If your not-for-profit organization is thinking about or preparing to embark on a brand refresh or rebranding project, consider a branding workshop as an excellent first step.
A branding workshop provides a way to bring together board leadership, senior staff and team members for constructive and collaborative discussions centered around branding. The moderated workshops, which typically span several sessions over a couple of days, can identify challenges and opportunities and begin to create the foundation of your positioning, messaging and updated brand.
The Benefits of a Branding Workshop
A branding workshop will give your nonprofit the chance to come together and unite behind the brand, allow many of the organization’s voices to offer ideas or solutions, and, with that increased engagement and involvement, will lead to a stronger brand foundation and an excitement toward the refreshed outlook. There is an investment of time required for your organization’s participants, but the end result is a better outcome of the branding efforts. At Trillion, our moderated branding workshop exercises serve several key factors:
Group Consensus and Understandings
Let’s face it, sometimes a leadership team does not have the same perspective or knowledge about branding. When embarking upon a high-profile project such as a brand refresh or rebranding, it is critical to focus on a direction. A branding workshop brings management and all of the key stakeholders into the same room to participate and reach a collaborative conclusion. This helps provide the company responsible for the new or revised brand with a clear direction to work toward.
Who should attend a branding workshop?
- C-Suite leadership
- Senior fundraising staff members
- Department or program leaders
- Marketing and communications leadership
- At least one long-time employee
- At least one new hire
- A key member of your Board
All Voices Heard, Which Leads to Better Acceptance of Change
Organizations with many departments and team leaders may all have ideas that need to be heard. It’s important for everyone to voice their opinions and also listen to the ideas of others.
The branding workshop is a great opportunity for everyone to share their ideas while everyone is together, so everyone has a thorough understanding of the rationale behind specific decisions. All of this leads to a sense of ownership of the brand and encourages brand advocacy.
Building a Foundation for the Brand
Most importantly, the branding workshop helps lay the groundwork and tools for the branding process. The exercises and team-building sessions help extract vocabulary that should or should not be used in communications. It also helps with the drafting of positioning statements and core messages. These proclamations help define key information about competitors, and also help state what the team thinks it does best. This exercise will inform branding decisions deep into the process.
Increases Excitement for Something New/Better
It’s likely that few in your organization have gone through a branding project before. While all of this might be new to them, a branding workshop can help build excitement toward what’s to come in the refreshed brand. Being involved in the branding workshop will allow them to talk about the process and understand why certain decisions are being made. The branding workshop helps team members see how a brand refresh can lead to something greater for the organization and for them as individual team members.
Do you have questions about conducting a branding workshop with your not-for-profit?
Strong branding is important for your overall nonprofit marketing efforts. It increases trust, recognition, and your ability to appeal to your donors. Trillion can help facilitate your branding workshop and bring the wind to your sails. We bring visuals and tools to keep participants engaged and to bring out value for the organization. Our branding workshops can be held at your offices or any off-site meeting space. Contact us here to discuss the benefits of a branding workshop, or give us a call at 908.219.4703. We look forward to seeing the growth your brand will experience!
