a common question, and the answer is fairly straightforward. Your mission is your reason to be. It’s why your organization exists, the common purpose that engages all of your stakeholders. Your brand is how you communicate that mission—the language, imagery, and behaviors that clearly and consistently illustrate who you are, why you matter, and perhaps most important for nonprofits, why you need support.

And by the way, there is no such thing as an “unbranded” organization, company, product, or approach. You have a brand … whether you’re managing it or someone else is. Unless you are a completely new organization, there are perceptions of you in the marketplace based on the experiences individuals have had with your organization. Ultimately, it’s easier and more cost-effective to manage those perceptions from the beginning, instead of cleaning up afterward.

Chapter 2

START SMART

Identifying your unique brand opportunity

While conducting brand perception research for a start-up email marketing firm, I was struck by something that a market analyst said to me. Essentially, she indicated that the firm would never be successful until it “stood for something.” As she explained:

“One of the reasons that their key competitor is eating their lunch right now is that the competitor has drawn a line in the sand, and their entire organization is standing on that line. The competitor is crystal clear on who they are, who they serve, and what they provide. On the other hand, your client is all over the map. No one is really sure where they fit in an extremely competitive marketplace, so they tend to be overlooked and dismissed.”

As I’ve said before, if you don’t build a clear brand perception, chances are that you’re confusing everyone, including your own staff and volunteers. That clear brand perception has to reflect your organization’s “line in the sand.” And it has to be based on your understanding of both the opportunity that exists for your brand in the marketplace and what you promise to deliver in response to that opportunity. There are three keys to achieving that understanding:

• Know yourself: understand what your senior leadership, your board, your staff want and expect the organization to be, now and in the future.

• Know your audience: be very clear on what your various constituencies, including those you serve, donors, volunteers, and the media, need and expect from you.

• Know your competition: have a clear perspective on all the other options your external audiences have in terms of services, giving, and volunteering.

The intersection of these three concentric circles represents the best brand opportunity for you. At that intersection lies the brand perception that fits your internal mission and vision, meets your external stakeholder needs, and successfully differentiates your organization from your competitors.

The preparation phase: Organizing for success

Before you jump into information gathering, and definitely before you “go public” with your brand strategy initiative, it is helpful to spend a little time organizing your thoughts and resources. Regardless of whether you work with a consultant or do your brand planning in-house, being well-prepared will save you time and money, allow you to make the best of the resources at your disposal, and send a clear message to all internal stakeholders that you are in control of the situation. Never underestimate the value of looking like you know what’s going on now and where you’re heading.

How do you prepare?

1. Organize a core brand team. Ideally, it’s a small group (6 to 8) with representation from your key internal stakeholder groups such as staff, board, and volunteers. Typically, your senior leadership is not on this team, although the team and the senior leadership work very closely together. These individuals should be seasoned enough to be able to make valid, and valued, recommendations to senior leadership and the board, but connected enough to the day-to-day workings of the organization to be able to act as internal brand champions. They will be your “working group,” while senior leadership and the board are your “advisory or sponsor” group. Of course, if you are a small organization, some of these distinctions may be moot.

2. Evaluate existing data. There’s no reason to reinvent the wheel if your capital campaign consultant just did a large feasibility study that addressed key branding issues. Similarly, member surveys can provide valuable input to the branding process. The key is to make sure that these data sources are up to date and that they actually covered some of the same types of questions you need answered to build a strong brand. By the way, if you do find yourself having to “re-interview” folks who just participated in a strategic planning process, make sure you adequately communicate that this is another phase of the work, complementary to, and leveraging, the work done during strategic planning (see the sidebar note in Step 1 for a quick explanation of how strategic planning and brand strategy should connect).

3. Set deadline...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Introduction: How and why would you use this book?
• Chapter 1 First things first: What exactly IS a brand?
• Chapter 2 Start smart: Identifying your unique brand opportunity
• Chapter 3 Lay the foundation: Weaving an engaging story
• Chapter 4 Make it look good: Building a high impact visual brand identity
• Chapter 5 Everyone on the bus now: Defining and instilling the appropriate brand behaviors
• Chapter 6 Go tell it on the mountain: Developing an integrated marketing communications plan
• Chapter 7 How to know if it’s working: Measuring and reporting on progress against goals
• Chapter 8 Brand never sleeps: The ongoing care and feeding of your brand
• Chapter 9 Need help?: When and how to use a consultant
• Chapter 10 What’s in a name?: Thoughts on name changes, name updates and all the stress that accompanies the prospect
• Conclusion
• About the author