Brand Alignment

Brand is the delivery of a set of promises made to your constituents.

It’s that simple . . . and that difficult.

Making promises you can and will keep isn’t easy. And because many organizations make promises without knowing it — or create expectations they are unable or unwilling to fulfill — learning how to intentionally and effectively make the brand promise can be a daunting task.

Among Christian nonprofits, branding is becoming more and more accepted as an important and integral part of your overall marketing strategy. As they become more exposed to and familiar with the language that is common to general market branding, many organizations are finding that they really are “brands.”

It’s important to keep in mind that brand development can only be understood within the context of making and keeping promises. Once you’re onboard with that, then a simple process can be used to develop or redevelop your brand. Many Christian nonprofit organizations have spent millions of dollars branding themselves. But you don’t necessarily have to spend that kind of money to take the first simple steps toward developing or redeveloping your brand.

Masterworks follows four main steps when we help organizations brand or rebrand themselves:

1. Discovery
   Get the facts by assessing (through interviews and other methods) existing perceptions about your brand from key stakeholders, including key leadership, board members, donors, advocates, et al.
   
2. Do the necessary homework
   1. Analyze your competition, ministry category or type and position in the marketplace by using primary and secondary research.
   2. Review and analyze past branding or organization positioning efforts, if any have been done in the past.
3. Develop insights
   Once we have the facts and research in hand, we move on to the hard and creative work of synthesizing it into key insights. This is the value-added step of a third-party expert — taking what we know and developing it into the kind of perspective out of which a brand essence can be distilled.
   
4. Deliverables
   1. Brand essence — a one-paragraph “elevator speech” about the essence of what the organization is and what it stands for; the promise.
   2. Brand statement — a one-sentence or shorter statement that serves as the “rallying cry” of the organization; the essence distilled into a compelling few words that convey the core truth of your organization.
   3. Brand visuals — the graphic elements that support the brand promise and messaging; the marks, if you will, that serve the brand.

Brand development honors the importance of your essential mission by effectively bringing forward the promises you make. When you keep those promises with your existing constituents, and make them truthfully with your prospective constituents, you’ve delivered the kind of value to them that you already deliver to your ministry recipients.