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Communicating your org or project identity

241120 Aspiration Tech Branding Discussion

=Introductions=

Introductions around the circle with each contributing their experience and/or needs around branding.

- Small business/free lancers that are thinking about branding for themselves and clients

- Large orgs thinking about their existing branding — their audience may already have a preexisting idea about them, even though it doesn't match all the things that they offer

- Internal and external way in which an org is seen

- Visual vs other components of a brand. Many different ways to approach it

- Personal identity, behavior how does it relate to brand.

- When you're not in tech how do you help people understand the brand?

=Exercise working in pairs=

- What are issues that your organization/individual has dealt with in relationship with branding/identity?

=Sharing what we have discussed=

- Easier to do branding identity exercises with youth since it's second nature with them than older people. Younger people feel like the need to be part of a group, identity is part of that. It's important for them to be seen as part of a brand.

- Challenge with having an accessible and inclusive process / end outcomes, products — what does it look like, who is it for? You can use different elements to communicate identity.

- How you can use identity to soften an image of an organization? Shift perception of an organization.

-- Recounting experiences of orgs that tried to shift their brand. With some orgs it's easier, but with other there are issues
  institutional inertia, pre-existing work business

-- Internal vs external —- there's a need to do work first on the internal identity / values in order to reform external branding

- Branding as a stand in for reputation and clout -- without a formal brand per se, how does a project shift to establish itself as a brand?

-- Pushing product up to existing network, or expanding out to new networks based on issues with existing ones.

-- Tension between transparency & authenticity, and security & privacy.

-- Anti-brand as a kind of brand. Being authentic and having core values attracts people. Working as a freelancer it's helpful to think about what your purpose is, what do I care most about, what is the impact that I'd like to make. It doesn't need to be a big branding doc, but it could be boiled down to this.

- Trust in relationship to brands. Some people may have less trust in existing organziations, government. Healthcare has strong trust issue in the United States, whereas in other countries there's more trust.

-- Gaps in knowledge between what an org/gov does can provide vs public perception

- Question to explore how brands can help to build trust.
- Consistency — how to get everyone on board to be on brand.

- YMCA of the Rockies — primary thing that the org is known for, vs sub-project inside the org. Bring the sub-project to outside audience, or expand the brand of the org to include the project. Perhaps outreach to a wider audience within the existing one.

- EFF started in 90s much smaller group was impacted back then vs today — 80% of survey respondents were white males.

-- Want to expand EFF's work to greater communities. Need to associate EFF's work with things that communities already care about.

=Takeaways=

- Becoming clear about purpose whether as an individual or an organization, then building out from there. Visual, audio, thought leadership

- Thinking about trust is important, and mitigating issues with trust if you don't have it

- Orienting your brand to the things that people care about

- Personal brand — we have multiple representations of ourselves in-person, online. Opportunities for cross-over and wiggle room.