Brand building is a vital part of any effective marketing communication strategy. Given today’s market forces, all companies are recognizing that they need to brand themselves to thrive.
The Forbes Funds worked with faculty and students from Duquesne University’s department of communication and rhetorical studies to study the challenges nonprofits experience in developing and implementing marketing communication programs. They found that the issues facing nonprofits are not dissimilar to any other industry. Here are some of the lessons:
Mission creep kills brands
Many organizations have taken on a variety of service lines to stay afloat and keep a healthy bottom line. For instance, a nuclear energy company I worked with bought an office furniture company, and a direct marketing firm took on building and maintaining websites. For many organizations, this complexity dilutes the employees and owners sense of mission and identity.
Building an effective brand begins by recognizing that a service line may be contributing to your bottom line but deterring from a coherent brand and long-term success. Therefore, determine what business lines share a brand, and those that are kept separate.
Know thyself
While branding is important, the emphasis on brand building can gloss over other managerial and organizational communication challenges that are just as vital. Left unaddressed, these challenges will leave your investment in branding at the starting gate, such as:
- Me, myself and I. If employees have been brought on for a specific job and have no orientation to the company as a whole, it will be challenging at best to garner their enthusiasm for “the brand” in a vacuum. Think about investing in on-boarding and team building with employees alongside rolling out your brand.
- Turf. Many participants in the study reported difficulties with departments and staff members who were used to promoting themselves in their own way and resisted efforts to centralize marketing communication activities. Resolving these conflicts is essential if the branding investment is going to yield results.
- Having no message means that everyone has their own message. One participant jokingly expressed his frustration with a manager who persistently pronounced the organization’s name wrong. But he recognized that this was no laughing matter: For a branding campaign to work, everyone has to be on-board.
Think big, think small
When you undertake corporate brand development it’s equally important for all to understand how the individual business lines collectively support the corporate brand.
Branding is not a one-off exercise
As one participant said, branding is often considered a “fun” activity that involves off-site retreats, shiny logos and punchy messaging strategies. When it comes to budget cutting, branding and marketing staff is often the first to go because organizations underestimate the complexity of what a communication function does.
In reality, building strong brands is much more than implementing strong messages and slick logos. It requires managing conflict, clarifying mission and identity, and communicating internally to make sure the organization lives its mission.
Craig T. Maier, Ph.D., assistant professor, and Julia Douglass, graduate student, in the department of communication and rhetorical studies at Duquesne University contributed to this article.
