Over the last couple of months, I’ve been discussing how critical it is for nonprofits, faith-based organizations, and other purpose-driven organizations to uncover and give voice to an authentic and unique brand. Brand is so important to effectively communicating your mission, building strong long-term relationships with stakeholders, and driving meaningful impact. I use a pyramid image as the framework to show how an organization’s mission, purpose, vision, and values are the foundation of a strong and authentic brand. Every layer is supported by the layer below. At the pinnacle of the pyramid sits the brand guidelines and content templates. These are the key deliverables that emerge from the process of brand discovery. I wrote about content templates earlier this week and I’ve written about brand books for nonprofits in the past. Today I want to outline the role of brand guidelines and what the value is in using them. Brand guidelines can serve as an invaluable resource in shaping and strengthening your organization’s brand identity.
Understanding the Role of Brand Books
Brand guidelines, also known as brand books or brand manual, is a comprehensive document that outlines the core elements of your organization’s brand identity and provides guidelines for their consistent application across all communication channels and touchpoints. While the specific content and format of brand books may vary, they typically include the following components. You’ll note that much of this comes directly from your brand framework.
Mission, Vision, Purpose, and Values
Brand books often start by reaffirming your organization’s mission, vision, purpose, and values, serving as a reminder of the overarching foundation that guides every action. This foundation should be embedded in every stakeholder’s heart and mind.
Target Stakeholders
These personas represent the different audience segments or groups that your organization aims to reach and engage. Each persona typically includes demographic information, psychographic traits, needs, pain points, and preferred communication channels. By understanding the motivations and preferences of these personas, nonprofit leaders can tailor their messaging and outreach efforts to effectively resonate with their target audience.
Personality, Voice, and Tone
Brand books may also define your organization’s brand personality, voice, and tone, providing guidance on the style of language and messaging that best reflects your mission, values, and audience.
Visual Identity
This section details the visual elements that make up your organization’s design identity, including logos, color palette, typography, imagery guidelines, and usage rules. By establishing clear guidelines for these elements, brand books ensure visual consistency and reinforce brand recognition.
Brand Messaging
This section outlines key messages, taglines, and call-to-action statements that best reflect your organization’s unique value proposition and communicate its impact to stakeholders. It also includes content templates for advertising, social media posts, flyers, emails, and more.
Usage Guidelines
Brand books include usage guidelines and best practices for applying the brand identity across various mediums, such as press releases, web content, print materials, digital platforms, signage, merchandise, and more. These guidelines ensure consistency and coherence in how your brand is presented to the public, in verbal, digital, and physical formats. Usage guides also include copy formatting, including title capitalizations, naming conventions for programs, departments, buildings, words your organization does and doesn’t use, abbreviation usage, and the age-old debate about the Oxford comma. I can’t stress enough how critical this section is for a brand.
You may be saying, is this really necessary? The answer is YES!! Let’s look at the value a brand brook can bring to your organization.
The Value of a Brand Book
When shared across the organization and put into every best practice, brand books offer several invaluable benefits:
Consistency
By providing clear guidelines for brand elements and communication practices, brand books help maintain consistency in how your organization presents itself to the world. Consistency builds trust and credibility with stakeholders, reinforcing your organization’s reputation and identity.
Alignment
Brand books serve as a unifying tool for your teams, ensuring that everyone is aligned around your organization’s mission, values, voice, and visual identity. This alignment fosters a shared sense of purpose and strengthens internal cohesion, which will then engage your external stakeholders on a deeper level. Every message will complement each other and your reputation as authentic and credible will be strengthened.
Efficiency
With established guidelines in place, teams can streamline their marketing and communication efforts, saving time and resources that would otherwise be spent on redundant and complicated decision-making, ideation, production, and revisions.
Clarity
Brand books provide clarity and guidance for decision-making at all levels of the organization, empowering leaders to make informed choices that uphold the organization’s brand integrity. If an action doesn’t feel like it would fit into the brand framework, then it shouldn’t be done.
Long-Term Sustainability
A well-defined brand identity, supported by comprehensive brand guidelines, lays the foundation for long-term sustainability and growth. It enables your organization to build a strong, recognizable presence in the minds of stakeholders and adapt to evolving needs and challenges over time. This is critical as we compete for the time, talent, and treasure from donors, volunteers, corporate funders, and others.
Real-Life Examples
Here are two real-life examples of brand books that I think are very well done.
Also, here is an image of a brand book my team created for LSS when we rebranded. This little book was given to external partners to use when they were creating marketing and messaging on our behalf.
A Note About Implementation
No brand book will be effective if created and then hidden in a drawer or desktop. A brand book must be readily available to anyone who communicates or represents your brand. That means not just marketing or development teams. It also means program managers and HR leaders. I suggest making it available to anyone in your organization who is a manager or above. In addition, it’s critical to ensure that everyone knows these guidelines are mandatory. Make them best practices, not suggestions. Spot check, if necessary.
Every Brand Book is Unique
Your brand book should reflect the essential parts of your brand framework. Remember that a strong brand is a powerful asset for driving impact and advancing your mission. Brand books are pivotal in shaping and stewarding your organization’s brand identity, ensuring consistency, alignment, and clarity in communicating with the world. Investing in brand guidelines will strengthen your impact and build a solid foundation for success in pursuing your mission.
I’d love to hear about your organization and what you’ve done to build your brand. Schedule a discovery call with me today!
