In my first column, I introduced the concept of branding and discussed how two New York
City cultural organizations — one very large and one quite small — used branding to address a unique problem that each faced. In this column, I'm going to show you how to get started on a design brief and develop the elements necessary to flesh out your brand's assets.
In order to be effective, branding has to have clarity and depth. Consider this: It's human nature for people to identify with the celebrities they see, read, and hear about in the media. In fact, they often develop loyalties to celebrities based on what they know, or
think they know, about the values and belief systems of those celebrities. Celebrities
able to project an image that is direct, consistent, and authentic — think John Wayne, Michael Jordan, or Princess Di — usually have a more loyal following than celebrities who are perceived to be wishy-washy or inauthentic.
It's not that different for organizations, which are only as effective as their brands. Just like the effective celebrity brand, your organization's brand has to convey the key
values of your organization — values rooted in its core activities — if you
hope to develop a loyal following. And that's why it's important that you, your board, and your colleagues — the people who, day in and day out, work to make the organization a success — are involved in and committed to the branding process, starting with the creation of a design brief. As a distillation of your organization's mission, values, and
personality, the design brief is an essential element in a process that, with a little luck and a lot of hard work, will result in a brand that effectively conveys what your organization does and stands for.
Unfortunately, many nonprofits are too quick to hand their branding over to an outside consultant and assume a reactive rather than proactive approach to the process. Even worse, many consultants who work with nonprofits will skip the design brief altogether. But
if branding is the story you want to tell, how can a consultant possibly tell your story without you? They can't — and trying to do so often leads to unwelcome consequences, not least of which is the possibility that your organization will have to live with an ineffective, half-baked brand. While having a design brief is no guarantee that your organization will avoid that fate, a thorough, well-constructed brief can go a long way to providing a solid foundation for the construction of your brand and will ensure that you and the outside consultant are on the same page at the start of the process.
But where do you start? You start by providing the creative team with the information they need to help you tell your story.
Outlining the Design Brief
When you sit down to develop a design brief, be sure to consider the following:
1. Profile — What does your organization do? Why does it matter? Be as succinct as possible and be sure to work your mission and values statements into your response.
2. Context — What is happening in the world today that makes your mission
relevant and compelling to your target audiences?
3. Positioning — What is your organization's relationship to organizations that are similar in size and mission? Be sure to include your competitors' logos and Web site URLs (when available) so that you can start to see how those organizations fit into your universe, and vice versa.
4. Audiences — List your audiences, starting with your primary audience (e.g., members) and continuing through secondary and tertiary audiences. Now ask yourself the following: Who are we trying to reach that we haven't already reached? What do our audiences value that we already provide, or could provide? Do we have any research or demographic information about our audiences that we can share with the creative team?
5. Brand personality — How would you describe your organization's personality?
How does the community view your organization? Are you perceived favorably? Are you seen as active and involved, or as distant and aloof? Are you a young organization or well established? (If you don’t know the answers to these questions, you may have to do some research.)
6. Current situation — What aspect(s) of your current situation precipitated the need for a new or revised brand strategy?
7. Budget — How much are you willing to spend? Yes, it's hard to formulate a budget when you don't know what the solution is, but you should try to decide on a ballpark figure so that the creative team has an idea of how much you are willing/able to invest in the process.
8. Schedule/deadlines — What is the time frame for the project? Are there deadlines that absolutely must be met (e.g., the date of a specific event or anniversary)?
9. Design media — What kind of materials are you going to need? A basic brochure? An annual report? A Web site? Posters or signage? A DVD or multimedia piece? Some combination of the above?
10. Technical/practical requirements — Are there specific requirements that must
be spelled out in advance of the design process? For instance, is your organization required to use union labor? How about environmentally friendly resources such as recycled paper or soy inks? You'll want to make a note in the brief if that's the case.
In my previous column, I discussed the usefulness of the four branding markers as a way to think about the brand you have versus the brand you aspire to. You may want to include these in your brief as well.
The Branding Markers
To review, the four markers are reputation (how much do your audiences value your organization?); esteem (how highly thought of are you by your target audiences?); relevance (do your mission and activities relate to the concerns of your target audiences?); and differentiation (are there other organizations out there that do what yours does? Is your organization distinct from those other organizations in the minds of your target audiences?).
The branding markers should be included in every nonprofit organization's toolkit. To see why, draw a simple two-axis chart, with the four markers arrayed along the vertical axis and the numbers 1 to10 spaced along the horizontal axis. Now ask yourself: How valued is your organization in the community? If you have reason to believe that 50 percent of the community knows and values your organization, put an X above the 5 next to "reputation." If your organization is unique and has no competition (good for you!), give yourself a 10 next to "differentiation."
Identifying weaker markers as they relate to your organization lets you know what you need to work on, while the stronger ones tell you what you can count on. Strong brands can have weak markers, but some are of more concern than others. For instance, if your brand is unique and well respected but irrelevant to your primary audience, you could have a major
problem. If, on the other hand, your brand is highly relevant and well respected but not particularly well known, you have a problem — but one that can be rectified. That's why it's important for the creative team to know at the beginning of the design process just what the strengths and weaknesses of your brand are.
Branding by Committee
Now that you're familiar with the basic elements of the design brief, the next step
is to make sure that your organization's executive director and senior staff —
working with outside consultants as needed — are involved in developing the
brief. And once the brief has been completed, it's equally important to present it to your board for review. Carolyn Patterson, president of the Leadership Council of the Alliance for Nonprofit Governance, says, "There's no question that the board has to sign off on the organization's branding. But first, the board needs to have a clear handle on the mission and vision of the organization in order to be able to give direction."
Now, you may be thinking that your board members are either uninterested in or incapable of thinking about design issues and branding strategies. In which case, I'd suggest that, when it comes to issues of design and branding, board members can only be effective if they are given the proper context for thinking about those issues. And that's one important purpose of the design brief. Let me tell you a story.
Beth Fredrick, Vice President of Communications and Development at the Alan Guttmacher Institute in New York City, and two of her colleagues visited me a while back with a problem: Most of the Institute's publications (of which there are many) looked nothing alike. As Fredrick noted, "Each publication is targeting a different audience and serves a different purpose. Plus no one ever sees all of them together. Is there a better way to
unify them and promote an image for the Institute?"
She was right. Although her organization's publications derived from the same institutional culture, some were bold and modern in appearance while others were quite scholarly — and there wasn't any connection between the different looks and designs. Without such a connection, without a unifying theme, the publications tended to blur the unique attributes of the Guttmacher Institute and, in terms of branding, canceled each other out. What Beth and her colleagues needed, I suggested, was some kind of institutional dialog focused on developing a design brief to use as a springboard for a coherent brand strategy.
Fredrick agreed, and told me that she and her colleagues were about to welcome a new brand-savvy CEO into the fold. She further agreed that the arrival of the new CEO was an ideal opportunity to start talking about the brand, that the process should involve senior staff and the board, and that the brief should include the purpose of each publication
and a description of how it related to the overall brand. The latter would serve to focus all the stakeholders, including the board and senior staff, on the task at hand. As Fredrick later confessed, "The tough part is where the directive comes from. Everyone involved with your organization needs a branding mentality, otherwise it's a real challenge to use design in strategic and effective ways."
As Beth Fredrick understood, sooner or late every organization, regardless of size, has to grapple with its own branding conundrums. Nonprofits that are able to provide a design brief to their creative teams and bring key staff and board members into the process have a better chance of arriving at their destination — the creation of an effective brand — than do organizations that try to get there without a map or the participation of key stakeholders. There are exceptions, of course, and the fact that some organizations succeed in branding themselves effectively without a design brief or buy-in from the board should not be taken as an argument for adopting the seat-of-your-pants approach to branding. As often as not, their success is attributable to the special talents of one or two people and more than a little luck. With that in mind, let's look at a tiny nonprofit that has been able to leverage the big talents of its founders into a strong and effective brand.
Fort Greene Park Users and Pets Society (PUPS), a volunteer-run membership organization in the Fort Greene neighborhood of Brooklyn, is so new and small it still hasn't received its determination letter from the IRS. Nor does it have a board or much funding. Yet it has gotten off to a beautiful start, branding wise, in terms of expressing its core values and implementing its brand strategy:
The PUPS mission statement — "We are responsible dog owners who believe that in order to enjoy the park's beautiful grounds and many resources, we must clean up after our dogs, keep our dogs under control, and prevent our dogs from harming the park's landscape" — is straightforward and establishes the unique positioning of the organization.
The organization's audiences are easily defined. Its primary audience, numbering in the hundreds, is anyone who walks his or her dog(s) in Fort Greene Park; secondary audiences include New York City Parks Department officials and employees and residents of Fort Greene who use the park but don’t have dogs.
The organization regularly surveys its members and incorporates many of the comments/ideas generated by those surveys in its activities and materials to make
sure it remains relevant and responsive to its members.
The acronym form of the organization's name, PUPS, is short, fun, relevant, and easy to remember — all qualities that reinforce the brand.
The organization has no competition and so is highly differentiated in the
minds of its target audiences.
The PUPS Web site (www.fortgreenepups.org) is bright, well-designed, and chock-full of valuable resources for members. Even better, the organization presents clearly defined short- and long-term goals right on the site and
informs visitors to the site when a goal has been reached.
The organization has good marketing instincts. Its products — T-shirts and a
calendar — resonate with the organization's target audiences and reinforce its
brand while generating revenue.
Surprise, surprise! Up until a few months ago, PUPS was run by just two people —
a graphic designer named Amy Hecht and Kath Hansen, a marketing professional, with a lot of support from Amy's accounting-savvy husband, Maurice van Swaaij. Together, Hecht and Hansen developed the PUPS brand, including its mission/values statements, logo, Web site, and income-generating products. But it’s precisely because PUPS is small, coupled with the
fact that Hecht and Hansen are design professionals, that the organization was
able to develop a strong brand in a cost-effective manner without benefit of a written design brief: It was all in their very professional heads.
Thanks in part to its effective branding, PUPS members "get" the organization and show up in large numbers for events. And because they're able to describe what it does in simple, easy-to-understand language, they also tend to be excellent word-of-mouth
promoters of the organization and its value to the community. Recently, when Hecht and Hansen realized they needed to expand the organization's leadership ranks, they put out a call for others to get involved and were pleasantly surprised when dozens of members (including design and photography professionals) volunteered. And with all sorts of new plans on the PUPS drawing board, Hecht, Hansen, and their colleagues are already at work on a formal design brief that will be used to guide the organization's future expansion.
So now you're on your way — to developing a design brief, to getting your CEO and senior managers to think about branding issues, and to securing the best wishes of your board. In next month's column, I'll explain how to develop the design brief into a document
and will describe the role of the brand steward in more detail. In the meantime, keep noticing the brands (and celebrities) that attract, or repel, you — and why!
PND Nonprofits By Design - DK Holland BioWriter, strategist, and art director DK Holland has been developing award-winning programs that include branding, licensing, promotion, and product development for companies such as Mattel and Citicorp for thirty years. She was, until 2001, a partner in the Pushpin Group, an internationally acclaimed design and illustration firm based in New York City. Currently the principal of DK Holland, llc, a communications consultancy that works exclusively with nonprofits, her clients include the Literacy Assistance Center, New Internationals, the Sustainability Education Center, World Reach, the Buckminster Fuller Institute, and Sisters of Charity New York. DK serves on the board of directors of the Alliance for Nonprofit Governance, which she is in the process of re-branding; is an editor ofCommunications Artsmagazine and the author/art director of a dozen books on graphic design; and teaches in the graduate school for nonprofit management at New School University. She lives in Fort Greene, Brooklyn.
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