Nonprofits
How Branding Hurts Your Brand
A brand is bigger than a set of rules you can put down in a spiral-bound book.
If you’ve always suspected the “brand police” were up to no good, you just might be right. Branding, a narrowly defined exercise that says you become identifiable through consistency, can badly undermine your message.
If your brand consists of a logo, some prescribed font choices, color palates, and a list of forbidden phrases—that’s all it’s going to be.
And that’s not just neutral; it’s destructive.
As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” Slavish devotion to brand guidelines tends to eliminate real thought. And I can almost guarantee you that anything you do that’s truly pro-donor will violate the consistency of the brand!
Your brand is what you do and who you are. What you look like is the smallest part of that. Most branding guidebooks pay lip-service to this fact, but none of them do anything about it. And that’s no surprise, because they can’t. A brand is bigger than a set of rules you can put down in a spiral-bound book.
If you have a great brand—one that aligns with the beliefs, hopes, and self-image of your donors—you can laugh at the puny efforts of the brand police to achieve consistency.
Old-school branding is a lot like the thing it’s named after: You burn your logo onto your donor’s butt with a red-hot iron. Whether she wants it or not.
New-school brand building is almost exactly opposite that. You discover how you fit into your donor’s dreams. Then you articulate that with passion.
Jeff Brooks is creative director at Merkle|Domain, a direct-response agency serving the nonprofit world. He blogs at the Donor Power Blog.
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COMMENTS
BY Sean Stannard-Stockton
ON October 22, 2007 09:49 PM
Jeff, I need to get a photo like yours instead of the stuffy one I use with me in a tie.
Do you think that branding is about how you fit into your donor’s dreams, or is it about how your organization allows your donor to express their dream? A for-profit company with no mission might find that profit maximization means that they change what they do to please the customer. But a mission focused nonprofit needs to get people to join them in their mission or show the donor how their mission is an expression of the donor’s beliefs. What if your mission does not fit into your donor’s dream? Shouldn’t a mission focused organization stick to their mission, even if doing so does not maximize fundraising dollars?
Isn’t sticking to your mission the ultimate brand position for a nonprofit?
BY Melanie Schmidt
ON October 24, 2007 02:54 PM
Looks are important. Let’s not fool ourselves. So, is consistency. People put greater stock in organizations that offer a sense of consistency in what they say and how they say it, particularly when they are talking to different constituents.
Consistency for the sake of consistency is bad. Yes. But consistency for the sake of reinforcing a core purpose with diverse constituencies ... far from bad. In fact, very good. Without it, you have no brand.
Great brands, in our experience, don’t laugh at the efforts of people to ensure consistency. Great brands reflect great brand guidelines that help people at all levels of the organization articulate the brand—who they are, what they stand for, what they want to accomplish and why they’re relevant.
If nonprofits don’t have it, their employees should demand it. Infuse the story. Go from a set of mechanical guidelines to a coloring book that outlines the big picture and allows each employee to add his/her personal flair with their favorite colors from the box of 24 crayons.
Without a clear and consistent framework for how things look and how they sound, the who and what of your organization can get lost in trying desparately to connect with a donor’s dream.
BY Jeff Brooks
ON October 25, 2007 09:47 AM
Sean, I completely agree that the best nonprofit will have a clear mission and stick to it. That’s the best way to serve donors. It’s worth pointing out that you can’t please everyone, and you shouldn’t even try. Know your mission, know your donors, and your brand will be where the two intersect.
The problem with many nonprofit brands (as with many for-profit brands) is they are essentially LOOK AT ME brands. They’re all about defining their own wonderfulness. Done right, it will be a LOOK AT YOU brand, defining what the organization can mean in the life of the donor.
BY Chakradhar Mahapatra
ON October 25, 2007 09:33 PM
As a layman, I think branding is an excercise in future tense, where future purpose and meaning becomes much more important than past attributes and achievements.
BY Larry Johnson
ON October 30, 2007 01:44 PM
Branding is still important to non-profit organizations. Consistency too. If the organization is seen as unprofessional, disorganized, having an excess of resources, or if they have compromised their mission, they need to address those issues. People want to feel that their involvement or funds make a difference and will be appreciated.
Whether it is called branding, identity, positioning or image, it is too important to leave it to chance.
BY Angela Hill
ON October 30, 2007 04:45 PM
A brand is more than just your logo or website or brochure - it is the true extension of your brand and it’s promise from environment to event to interaction with your staff. A brand is about who you are and who you want to be and ensuring your integrity is aligned with your authenticity. Brand consistency is a must. I do not mean brand over-duplication in which every item looks like identical to the last one as you mentioned. Rather, I believe there is room for a brand family with a flexible system of colors and imagery applied across multiple variables to create harmony not uniformity. In the end, a truly successful non-profit brand is true to their core values and finds other like for profit brands with like values to partner with and create mutually beneficial cause marketing relationships.
BY E Fogel
ON November 2, 2007 06:34 AM
I agree with Angela - brand consistency is a must. As for brand identity, there can be an overarching brand look and feel with complementary sub-brands for specific programs and services that require unique attention.
Here’s an article I’m happy to share with SSRI readers.
http://content.epnet.com/ContentServer.asp?T=P&P=AN&K=25346356&EbscoContent=dGJyMMTo50SeprA4zOX0OLCmrk+eprdSsam4S7WWxWXSAAAA&ContentCustomer=dGJyMOPm30bf499G9NvmAAAA&S=R&D=veh
Elaine Fogel
http://www.solutionsmc.net
BY Marty
ON November 15, 2007 01:35 PM
Brand is what you do. It is the experience of the interaction. Strong brands in our sector are not about colors and logos but consistent experience and action. Moveon, The Nature Conservancy, Greenpeace, Habitat for Humanity (I don’t even know the official logos or colors or fonts of those groups) I know those brands.
In our sector we are not splitting hairs on soft drink choices. WE are “Selling” themes and stories. Once someone engages with us it is there interactivity with us that is the brand.
Unfortunately, we are treating the public like an ATM these days and that is becoming all our brand.