Brand Awareness 2020
Start the new year with a fresh review of your brand strategy.
The start of a new year, not to mention the dawn of a new decade, is a natural time to reflect. A time to take stock of your personal goals, priorities and plans for the future. It’s also a prime time to consider your organization and how you present your work to the world. Do you have a defined purpose? Does your stated mission still align with what you do day in and day out? Have you been going with your gut for too long? These are just a few of the questions to consider.
If you’re running a start-up, you likely set out with a clear plan for your offering and little more than a gut instinct around your brand. If you’re at a not-for-profit, you may sense that your day-to-day work has far exceeded your stated mission. Your team gets it, but what about everyone else? In either case, there’s a good chance you aren’t using a defined purpose as a key brand driver.
Without clear brand definition and consistent communication, your audiences are filling in the gaps. Your newer team members don’t share the hivemind of those that have been with you since the beginning. Your funders are viewing you through the lens of your emerging competition. You might be expanding your reach while also being viewed as yesterday’s news.
Your 2020 Gut Check
Here are a few questions to help assess how well defined your brand is for the new year. If the answers come easy, great. Document them. There’s a good chance that some of these will cause some contemplation. If so, those are areas to dig in.
Purpose
Do you have a clearly defined purpose?
If so, do your actions remain in line with that purpose?
Mission
Is your mission consistently communicated?
Does your day-to-day work match your stated mission?
Vision
Have you defined a vision for the near future?
Are you on track to fulfill that vision?
Audience
What does your current audience think about you?
Who do you wish knew about you?
Persona
Have you considered your key brand attributes?
Are those characteristics currently reflected in all of your work?
Competition
Have new competitors emerged in your space?
If so, how distinct is your offering in the eyes of your shared audiences?
Inspiration in Practice
A strong brand is reinforced through everything that you do. Every touchpoint. Every conversation. Every visual treatment. Here are a few references for establishing clarity and consistency.
Your team is the primary ambassador of your brand and the internal culture that you establish is critical to setting the right tone. This recent Havard Business Review article, Build a Culture to Match Your Brand, is a great resource.
The American Red Cross tagline, “Always there in times of need,” puts the organization’s mission front and center. Red Cross takes their brand positioning a step further by featuring their mission, vision and guiding principles on their website, while their iconic logo has become an international symbol of relief and most importantly their brand is reinforced through all of the work that they do.
PBS has become synonymous with quality educational programming. Their recent visual identity update fine-tuned their distinctive mark while their revised brand guidelines are shared publicly to ensure easy access and consistent use by member stations.
Whether you’ve been internalizing your brand or haven’t had a chance to consider key aspects – there’s no time like the present to get you and your team in sync. Leaving it to other’s imaginations will only gut your hard work.