What is a brand?

"Any visible sign or device used by a business enterprise to identify its goods and distinguish them from those made or carried by others"
- Encyclopaedia Britannica.

• Your charities brand is the creative combination of bespoke design, use of graphics, colours, typography and words, a package which when used correctly identifies your organisation or project and differentiates it from everything else.
• A brand should attract the attention of your target audience and make your charities message clear to everyone; supporters, partners, beneficiaries and funders.

Creating a successful brand

A brand is more than just a logo or image. It is the first (and lasting) impression of your organisation and shapes the way in which the people perceive your organisation and the work it dose. The charities and voluntary organisations whose brands are most successful are those that are comparable to a similar corporate brand at every level. A clearly articulated brand will present to supporters an unambiguous image of your organisation's competency and professionalism. Developing and establishing a strong brand, will increase the likelihood that potential funders or volunteer will choose to support your organisation over a not so professionally presented charity and so your brand loyalty begins. • A brand should clearly express your charity's vision and values.

• Ensure that the brand appeals to your target audience.
• A recognised good brand is a result of consistent messages, steadfast marketing efforts, good experiences and positively reinforced images emanating from your organisation over time.
• Potential supporters will probably interact with your brand before they meet the human face of your organisation. A brand should make explicit your charity's needs and objectives while immediately conveying to the target audience what it is you desire from them. It should also inform those who might benefit from your services exactly what your organisation offers.
• A brand must work through out your organisation and needs to be applied to both internal and external communications. Make sure that the language and attitude of your staff reflects the charity's brand and objectives. Your brand should also feature on all materials issued by the organisation. Your brand should be your most powerful and stable communications tool both in print and as a spoken word – staff must be the first to buy into your brand.
• Be prepared to reassess and if necessary restate your brand.

Your organisation and its brand

Before presenting your brand to the market ensure that the charity can live up to its promises. Delivering on your assurances will encourage people to trust your organisation. Failure to live up to expectations, on the other hand, could do irreparable damage to your charity's reputation and support (and your new brand). Your organisations brand therefore should be consistent with your goals. If you possibly can find the resources to do so try and carry out as many of the following exercises as you can and as well as you can before you look to create a brand.

• Be clear about what your organisation represents and what you hope to achieve
• Talk to your stakeholders and investigate whether their expectations are in line with what your organisation is doing
• Investigate how you compare with your competitors
• Look at who supports your brand and why
• Ask what it is that beneficiaries gain from your service

Why rebrand?

If you decide to rebrand, be sure of what the process entails and of the benefits you envisage your organisation will accrue.

• Revamping your brand can reinvigorate the organisation, expose it to new markets and increase financial contributions to your charity.
• The image of a long-standing organisation might appear tired and outmoded. Distinctive images and styles are closely associated with the era of their conception thus a timely repositioning has the potential rejuvenate your organisation's image.
• Certain words or images might have a negative impact upon the success and marketability of your organisation. Adopting a brand that is consumer friendly and which encapsulates your message can significantly transform your organisation's performance and appeal.
• Certain words or images from your existing brand may be already having a positive impact on the success and marketability of your organisation. If you have established brand aspects that provide reassurance and brand loyalty, if you have established elements within your brand that are working well, you might wish to incorporate them into any new branding.

The methodology and costs

For charities functioning on limited budgets, employing a branding consultant can appear to be an extremely expensive, perhaps infeasible, exercise. The budgets of many charitable organisations and projects just will not stretch to covering all the costs of a full-scale, professional branding exercise. Options do exist, however, for your organisation to develop a good brand.

Consultation
For a consultation process you can put your own knowledge to good use, or carry out your own consultation to establish the aims and objectives of your brand. Start by sitting down and writing up what you already know, you could be surprised at how much knowledge you already have about your target audiences, what your funders, or beneficiaries respond too and the responses or actions your project needs from those who come into contact with your brand.

If the resources are available, set out to conduct your own surveys to gather more information. The information you require is there for the asking, if you do not have time to build a complete research project with questioners and incentives, then pick up the phone and get some direct feedback from your beneficiaries, partners, funders, volunteers, staff and supporters. (The answers and information you require to help build a professional and relevant brand is illustrated previously in this article as a bulleted list).

Whatever conclusions, or document you can draw up from these activities may well fall short of a full brand consultation exercise but it will provide valuable and useful information for whoever has the task of creating a brand that clearly identifies your organisation, distinguishes it from others and attracts the attention of your targeted audience.

Creative services
A good all round creative service will be required to interpret and convert your consultation conclusions into a professional definitive brand. Remember there is more to a brand than just a logo and while a good logo alone can do a lot to take your project forward and leave its mark. If a brand is to be successful at every level it must be all encompassing with clear and distinctive relationships between graphic elements, typography, images, colours, copywriting and your own aims and objectives and even the spoken word in face to face meetings, etc. So, there is a real need to acquire a professional creative service at this point.

Without an in house graphic design resource, you most likely now need to retain the services of professional creatives and this of course means you have to be sure you can get best value from the professional services required to create your brand. Though finances may be tight you still need to look beyond the cheapest quote and should look for a confidence that your chosen supplier can deliver all you need or at least the best you can get for your budget.

Be sure a creative supplier understands the depth of your requirements. As well as your enquiries as to what they can provide be sure whoever you chose to create your brand, have asked you all the right questions and are willing to draw on what knowledge you have to help them build something that will work for you. They should at the very least be asking you:

• What dose your project do and/or need to achieve?
• Who is your target audience or audiences?
• What message do you need to communicate to this audience and others?
• What action or reaction if any do you require of your audience?

This is the most basic information that any creative will require before they can begin to envisage how your brand should look and feel. If you have a supplier of creative services who is not asking these questions, then find one who dose.

Facing the Myth that “slick branding” = wasted funds

Good branding can make a significant difference to all aspects of your project; better financial health, greater public awareness and fulfilling many aims and objectives is just the tip of the iceberg. Nevertheless, many organisations remain fearful of people’s perceptions and think a professional brand could be seen as extravagant, thinking it could undermine an organisations worth, if a funder disputes the value of any branding exercise and states that funds would be better spent on fulfilling your charity's aims.

Good branding can not be too good or too “slick” for that matter. If a brand works and fulfils its objectives then you have a success no matter how you look at it. If this success happens to be “slick branding” then it remains a success. One of the key objectives your brand is to archive all this success within your budget. In creating a brand your plan is to invest in something that will give you good returns over a period of time. Like any investment if the returns are not worth the capital outlay only then can you say the funds could have been better spent!

The advice given in this article should help you avoid that negative equity situation and allow you to make a reasonable investment in your organisation and brand that will bring constant returns in way of awareness, funds, support, partners and of course fulfilling your aims and objectives.

It would be great if this myth was broken once and for all. But, as long a minority of organisations overspend or invest badly in overpriced services for advertising, administration or anything else and as long as a few people believe all charities must be doing this because one has been proven to do so. Then this perception and attitude will continue effect our decisions and stifle the success and growth of many good causes.

In the last 20 years peoples understanding of marketing and advertising has greatly increased. Most will have a fundamental understanding of the advantages that a professional image and brand will bring to any project. You should not let the poor understanding of a minority restrict the potential of your project. However, at the same time, as a charitable organisation you must recognise and understand your moral duty to not waste resources or spend unnecessarily.

If you have genuine concerns regarding some peoples perceptions of your organisation investing in a new brand then in way of education and explanation to those who do not understand how a professional branding exersise will help your charity achieve its aims and objectives, please consider the following:

• Be careful to ensure that your organisation justifies its expenditure, just has you would have to with any project.
• If you are convinced that a wholesale revamp of your brand will enhance your organisation's performance, regard the project as an investment. Present evidence of likely advantages to your organisation, its beneficiaries and its supporters in defence of your proposal.

Ensuring the continued success of your brand

Once you have established a professional brand for your organisation, you will want to maximise the return for the resources time and effort needed to create it. To help do this you can measure the performance and perceptions of your brand through some brand valuation surveys.

• Gauge the responsiveness of existing, new and potential funders or supporters.
• Assess the reactions of your employees, volunteers and beneficiaries.
• Ensure maximum impact for your organisation's brand by monitoring and responding to your audience's changing needs.
• Remember that branding and advertising, especially when they are well-executed, stay in a person's mind and leave a lasting impression that may not convert into an action until much latter. Be in it for the long haul and be consistent and persistent in your publicity and in the messages you project. A constant reinforcement has been the proven success of many quality brands.