Category Archives: Your Brand

Brand ambassadors are the voice of your brand

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voice balloonYour brand voice will set the tone for all of your communications; but is often overlooked by organizations when they develop messaging and redesign their brand.  As a result, depending on who the author of any given communication on your behalf may be, your communications can sound haphazard and jarring to your audiences – creating inconsistencies that are confusing and even uncomfortable.

A good brand guide should not only address basics like color palette, elevator speech, tag lines, logos, and visual identity. Your brand guide needs to cover the voice and style in which your organization addresses the audience.  Some elements of your voice might differ depending on the channel – for instance, your voice on Facebook might be more informal and fun than your voice on your website, a blog, or your content resources.

Nevertheless, your audience should always be aware that it is your organization talking.

A consistent brand voice requires you to educate all of those in your organization. Any member of your staff can be a brand ambassador, but only if they know about the voice and the messages that are important to you.

Check out the Cleveland Clinic branding site.

Cleveland Clinic goes beyond the basic brand guidelines for their staff. Their OnBrand website helps to educate their brand ambassadors about their history, mission, and “pride points” – helping staff to visualize what kinds of stories will support the organization best when shared with customers.

OnBrand does more than just act as a resource for staff. Cleveland Clinic’s brand team goes proactive, with educational pushes about their branding messages and elements, on their intranet.

 

So What? Writing about benefits v. features

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Image of Post it NotesAs you develop your branding messages and work from that to create more specific messages about what you do, always keep in mind that you are addressing your customers – and that they are looking for a solution to a problem.

While it’s important when designing a service to understand how the features of your service make it (and you) distinctive), be careful not to leave your marketing message there.  It’s only the first step in communicating effectively.

Features describe the content of the service or product: what does it do, what does it have, how does it work?

Features are important to the customers who will choose you from an array of options. Anyone who has referred to Consumer Reports before buying a car or appliance knows that we all love comparison charts and checklists – and those are all about features.  But the reason that your customers are looking for a set of features is to solve a problem. Even in business, that problem is likely to have a business component and a personal component.  The more you know about both, the more you can resonate with your audience.

Benefits are what your services or products will help your prospect to do, They describe what the customer wants to accomplish and how they will help to get there. This is the business or work goal that you designed for.

Best of all is when you understand your customer well enough to go deep, and speak to their personal motivation in the matter. People make decisions and selections in their professional lives all the time based on emotional and personal responses, justified with logical processes. Understanding what they are really feeling helps you to describe not just a benefit, but a really good benefit.

Good benefits address your customer’s motivation and personal investment in their project or goal, and identify meaning on a more emotional level.

I love Post it® Notes, so they’ll serve as a good example of features v. benefits here.

Feature:  Post it® Notes are designed in an array of colors and sizes that you can mix and match; and you can stick them in one place and then easily move them around when you change your mind about an idea.

Benefit: When I am designing a service, Post it® Notes allow me to work on ideas that have many parts and levels and capture evolving thought. They solve the problem of how to brainstorm together with a group without confusion or mess.

Good Benefit: Post it® Notes are an excellent collaboration tool that help me to lead while ensuring that I’m including all voices in the group in the process of creation, and discover ideas that I might not have otherwise surfaced.

Finally, when you are writing about your brand, product, or service, be mindful about going the extra mile to distinguish between serving up a list of features and really conveying what your offering will do for the customer; pragmatically and emotionally. As yourself:

  • So what? (ask it multiple times, not just once)
  • Why do they want that feature?
  • What are they trying to do that will make them choose this?
  • How do they want to feel about their project or goal – what are their personal motivations?
  • How will your offering create a positive emotional reaction for your customers?

 

 

Setting guidelines for your brand

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wwrd_brandbook_xfeed-10_2048What is in a brand identity guide?

One of the final products of all of the work, thinking, and decision-making that will go into the establishment of your brand should be a document containing the elements that are needed to carry it forward. Without formally identifying your goal, primary messages, and voice, there’s little hope of ensuring the consistency in your communications that’s essential to keeping your brand remarkable and memorable.

Many are familiar with the brand style guide that is a typical outcome of working with a graphic designer on your logo, colors, and overall look. These visual elements should absolutely be a part of the overall brand identity guide; and the guide should tell readers where and how to use logos, icons, fonts, and so on. I would strongly recommend that you not forget your online presence. If you are working with an outside designer, it’s a good idea to identify a designer or firm that is experienced with mixed media and online elements; and consider asking them not only for logo treatment, fonts, and graphic icons and elements needed for your main ideas and topics, but also for website button and icon art – and if you are considering a redesign of your website, possibly menu and page mockups. This remains the best way to ensure that your visual look will carry through on the web; but not all graphic designers are comfortable with mixed media.

It doesn’t stop with your brand’s visual style guide.

The style guide for visual elements of your brand is one piece of the overall direction that you’ll provide in order to help staff, vendors, and external consultants or others fully understand your brand. Following, you’ll find my general list of the critical pieces of information that belong in any Brand Identity Guide.  Please feel free to use it as a checklist, or modify it for your project.  You can also download a copy of the  Brand Identity Guide; and we’ll talk more about a number of these elements and how to develop them in other posts.

Brand Identity Guide

Introduction for staff and other readers of the Guide

  • Why are we doing this work? What do we hope to achieve with a strong brand?
  • The overall voice and style of your brand and organization – description of the voice (with examples). How will we talk to our audiences? Formally, informally –what is the voice we strive to use and how will it be executed?
  • Your main audiences – who are your main audiences (customers), what do you want them to know and do? Will your voice vary depending on audience?
  • Are there cultural and social/emotional considerations in wording and imagery that you choose as part of your consistent voice to your audiences? What are the words we like to use and words we don’t like to use?
  • Storytelling voice: If human interest “stories” are important to your overall messages and communication plan, your Identity Guide should contain a sample of how one of these might look, along with notes about process – where will stories come from, who should they focus on, to what purpose, and how will you ask for and obtain permission from subjects.
  • What types of images or art should we consistently try to leverage in our communications?
  • Keywords we want our customers and community to use to describe us (embedded in the brand)

Brand Messaging (This is messaging that should be used by all, consistently, when talking about your organization in any context)

  • Tag Line: This should be 3-8 word statement that conveys the essence of your brand value quickly and in a memorable way. It can and should be viewed alongside the organization’s name and logo.
  • Naming System: when do we use the full name, acronym, with/without tag line; and how to use it in conjunction with the names of our distinct services, programs, or sub-brands. This also describes when to use the organization logo.
  • The organization’s Branding Statement – 60-80 words. The Branding Statement is not a description of the services you provide; rather it is meant to convey who and what you are and what your unique promise is to your customers. The branding statement should be developed in a way that can strongly position you against competitors and help you to stand out from others.
  • The summary description of the organization – boilerplate – use in press releases, fact sheets, annual reports, on the website, and as standard text in brochures and other pieces. What are you, how long have you been around, what services do you provide and to whom? This is not an exhaustive list – it should also be limited to 60-85 words at most.
  • Positioning statement: This is a valuable statement for internal use by your staff, sales, and communications specialists. From this statement, they’ll be able to readily draw the main components that differentiate you from competitors in terms of value, benefits, style and voice. These can be used in conversation, proposals, and the creation of ongoing messages. This will help to focus your stakeholders on how you are different from your competitors. This may or may not be accompanied by a brief analysis of main competitors – the strengths and weaknesses that are driving your positioning.
  • Statement of key benefits of your organization and brand for customers, stakeholders, and partners. This is a place to elaborate upon your brand statement by listing and clarifying what your primary brand benefits are. What’s best about you? Explain what you mean by the terms you use – words like excellent, high quality, caring, customizable can all become a blur due to over-use. What do they look like in relation to your work? What, exactly, are you promising? Remember that the benefits of your brand should be hallmarks that carry consistently across all that you do. If your brand has sub-brand, programs or services related to it, these are attributes that all should share.
  • Product/service features: If you have a specific product or service that is primary to your brand, your brand guide should contain the language that you want others to use in describing the most important features of the product or service. Features are not benefits. (See features v. benefits blog post) These are a straight up description of what your product or service includes or does that’s important to a purchase decision.
  • Content vocabulary and usage across media (the architecture): Where do we use these different pieces of content, and are they used differently in different communication efforts and media? How do we use our names, titles – what do we call our staff, and how do we put people in touch with them? Are there things we should say in every communication, things we should save for only some?

Visual Assets and Style Guidelines

  •  Logo: Depending on the length of your organization name and whether you’ve chosen to incorporate a tag line, you may need multiple versions of this graphic. Think about the simple logo art, logo with organization name shown stacked or horizontally, Logo with and without the tag line incorporated. Don’t forget to ask for versions that can be used in both print and on the web; and versions to use as avatars in social media. You’ll also need to consider a version that is shown in reverse white on a background color, if your guideline allows for this.
  • Color palette: what are the colors, both in print and on the web, that will belong to your brand? where and how will they be used?
  • Brand font and size, usage of bold, italics, etc. What kind of headlines and sub-heads will be consistently used in your communications?
  • Text elements: What line spacing will be your standard? How will you handle paragraphs and bullets in your corporate communications?
  • Icon graphics for main ideas: If you have main ideas or types of content that can best be displayed with a graphic icon, make those part of your style guide.
  • Background colors and white space – make sure to identify and direct how your communications will use white or other background colors in your efforts. This should not be left to chance or individual preference.
  • Visual elements associated with your brand. In creating communications about/for you brand, should they only use photography? Info graphics? Cartoon based artwork? What types of subjects should be shown, ideally? Are there guidelines about the size and placement of such graphics when used?

Website Guidelines

  • Website purpose
  • How and where your website URL will be shown.
  • Guidance on sub-URLs – when and where to use vanity URLs connected to your brand
  • Online elements: does your brand’s visual identity require a specific way to display links? Web icons? Button graphics?  How about menus? What font and type size should be used on the web?
  • Website target audiences – who are they, what are they seeking, and what do we want them to do on the site?
  • Suggested keywords for the site
  • Proposed menu focal points, based on purpose and target audiences
  • Draft sample messaging/copy for home page, how brand content vocabulary and voice will be executed on the web.
  • If available, page mockups should show how the main types of website pages will be laid out.

 

Short and sweet: Power of your tag line

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Whether you can capture your essence in three little words, or it take eight – a tag line is a powerful way to create the most memorable and clear statement of what makes you unique in the eyes of your audiences. It can be the cornerstone of your other consistent brand messages; and the work that you do to arrive at and agree upon the right tag line can be a process that will clarify priorities for your whole organization.

It’s hard to narrow your focus.

Making a decision to select one idea from all of the powerful values and beliefs at the heart of your organization is tough.  It’s also crucial to your ability to communicate quickly and readily that which is most important and will differentiate you from others. Nonprofits in particular have a lot to say about their mission.  But they acknowledge that, when it comes to talking about their work, they aren’t saying it well enough.

You’ll find an interesting article on the GettingAttention.org blog, written by Nancy E. Schwartz; the organization’s president. It’s called “Getting to Aha! The Nonprofit Marketer’s Top Challenge“.

In the article, Ms. Schwartz talks about a 2012 survey of 1,566 nonprofit leaders. 84% of nonprofit leaders surveyed characterize their messages as difficult to remember. 71% point to their tag lines as least effective.

Why does the tag line matter? I don’t even have one.

Your audiences are busy, harried, and overwhelmed. For the most part, it’s a safe bet that they often don’t have time to read through complex explanations of your mission and services. A well chosen, powerful tag line can create a memorable connection to your most important idea; and because of it’s brevity, will be used more than any other message you develop, in more places – from email signatures and conversations, to your website, to business cards and stationery.

How do I get to a powerful tagline?

1. Find the words that are the most important cornerstones of your mission, services and focus. If you have multiple (and diverse) departments and programs, it will be an inclusive exercise to identify what words rise to the top that are shared between all of your programs – remember that your joint exercise is to define what is important and different about the organization as a whole, not its parts.

2. Keep the audience at the center of your message. How do you want your audiences to feel about you? Tag lines are benefit oriented, and they set the stage for your tone and voice as well as conveying the thing that makes you stand out from the crowd. They can attract to you the customers and stakeholders who see themselves as members of your club.

“You’re in good hands” (Allstate)

“Like a Rock.” (Chevrolet)

“Because I’m worth it” (L’Oreal)

2. Take a look at what other organizations like yours are saying. Is everyone’s message the same? Does it make an important idea somewhat homogenous? If everybody is saying the same thing, it may really be the key idea, or it may be clutter. Think carefully about how your organization is unique. You may have the same goals, but perhaps your approach is completely different.

“Listen to the future” (Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestras)

“Where learning takes flight” (Aviation Museum and Discovery Center)

3. Talk to your key audiences. This can be a casual discussion, survey, or focus group; but a tag line is meant to convey quickly to your audience the idea that is relevant to them. It’s not all about you, it’s all about them.  You may find in those discussions that you’ve chosen words that carry negative connotations for them, or words that simply mean nothing to them, but much to you. Make adjustments where they are indicated. This is a great step for learning more about the voice and tone that will resonate with your audiences. Is direct and straightforward better? Does your voice need to be friendly and personal, or professional and grave?

“Nothing stops a bullet like a job” (Homeboy Industries – Workforce Development)

Holding power accountable” (Common Cause)

4. Once you have a tag line, use it consistently. You will want to make it part of your branding style guide; and inform all of your staff members about how and where to include it in their messages.  Make sure that when they use it, they get it right. And give it time to take root.

 

 

 

Why is a tag line important?

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Seems a bit silly to spend time sitting around trying to capture everything you are in 3 or 4 words. Your mission, values, and key benefits are much bigger than that – aren’t they?

Of course they are.

But the work that it takes to capture your essence in a sound byte is not at all silly; in fact, it’s an essential exercise in discipline. It can capture who your customers, members, and fans are; and it serves a very useful purpose in quickly uniting you with your tribe over your shared values.

  • Just do it (Nike)
  • Think different (Apple)
  • Because you’re worth it (L’Oreal)
  • You’re in good hands (Allstate)
  • Quality is job one (Ford)
  • It’s not just for breakfast anymore (Florida Orange Growers’ Association)
  • That was easy (Staples)
  • A mind is a terrible thing to waste (United Negro college fund)
  • Takes a lickin’ and keeps on tickin’ (Timex)
  • For a living planet (WWF)

Your mission, your promise and your brand

They are indeed complex, but place yourself in the mind of your customer and ask yourself “so what?” Then ask it again, and again. What can you come up with to answer it in 5 words or less?

Taglines are about making decisions.

Timex could talk about the visual beauty and simplicity of their watch design, the fact that their watches are an inexpensive, yet good value. So what? What do you really want in a watch, anyway? Timex watches are for people who don’t want a Rolex. Don’t want the bother, don’t want the expense, and don’t want to worry about damaging it. Just want it to tell time, reliably.

If you have done any strategic planning for your agency or business, you’ll likely have a mission statement, and core values – particularly if you are a non-profit. If you haven’t looked at those lately, take them off of the shelf and review them again. Non-profits spend a great deal of time arriving at a mission statement that is meaningful for them; and they are often excellent statements of purpose and approach. They are also (usually) somewhat wordy for the average stakeholder-on-the-street, and may not be at all memorable.

Try it. You’ll like it.

What can you give?

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promiseWhat’s the promise, and can I keep it?

Your mission as an organization is about your aspirations, your passion, your beliefs. It tells your audiences what you wish to accomplish and promises to pursue that to the best of your ability, with all that is in you. You will work to improve how you deliver on your mission, and how you deliver may evolve over time.

Your brand is a promise. It can also aspire, but never forget that the promise offered by your brand carries with it an expectation of delivery and consistency.

We will do certain things in a certain way.  We hold to these truths and values. You can rely on us for this.  Be careful about what you choose to promise with your  brand. When you select what is most important for your brand to convey to your audiences, your work will be scrutinized against that standard.

Your brand offers a clear message about what it is that makes you unique – which means making choices about what you want your brand to convey. What is it about your work and your approach to it that distinguishes you from others?

What’s in it for me?

Your brand is also about your relationship with your customers. Unless you are opening your doors for the first time, your loyal fans already trust you for something very specific, that benefits them or that they also believe. Is your brand message going to be consistent with that perceived promise?  Before you go all in to make a statement about your brand, find out if it matches your customers’ and fans’ experience of you.  If it’s not, figure out why not. You may be making an aspirational promise that you have neither the experience nor the will to deliver on.

Do you know how to do what you are saying you’ll do? And is it something your customers value, or a complete departure from how they currently see you?

If you don’t know, ask.

Mom always told us that, and she was right. Understanding how your customers perceive you is an important element of moving forward to a stronger brand. Do they have a sense of what you believe, and can they articulate why they would choose you? There are a lot of ways to ask, and really, they are not scientific. You are looking for qualitative, not quantitative feedback. But I would always recommend contacting at least 5-10 of your top customers or partners, and having a conversation. You might want to ask:

  • What made you choose us to work with instead of the alternatives?
  • What do you think we stand for? Is it something you also believe in?
  • What three words would you use to describe us as an organization? Are these things important to you?

What’s in it for them?

I’ve worked with companies that have done research up, down and sideways to identify what specific attributes their customers thought they had. But in many of those studies, I’ve observed one critical omission that made them miss the point. Once you know what attributes or beliefs your customers think you offer, please ask them how important those are to them.

At the end of the day, if you are a service provider, or a non-profit agency, you need the things that are unique to your brand to be an important benefit for someone.  You need fans. So connecting the dots to your customers and stakeholders is an integral part of understanding your brand.

 

A picture is worth a thousand words

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buildingYour brand promise is a lot more than a logo, tagline, home page, or picture.   But if you have not pursued some consistency in how you visually represent your brand; if there is dissonance between what you are trying to say and how you are saying it, then your underlying message about your commitment and your work will not be clear or convincing.

If you haven’t recently done an audit of your public facing messages and images for consistency with your branding message, it’s probably long overdue. Remember, though, that a visual audit proceeds from a strong brand statement.

Go back to your mission

Make sure that you’ve clearly identified your customers, influencers, and most importantly – who the people are that benefit from your work. Your visual messages should convey the heart of the work – what you hope to accomplish for those beneficiaries that your organization is passionate about.

Is your work about a building? Or is it meant to make lives better for people? If you are a nonprofit agency with a people-focused mission and your websites, brochures and media messages focus on your building; then you may be communicating pride of place. But you are not showing the heart of your work to your audiences.

Agencies that focus on educating kids and are not using visuals that keep the kids at the forefront are not only missing an opportunity to convey an important message about their mission. They are also taking a risk that the public will perceive their heart and their commitment to be in the wrong place. Materials, web pages, and commercials created to further ASPCA work don’t focus on the people. They focus on the animals. AARP does not show you lots of images of small children, but rather vibrant, aging retirees.

And unless you are Habitat for Humanity, consider keeping pictures of a building in the background, not the forefront, of your message.

A note about locating images for your work

If you lack the available resources to take your own photos of your work, you can start with stock images. Both istockphoto.com and shutterstock.com offer fairly inexpensive images for download and use. If you can find one or more images there that do a good job of showing off your work and your audience, it can start you off. Searching these sites may also help you to identify what you want to ideally convey that you can’t find in stock photos; and will need to pursue on your own. The downside: you may not be the only one using a stock image. The upside: commercially available photographs have all their ducks in a row as far as model/subject releases are concerned. If you take your own photos and people are the subjects, you should always get permission from the subject to use the image (or their parent/guardian, if they are a minor).

Check your brand integrity with your most loyal fans

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mufasaYou have forgotten who you are and so have forgotten me. Look inside yourself, Simba. You are more than what you have become.
– Mufasa the Lion King

Brands are about business performance promises. They differentiate our promise in the marketplace. Strong established brands are about promises kept. As you look to expand upon and extend your brand, can you pursue growth by migrating, extending and expanding your brand and still maintain its integrity? At the heart of successful companies that have migrated their brands over time, there has been a crystal clear understanding of what their customer promise is, and how to keep it at the core of new business directions; be they acquisitions, adoptions of new technology, or new product lines.

Let’s go again.

A few years back, I went to see the Lion King 3D. I was immediately captured by the emotionally engaging musical score (a hallmark of Disney movies), the beautiful colors, and then finally, the memorable and well-told story. It’s just a great story, folks, start to finish. And that is what you expect from a Disney animated movie. The 3D effects were a nice embellishment to something that was already worth seeing again and again. Disney movies are treasures that you keep on your shelf to pull down and watch on a rainy day. Everybody’s got a “remember the part where…” spot in a Disney movie.

Will 3D be the new tech steroid that re-introduces Disney to millions of new viewers? Probably not. But it will trigger millions of loyal fans to remember what they loved, becoming active champions to expand Disney’s fan base to their own kids, friends and families – thus growing the brand.

 First, know who you are to your most loyal fans.

Your customers have long memories, and if they have engaged with your brand in the past, then your brand has over time become a collaborative effort. They know who you are, perhaps better than you do. They communicate what they know to others. If you understand what your brand really is, you can build upon it for a stronger future than you may have expected. Before you do anything else, dig in. Do the homework, talk to your customers and understand what they perceive your brand’s promise to be. If you’ve been in business a while, then your brand has a life. So as Rafiki says,

You can either run from it, or… learn from it.