Just How Much Branding Can One Nonprofit Take?
Photo by mattlogelin on Flickr |
I received this question via email this week:
Our organization has gone through a huge transition in the last year. We are in a new neighborhood, with a new, beautiful building, new development staff (like myself, hired for the first-time by the organization) and a new, more sophisticated look - a rebrand.
Internal dynamics made the rebranding process a frankly, painful process. But, the process is almost now complete and I’ve come down to one last step: convincing staff to use the new rebranded look with their e-mail signatures.
We had the graphic design company design e-mail signatures for us, but only two staff (and one is me) have agreed to change over to this more formulaic signature. I personally think it looks more sophisticated and team-like. We have people use all sorts of fonts outside of our brand style guide and colors. Their argument is that to enforce from the top-down a mandate on something as seemingly petty as e-mail signatures is intrusive to the personal freedom of each staff member.
Any thoughts on this battle?
Here is how I replied:
I can see both sides of this argument — it’s good to be consistent, but you also don’t want to force the brand on people to the point where they rebel against it. A brand won’t succeed with the public if your own people aren’t behind it.
I would try to find some middle ground about using the brand overall — pick your battles. If you can get everyone to agree to use it consistently on all of the high-visibility pieces, I would be willing to let the email sig slide — within reason. Maybe you can come up with a range of options in fonts and colors that are still somewhat consistent with the brand look. That way, you aren’t all over the map, but you are also allowing some personal choice. Or is there a way people can customize the sigs provided to them with their own little messages about their particular programs?
I really do think finding some middle ground will be the best result long-term.
How would you have responded to this situation? Click on the comments link to add your thoughts.
What about having staff use the branded email signatures on all outgoing messages but inter-departmental emails can be a little more relaxed? Not sure how easy that would be to set up, but it seems like that would be a reasonable compromise.
I say folks can put whatever signature they want on their personal email accounts, when it’s work… you need to be a team player.
I agree with picking your battles. It sounds like this may be a bit brand mad…people can get too obsessed on the brand and brand guidelines etc…but take a step back and look at the bigger picture. A brand is supposed to stand for something and if this gets pushed it will just end up standing for something negative in the organisation…not a good start. Once they aren’t using the old brand, move on, look at the big picture and find a way to make people proud of the brand, when you do that you won’t be able to stop them using it.
Half the challenge of branding a nonprofit effectively lays in outlining a process up front that builds buy-in. Unlike a for-profit, nonprofit staffers and board members often reject branding efforts if they haven’t been appropriately involved in the process, or, at least, had the importance of it adequately explained (usually done with training).
Instead of focusing on the small details first, I’d go back and lead the entire staff through a process that takes them on the branding journey and builds buy-in. Then the email sig won’t be such a big deal to implement, perhaps.
Would you let each staff member use individualized letter head? Sounds like this is a bigger issue of buy-in as noted.
Thanks for the topic. Our team refuses to use our new branded email address. I could skip the signatures happily if our team could move away from the generic “me at aol” “Suzy at yahoo” and “sammy at gmail” Lots of “good reasons” but no change after branded website was added over a yaer and a half ago. one response: “only my cousin uses that one!” I, too, am new and from a for profit background. Help, help, help!
We also rebranded recently, and e-mail signatures was also an issue. Our IT department was able to set Outlook to default to a formulaic e-mail signature for all staff. They still have the freedom to set alternate signatures in Outlook, but it would take an extra step to delete the default and apply a different signature to each e-mail, which so far no one has taken the effort to do (it’s been about 6 months).
Another argument we made for our signature was that it would be better for the recipients. Previously, some staff were inserting graphics, logos, or backgrounds that would increase the size of the e-mail. Our new standard e-mail is text-only.
[...] November 11, 2008 Kivi Leroux Miller started an interesting discussion in a post on Kivi’s Nonprofit Communications Blog. The post detailed a question from a communications professional at a nonprofit that has just [...]
I agree with leandra. Your work email is just that ~work~ email. It belongs to the org. I would certainly go about implementing the branded signature with a softer touch than just stating the above- the suggestions about building buy-in, training and allowing a single item (a line with a program or the like) that can be customized are great. But the bottom line is that you worked to create new branding for yourself and there is no reason not to utilize this in your email to unify this form of external communication.
If folks still refuse to change over the email signature after you’ve offered education around the branding etc., I’d have to wonder if it isn’t indicative of some other issue.