Subject: What is brand?

There's a fairly good article on Wikipedia about this at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brand. It's a bit cynical but basically reflects what most management and marketing people think when they use the word.

If you're a service organisation, like almost all not-for-profits, basically your 'brand' is your character as perceived by the world - your reputation - and the way that you present yourself - not just through your logo or the colour of your office, but the way your staff greet people on the phone, the way you talk to the press, the kind of people you hire and how you deal with their training and career planning etc.

So it's your organisation's 'vision and values'? Not quite, because brand is about perception, reputation, the way that people think about you. This can be quite different from the way you actually operate, though some including me say it shouldn't be and that you'll get found out - at which point you have destroyed your brand. Normally your 'brand values', like your other values, are a bit aspirational, reflecting where you would like your brand to be rather than how it actually is.

You'll normally have some kind of visual identity, and maybe associated standards for colour, typography, use of images etc. In theory this should 'support your brand', but I have seldom been able to work out what that means (and I have created and developed brand identities!); in practice that stuff can usually settle for being reasonably smart, legible and distinctive - then consistently applied to the materials you create, where it should act as a sort of reminder of your (intangible) brand.

Mark really nailed it in his response: brand is not something that the organisation decides or provides; brand is determined and created on the other side of the organisation by supporters, service users, the community and so on.  It includes reputation, user experience, word of mouth, interaction, feedback and more.  So, it is more than a logo.

Chris Brogan talks a lot about brand and about how organisations can participate in the shaping of brand (instead of pretending that putting their logo out there is enough and not participating in the real conversation that is taking place).  You can find blogs and articles from Chris on his website.

that's helpful - thanks guys. getting it right sounds like a bit of good design mixed with strong shared values and working practices across the organisation. Hmm, definately food for thought. Would be interested in hearing how people have tackled this.

I've often thought of 'brands' for social projects as working differently to commercial models. Commercial branding is a technique for communicating reputation and credibility, building product recognition and creating a sense of trust and value around the project. It's very much 'business-to-consumer'.

For social projects, I think of brands as more like rallying points - a standard under which the interested parties can gather and work together on an issue. It's more collaborative, less push, more emergence. I think it's about creating a logo and identity for the project and then starting a conversation around it; the 'brand' becomes defined by the characteristics of the community, the agenda set by the people who will benefit rather than the organisation.

I'm not sure if it always works like that though...!

I often wonder why organisations (this one included) categorise 'brand' with Marketing or Campaigning & Awareness etc.  Just a quick read of the posts here illustrates that at its core branding is an overarching discipline, the effects of which are driven by and impact upon every part of your organisation which touches your audiences.

Maybe that's the point.  We have to classify it somehow and all of these posts contain common sense opinions which are borne out by countless text books and articles.

• Yes, branding is about values; or rather how the values you have as an organisation are perceived by others and therefore the underpinnings of why they will or won't engage with you (I'll use this context from here on)
• Yes, your audiences' (as there are usually several if not many) opinions are more important than internal views.  Especially in modern, increasingly consumerist, individual-in-control society.  
• Yes, the audiences will decide whether they want to engage with you or not based on how well your externally broadcast values match theirs - backed up by your actions
• Yes, images, tone of voice, colours etc can reinforce those values (eg; the National Blood Service will not be using images of wolves or leeches to promote what it stands for)
• Therefore yes, every communication touch point you have with your audiences is an opportunity for positive branding to build that positive perception
  However, I do think there are a few other factors to consider:
• Because of its wide impact, branding is in fact the responsibility of everyone in an organisation.  Our actions impact on external perception therefore if we don't act in line with the organisation’s values, how will our audiences perceive the image we want them to?
• That said, someone has to own and coordinate 'branding' on behalf of the organisation.  That's all they can do, by the way.  If anyone ever tells you they own the brand, I respectfully suggest they aren't seeing the full picture.  For example, someone needs to do the research, collate the values and articulate them for everyone else to discuss and buy-in to.  Most often this is a marketing or communications function and probably rightfully so as I can't think of another profession that at least formally trains its members how to do it!
• This segways into my next point; I know that community and user-direction is key but a brand cannot be left unchecked and unfettled.  If users (audiences) dictated what they wanted brands to be, brands would be diluted and confused purely because most have to appeal to various audiences with differing needs.  For example, a health charity which facilitates coffee mornings for people who need the social interaction as well as the health information and support, needs to represent something else to the pharmaceutical giant they are wooing for £1m in funding for research projects.
• We shouldn't be too contrived about it but at the very least, a light hand on the tiller of HMS Your Brand is certainly sensible.  The task then is to ensure that the 'hand' is light enough to be able to absorb and react to audience expectations and demands but to help provide focus when required.
• Consistency is the key to branding success.  Plus either time or massive investment.  Think "RSPCA" and they have positioned themselves consistently for over a century around protectors of animals and preventers of animal cruelty.  Think "Virgin" and we know that Richard Branson has invested tens of millions into building the company ethos of increasing customer value by doing things differently and, more recently, social responsibility.

My favourite branding story is nothing to do with logos and everything to do with values and how they are consistently communicated (it also might be apocryphal but I heard it as a case study).  During the 1960's the US government was concerned at the level of expenditure being incurred by NASA's moon landing programme so sent a team of auditors to the various mission centres, storage depots and launch sites to assess what could be done to reduce overheads.

The audit team quizzed senior management and always asked the question "So what do you do here?".  The somewhat expected response from these senior guys was;  "we're helping to put a man on the moon". Obviously, the auditors continued their assessment of the facts and figures but needed to interview junior managers and technicians to understand all the facts.  The same question was asked and the junior team members answered; "we're helping to put a man on the moon".

As the auditors travelled across the country interviewing white collar and blue collar workers alike, they met with the same answer but it wasn't perceived as a trite, rote-learned statement. This ethos underpinned all the subsequent answers given.  For example, when challenged to cut costs on components engineers would respond that this would mean a delay of six months in putting a man on the moon. My favourite example is of the last man questioned on the last day of the audit. 

Allegedly, one of the auditors had had enough by now of the zeal and vigour of the NASA teams and, when exiting the last hangar bumped into a janitor who accidentally splashed water from his mop bucket onto the auditor's shoes.  When asked why he had to mop the floors now, while there were still people about, the janitor responded; "We're helping to put a man on the moon and the hangars always have to be clean if we are going to make it."

Consistent message delivery, aligned to what the greater audience wanted, riding a wave of positive expectation and genuinely bought into by the whole team to the point where it underpinned their decisions and actions.

That's the kind of branding we could all aspire to.

I think Kevin has just about said it all! Thanks Kevin!

I would simply emphasise the distinction between the projected brand (ie what we are trying to say consistently about our nonprofit) and the perceived brand (ie what people out there think we are). Most charities don't spend enough time finding out the second, partly because the answer is often uncomfortable. For example many household name charities have spent masses of time "modernising" their image,but the public still regard them as rather slow and old fashioned.

If you want to shift public perception, you have to know how they regard you at the moment ie start where the customer is rather than where you wish they were!

Ian, I disagree with you, the two words 'projected' and 'brand' don't fit together.  Brand is a perception, an experience.  Organisations can project whatever they want about themselves, but it's the interpretation of what they say and do, in the market, that creates the brand.  I love the quotation from Beverly Hodson, who at the time was MD of WH Smith retail.  She said 'The brand is what the customer perceives.  I would say that customer experience is the reality of the brand'.  And that absolutely fits with Kevin's view of branding.

By the way, we met yesterday on a sector conference on social networking and blogging, and here I am joining my first ever blog!! 

I've just spotted all the great, spot-on, responses on brand, image and reputation. We've specialised in helping charities to define and develop their positioning, values, key messages and identity for the last seven years - clients include Rethink, MS Society, Breast Cancer Care, Aston University, The Royal Academy of Engineering and The Ramblers to name a few.

A brand positioning is essential to building strong brands, and we've developed a number of approaches and processes specifically for non-profits - consultation, feedback and buy-in throughout the process being key! 

John - you might be interested in the CharityComms seminar coming up on 'Branding, image and reputation', where my colleague Max du Bois amongst others will be talking.

http://www.charitycomms.org.uk/conferences

Ben, I've been in the charity marketing business for more than 25 years.  Your blatant salesmanship on a blog that is exploring an important issue to charities is frankly, inappropriate.  And you will find that if your colleague, Max, is foolish enough to do the same at the CharityComms conference, he will be heartily disliked for it.

Pidge is right that this is not the place for self promotion. Instead conferences / courses can be advertised in the events section and you can use your profile to talk about your business and areas of expertise.

These forums are for discussion about nonprofit topics, as part of this it may be relevant to refer to experience and background to give some context. As such Ben's comment does contribute to the discussion.

Agencies as well as individuals are welcome to use these forums as all have useful experience to share. However all should be following the forum terms and conditions.  

Madeleine

Thanks for the feedback Pidge and Madeleine. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to cause offense or be inappropriate, just contribute to John's question. Ben