Spring Cleaning Your Brand

When a brand is first being established, the people building it are energized, engaged, and single-mindedly focused on crafting an identity for the organization. Then over time, the category evolves, the competition reacts, staff may come and go. It’s easy to gradually lose sight of the brand and why staying true to it is important. This is when the dust bunnies start to settle.

Spring cleaning your brand is easy to do, it doesn't require a major time commitment from your staff, and it's relatively inexpensive. It can assure you that your brand is perfectly positioned, or it can help set your branding priorities for the coming year.

Here's how it works:
Choose 10 people for an informal conversation. We recommend including one person from membership, one from marketing, maybe a board member, but no directors. The others should be a mix of long-time volunteers or members of your organization and, if you can find them, people who patronize organizations similar to yours but are unfamiliar with your brand.

Each person is asked two questions. The first is, "In three words or less, what does this organization stand for?" If they have trouble answering or need a little prompting, make note of it. If they are able to answer the first question, with or without prompting, then follow up with, "What things does this organization offer or do that support what it stands for?"

From their answers, a pattern should emerge. Here's what to look for:

- Can everyone define what the brand stands for?

- Is there consistency in these answers?

- Is there consistency between what insiders and outsiders are saying?

- Are the words people identified likely to inspire advocacy for your organization?

- Do the actions and offerings they identified as supporting your brand really support it?

If you answer "yes" to all of these questions, your brand communications program is likely doing its job. If "no" pops up more than you’d like, you may want to consider a more comprehensive brand review, such as a brand audit. A brand audit delves deeper into your organization's core values, asking questions that define, promote and protect your brand.

An annual “spring cleaning” of your brand not only keeps your organization looking good; it ensures that you accurately reflect who you are, what you do, how you do it and why anyone should care enough to support you.
 

Share Your “Brand Clean Up” Breakthroughs With Us!
Have you done a spring cleaning of your brand lately? If so, tell us what insights you discovered and how they have changed your organization’s brand strategy. Connect with Élan’s online community by posting a comment to this blog or chatting with us over e-mail, Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn.