Building your charity's brand into an asset
In the noisy world of charity marketing there is often a whole host of charities operating with similar goals, missions and service offerings. With a similar raison d'être and similar campaign focuses to "alternative providers" (that’s charity-speak for competitors), your brand can often be your biggest differentiator – and your only chance of standing out in a busy marketplace.
By brand of course I don’t just mean your logo. Your brand encompasses your reputation, your heritage, your behaviours, your organisational culture – and so the list goes on. Brand is the vehicle through which you communicate your own unique set of messages to your audiences. Carefully constructed, your brand can both tell your story and invite others into it. It can build loyalty amongst supporters, donors, volunteers, staff and funding bodies – and ultimately it can become your greatest asset.
This article will define what "brand" stands for, what your brand can deliver and how you can effectively craft and identify your charity’s brand essence.
First let’s go back to the definition of brand. Simon Middleton, the self-appointed "brand guru" says: “Brand is about meaning. Your brand is the sum total of all the meanings that all your possible audiences carry around about you in their heads and in their hearts.”
In other words your brand is everything that your supporters, service users, staff and stakeholders think, feel, say, hear, read, watch, imagine, suspect or even hope about your charity.
Best metaphor
That’s beginning to get there in terms of a definition, but for me the best metaphor for brand is always that of a person. You hear a name – like Ollie Leggett. It may be you've stumbled across the name in a web search or through a business network or a mutual friend. It sounds familiar. You begin to gain a measure of the person. You maybe suspect English heritage and you build a mental picture of him.
You check him out on Linkedin and request to follow him on Twitter. You notice his name coming up in conversations. Still no photo – no visual identity – but lots of information that has helped you to build a wider sense of who he is – his brand – including his history, his relationships, his tone of voice, his key drivers, pet hates etc.
Then finally you meet. He's younger than you expected and you'd imagined auburn hair and a beard but he's blond and clean shaven. You find his dry sense of humour endearing. You share interests and a little overlap in social circles and you become friends, and begin enjoying his company and introducing him to others.
You'll now happily defend his reputation amongst peers and won't hear a bad word said against him. You've become his friend. You choose to spend time with him, to be influenced by him. You are loyal to him, you know he values your friendship and a part of your own identity is now bound up in your friendship.
Visual identity
His appearance – his visual identity – by now is just a tiny fraction of your overall knowledge of him and his character – the Ollie Leggett brand. Far less important than the emotional engagement you’ve come to enjoy – and it’s emotional engagement that is the holy grail of branding. It’s there that brand loyalty lies.
A strong brand can deliver four really powerful and valuable assets to your charity in the crowded market:
INTEGRITY - and I mean integrity in the psychological sense. Psychologists tell us that we’re all seeking a healthy level of integrity – that’s a place of internal and external consistency where the person that we truly are and the person we are understood to be are in healthy alignment. Human beings are amazingly good at "reading" people – and we bring this same unconscious skill set to reading brands.
We enjoy being around people who are "comfortable in their own skin" and we instinctively trust people who "walk the talk". We’re just as quick to recognise inconsistency and pretence.
If your charity is a mess, then popping a totally new, shiny brand mask over it is no solution. The most powerful brands are true. And that’s why any decent brand agency likes to listen to you AND your audiences – they’re looking for the truth about you so that ultimately your brand can have genuine integrity.
VISIBILITY - it’s all very well understanding yourself and having a fantastic proposition to offer but if you’re invisible in the ever-increasingly competitive world of charity marketing then you’re on a highway to nowhere.
A strong brand can give you a face that your target audiences recognise, a tone of voice they can hear above the noise, messages that give them hope and call them to decisive action.
CREDIBILITY - your brand needs to be a signature they can trust. It needs to be delivered through behavioural consistency: consistent quality of service, consistent messaging, physical spaces and visual identity. We trust those who behave consistently. That’s why brand guidelines are so critical in policing and protecting your brand after initial launch.
LOYALTY - the holy grail of brand. One is talking about the emotional engagement that will motivate supporters and funders not just to give to a specific campaign, but to sign up to support you on an ongoing basis, to become advocates and enthusiasts, to campaign and volunteer.
I support six charities via monthly direct debit. Four of those I’ve given to for over 25 years and the other two for over a decade. They’re not just worthy causes that I support. They are part of my identity, part of my story. My relationship with them has had ups and downs but over many years they have enjoyed my loyalty. And, like an inner circle of lifelong friends, it would take a great deal to break my ties to them.
For your brand to deliver integrity, visibility, credibility and ultimately loyalty, you need to identify where people can emotionally engage with your brand, how you can make them feel part of your story. You need to know who you are and what you stand for – your essence – and then you need to behave like a friend – be generous, consistent and grateful. Give me opportunities to feel significant. Invite me to be the Godparent of your firstborn. Ask me for help when you need it. Celebrate together. Challenge me. Introduce me to your friends. Confide in me.
Everyday relationships
This is not rocket science, it’s the stuff of everyday relationships and it goes back to that metaphor of brand as a person. In order to really know anyone you need to do more than read a mini biog or have a quick coffee. You need to understand their journey, their background, you need to speak to their friends and family, learn about their passions and their idiosyncrasies, walk alongside them through feast and famine.
In order to understand the state of existing relationships you need to speak to your supporters, your service users, staff and other audiences to discern what’s going on. If you’re lucky, amongst all that detail, something distinctive, something that is unique about you will emerge - something that defines you and sets you apart from everybody else – your essence.
Whilst other charities might be able to offer a similar service to you, your brand, whether focusing on your heritage or your charity’s deep understanding of the location you operate in, is what can really set you apart.
Once you have identified your brand essence you then need to ensure that it’s translated into an arresting and engaging visual identity, a tone of voice and a set of key messages that will enable you to communicate consistently.
Whole charity
And maybe even more importantly, you need to encourage the whole charity to cherish this new expression of your brand. You need to take internal staff, volunteers and stakeholders on the journey with you. You need to consult with them, communicate the key findings of market research, focus groups and competitor mapping. Encourage them to feel a sense of shared ownership. Only then will they want to play their part in protecting, policing and embodying the brand.
Every volunteer and staff member of your charity must live out your charity’s brand every day in every interaction with your audiences in order for it to survive and thrive. It’s this consistency that can make your brand identity your biggest asset.
Ultimately you and your people are the brand – your empathy, your passion, your professionalism, your expertise, your advice – you. Your brand can only be as great as your people are – as inspiring as your team is – as outstanding as you are.
