You’ve got a dynamite logo, a compelling tagline, and great messages that really hit home with your audiences. How do you get your team to use them consistently and correctly?
Has this ever happened to your organization?
- Staff sends out a picnic flyer without the correct logo, fonts, and or colors (created in MS Word, no less!).
- An office manager writes a listing for a section of a local magazine and doesn’t include any relevant messaging.
- The Development Department sends a card out to donors through a third-party marketing company, which formats the message in all caps, with an excess of exclamation points, and poor reproduction of the logo and tagline.
- A staff member creates her own e-invitation using a template with an image and colors that have no relationship the organization’s brand and does not include the organization’s logo.
- When requests for materials are turned down due to unclear goals or unrealistic timeframe, staff just goes off and does something on their own.
Frustrating for those in charge of brand management!
What’s a Marketing or Communications Director to do? Such actions are crazy-making and threaten to undo all the hard work of designing and building a brand. The answer: training, training, training.
Build a culture that understands and respects the organization’s brand. Reinforce proper use of the brand guidelines, and showcase their good effect. Here are some rules to live by to ensure that brand standards are maintained.
Make maintenance of the brand a core priority for the organization. Leadership has to lead, by communicating the importance of a strong brand to everyone in the organization.
Make sure staff understands the technical aspects. Guidelines must be written for an audience acclimated to the soft skills of helping people rather than for people with a technical mindset. Watch out for jargon and avoid assumptions about basic knowledge.
Reward good behavior. Publicly recognize those who follow the brand guidelines. Post examples on the intranet or bulletin board with a note praising the design or messaging. Offer other rewards or recognition for maintaining the brand standards.
Have those who do a good job maintaining the brand standards show others how it’s done. Staff might be more inclined to listen to or learn from a peer rather than management.
Provide ongoing training. You can’t expect people who have no prior training in branding, marketing or design to understand, remember or be consistent with the brand without lots of reminders. Find regular opportunities to mention the brand priority, for example, at staff meetings and in memos.
Be sure new staff receive personal training. Don’t just hand new employees or volunteers a manual and hope they’ll “get” it. Let them know that brand consistency is an important part of their job description and encourage them to ask questions if they are unsure about anything.
Speak people’s language. Your staff may be more auditory than visual so they may not actually see the difference in how the logo, typefaces, or design elements are treated, or realize when something is off. Communicate the brand standards in ways they can understand. Help them understand what the elements of the visual identity are meant to communicate to stakeholders.
Provide specific examples of good practices and the way they help the organization. Consistent branding improves the way people perceive the organization, increasing respect and credibility, resulting in more referrals, members, or funding. The more specific the example, the more memorable it will be. When a school is competing for students, an inaccurate directory listing means referral sources won’t know which children to refer. This can undermine the recruitment rate and, therefore, the income of the school. If random images, typefaces, and colors are used on flyers, the events won’t be associated with your organization. This may reduce attendance as well as rob the organization of credit for the all the work it does.
Impose consequences if guidelines are not followed. If establishing and maintaining a strong brand are truly a priority, then it is, de facto, part of everyone’s job description. Not complying should bring consequences. Of course, this requires that everyone is aware of that expectation and given the appropriate opportunity to do a good job, by understanding what the guidelines are, having easy access to the logo and brand assets, quick answers to their questions and so on.
The penalties for noncompliance can range from a rebuke to a note on their job performance review. Introduce negative consequences slowly by explaining what they are and why they are being imposed. Then provide a grace period during which people are warned but not penalized. The Communications and Marketing departments may not be able to oversee every design need, which leaves non-marketing people in charge of creating materials. Be sure they have the tools and motivation to do so!
Another alternative is to hire a designer or outsource all the work to an agency or freelancer. This eliminates the need for ongoing training and constant oversight of staff outreach efforts.
