 As-Salaam-Alaikum-Khawwati-Nuh-Azrat. Wasim has and welcomes you to lecture number 15 of Marketing for Non-Profites, MKT 628, at the Virtual University of Pakistan. The topic of learning is brand raising, meaning how to raise a brand. Whenever we talk about raising a brand, the image, it really flashes into our mind as that of a logo, its colors, and all the associated features. But the fact of the matter is that branding is not limited to that. This is just to the one particular part of the whole branding process. Branding, in effect, goes far beyond that and it is the upshot, meaning the result of a very comprehensive, holistic, all-encompassing kind of a strategic process that starts with the vision of the founder or the founders. Once the founders could have the vision in place, they try to put together so many different resources needed to carry out the program like the vision. And that gives rise to what we call the strategic intent. And out of that, so many different strategic steps that we follow in order to complete that particular process. And at the end of it, we get what we call a particular program and we brand that program in a comprehensive way like the following. Branding basically takes place at three different levels of the organization. The first level is known as the organizational level itself. The second one is known as the identity level, whereas the third one is known as the experiential level. All the levels are extremely important, but the fact remains that the first level, which is the organizational level, is the driving force behind all that happens within the organizations. And another factor is that it drives all the programs, the HR function and all the decisions that organizations make in order to execute their programs and then accomplish their missions. So we can say that the different steps that are part of the strategic process are the vision translated into strategic intent, further flowing into strong culture which basically is a collection of different values and values define the way we work within the organizations. If we are very passionate about working on a particular cause that becomes a value because it is the passion that drives us to go to the work and do it in the most efficient and effective way. Strong culture gives us certain capabilities and core competencies out of which we get what we call sustainable competitive advantage. We have this advantage which really differentiates us from others and with this the point of differentiation that we get into what we call a mission and that mission is expressed in very explicit terms so that everybody understands what the organization is all about, what it does and how it is going to fulfill the vision with which the whole thing started off in the first place. And once we have mission in place, we carve out the right positioning for the program that we are working on and out of the positioning we get the personality of the program or in other words the brand. I am talking about program which is going to be synonymous with the brand because here we are talking in the context of non-profits and we do not call it a product although a program is a product as well. The organizational level is extremely important because all the steps of the process that I have just enumerated are the ones which get translated into different communications. The fact is until the time whatever we do as part of the process is communicated to all the audiences, those steps are not fulfilled and the only way to bring to a completion of the program we have got to talk about that, we have got to communicate verbally, in writing by doing so many different things and therefore communication plays an extremely important role in highlighting the organizational level because we talk about it with a sense of uniqueness we reach our targets, we raise funds and we advocate the cause with that point of differentiation which is the basis of our positioning. And of course with a strong position we reach the targets and influence them with the difference that we think we carry and with the conviction on their part audiences come forward to support our cause and therefore communication plays an extremely important role in making the cause visible with that uniqueness that we are trying to pinpoint and trying to highlight. The next level is the identity level which basically is a combination of two sub-levels the first one is known as the visual identity whereas the second one is known as the messaging platform and as a matter of fact these two sub-levels are the ones which are even more associated with the branding exercise and the fact again remains that the branding is not limited to the visual identity of the brand although this portion is extremely important and it is also not limited to the messaging platform or a collection of two at the same time it again goes beyond that. It is based on what I just talked about as part of the strategic process in terms of the organizational level and that level then getting translated into the identity platform which consists of these two sub-levels. Until the time that we have total clarity of the organizational level and we are very clear about the point of differentiation, positioning and the personality of the program or the organization we cannot really define the right identity for the organization or for that matter cannot really come up with the most appropriate communications in terms of our vision, mission, values, statement, so on and so forth. It is important and rather mandatory that we translate all these elements into very explicit expressions which have to be understood and owned by all those working for the organization and all those who are actively supporting the cause with the meaning all the important stakeholders. We should not really hesitate involving important stakeholders when it comes to creating these statements because they are a very significant portion of the messaging platform and these are the statements through which we express ourselves and we let others know what is the cause and what is it all about and what is the point of our destination. After the identity level we get into what we call the experiential level. This basically is a combination of the different tools of communications at the disposal of the marketing people who put them together the way they think is the most appropriate mixture of communications in order to reach the target audiences and these tools of communication or communications consist of so many different media. We have electronic media consisting of the cyberspace of which we have websites, blogs, emails, we have social networks and then we have the traditional print media consisting of newspapers, read articles, articles, reports, brochures, flyers and so on and so forth and then we have personal spaces in terms of the meetings that take place between us meaning the marketing people and our audiences consisting of all the audiences starting from the sponsors to the clients meaning the people or the community for whom we are working. We have galas, we have seminars, conferences and we have promotional programs of different kinds. Then we have on-air communications by way of having the television networks we have radios and the fact is that the YouTube is also considered as one of the tools of on-air communications and then we have media coverage by the electronic media and last but not the least we have text messaging the mobile telephones which have become the latest tool of communications because with the help of that we can very quickly reach our target audience for advocacy in the first place and also for fundraising. It is considered to be one of the more important and effective media that nowadays we have at our disposal. With these levels we can say that the first one is all about the philosophy of the organization starting with the vision translated into the different strategic steps which we call the organizational level because those are the steps that drive all the execution regarding the program or the programs that we are executing and unless we have the complete clarity of all those steps and unless we really can relate all those with each other in an integrative way that we cannot come up with something which is very holistic and which really is integrated into something that gives rise to effective communications and communications is the name of the game here when we talk about brand raising and the basis or the supports that we need to have to raise the brand are the three levels that I am talking about. Let us take a look at a graphical presentation of these steps so that we can develop an in-depth and insightful understanding of the process the way it takes place and the way it leads the ground for eventual communications that take place with the help of all the tools that are part of the experiential level. As you can see from this illustration we have the vision to the right and top and this is the vision of the founder. The fact is that the founder or founders do not remain with the organizations all the time. They disappear from the scene which is a fact of life and from them others pick up the threads where they leave and others adopt all that they have left behind and out of that vision we create what we call strategic intent and you will recall that this basically is a function of resources of our capabilities and core competencies. Now the question here is what is it that is connected with raising of the brand when we talk about resources capabilities and our core competencies? Well if we are not in a position to put together all the resources which are most appropriate for deployment for a particular cause our brand is going to be weak. Same is the case with our capabilities and core competencies. Good core competencies which cannot be copied by others which cannot be substituted and even if those can be substituted at a later stage at a very high cost on part of the competition that is something that is going to provide us with a very solid base and a platform for moving forward because out of those core competencies we create a competitive advantage and if we do not have that competitive advantage meaning that we do not have some point of differentiation which is different from others and different in a unique way. Not in a simple way but rather also unique way which can home into the minds of our audiences that we cannot create a strong basis for the brand and we cannot really go ahead with the kind of communications that we need to put together in order to make our program or communications for the program effective and reachable. Another thing that we have to take care of here is the external environment. We take a close look at the environment all the time because if there is a need to bring about a change in our vision and resultantly in all the steps that I am talking about then we need to do that as a response to that. The fact is that the vision does not really change every now and then. It takes quite a bit of time before we bring about certain adjustments to the vision for the organization and hence all the resultant elements out of the vision. But the important fact is that we do not lose sight of any possible changes taking place in the environment and this is how all these things are connected and lay a ground for the brand raising to take place. You think to yourself and you will be convinced that without a good point of differentiation that has such a comprehensive and sophisticated background in terms of all the steps of the process we cannot really carve out the correct position for the program and unless we have the correct position we cannot communicate properly and we cannot really express the right personality of the organization despite having all the capabilities and competencies at our disposal if we cannot reach the right point of differentiation and the most accurate positioning which is simple and unique we cannot express ourselves through our communications and as you can see from this illustration we are down to the next step which basically is a collection of the two levels that work simultaneously we have the visual identity then we have the messaging platform visual identity and messaging platform have to be a true reflection of the identity of the organization and we derive this identification out of the organizational level that defines the positioning and personality of the organization so this is where the connect is and this is where the sensitivity is once we have a vagueness out of the process and we have total clarity we go ahead with the development of the logo the colors and the images and together we start expressing our different strategic elements in terms of the very specific statements which become part of the messaging platform and so much so that all the people within the organization and all those who are connected the way they have to almost remember those statements because you all have to express yourselves at different times at different points to different audiences in just about the same way it is not that one person expresses one self in one way and the next one in another because that is going to cause a lot of variability to the way that we have expressed ourselves as an organization and the way that we have attempted to create the identity of the organization and the resulting messaging platform we then get down to the experiential level which is a collection of different tools of communication and here the important thing is that we have to have somebody or rather a small team within the organization if we happen to be a small organization if we happen to be a large organization we can have a large team of course but a team of marketing people that is knowledgeable not only about the traditional marketing communications but also have the savvy of digital marketing communications because we are passing through a period which is a collection, a combination of both sides and therefore putting communications together in terms of the cyberspace and in terms of other means of communications is a demand which has to be fulfilled by a team that is knowledgeable about all the tools of communication here we have to be very particular and sensitive to the one factor when we talk about the internet in particular we are here talking about two-way communications as you will agree with me traditional marketing communications are just one way one-way traffic because we talk with them through advertising through television commercials through radio programs so on and so forth but there is no interaction with the audiences with the help of internet and the cyberspace the communications have become two-way and we are interacting with our audiences all the time which means it entails positive advocacy as well as negative advocacy meaning there are people who will talk positively about your program or about the product that you are trying to sell you have launched or you are working on you are trying to maintain and there are audiences that are going to be negative about certain elements of your program and therefore you have to have people who can collect that information on a daily basis continually so that you can sift information meaning good from bad and if you are getting feedback which is mostly positive you have got to reinforce that practice but vigilance is the name of the game and that is the price you have to pay if you are getting into digital marketing communications known as DMC communication has a lot of power whether we do it in a traditional way or we make a combination of traditional marketing communications along with digital marketing communications which basically is integrated marketing communications meaning IMC the power of communications cannot be denied and therefore we again have to take a look at all those features that can make our communications very coherent and consistent and here one more time I would like to take you back to the strategic process out of which flows the coherence we look for while putting together our communications and it is by going through all these steps in a logical way that we end up with a communication process which is not vague and which is not whimsical I think that's the right word to use because we cannot afford to have people sitting in the marketing department or for that matter somewhere among the top management or also as part of the stakeholders who might find out we don't like this communication we don't like this particular color we don't like the way this name is written they have to support all that with the help of certain strategic considerations it just cannot be whimsical so coherent and consistent communications basically are an upshot of that particular process which gives legitimacy and authenticity to our communications and on that basis we create the identity of the organization which means we get into two levels simultaneously we develop the visual identity for the organization and we start working on the messaging platform so we can say that good communications if arrived at through the process that I've just talked about give us a lot of benefits out of which some are extremely significant but the one is that we have coherent and consistent communications the other one is we get consistency of image at every point of exposure or interaction with our audiences we are talking about the same thing over and over again we are not changing our presentations we are not changing our written expressions we are very consistent about creating a particular image and that is what we get out of these good effective communications and don't forget if we have coherent communications which lead towards consistency then automatically what we get on our programs is legitimacy, credibility, reliability reassurance, so on and so forth so many different adjectives which you can use for the programs and this is what you call branding you create and you raise your brand by becoming very strategic by giving due importance and consideration to so many different elements that belong here and there all along the strategic process and then arrive at something which is oversimplified by lay people or even those professionals who do not really have the savvy of marketing by saying that this logo is a beautiful piece of marketing well it is an oversimplified statement but the fact is it really contains volumes if you try to translate that into marketing terms because when you do that you will go back to the strategic process and it will start from the vision and then get down into so many different flowing elements which have given you what you see there as the end product however I would like to add one thing here and that is the raising of the brand is not a short term exercise it is a long term thing and any organization has to have the patience to raise the rightmost brand it does not pop out overnight it is a reflection of a lot of hard work in terms of planning, coordination and teamwork and therefore the end result that we see when we take a look at those organizations which we may call good brands in themselves we can rest assured that the amount of work that has gone behind the brand is enormous and given that we can now define the process of brand raising as the one which develops a very clear and cohesive organizational identity and communications systems that support organizations mission so this is a statement which has to be interpreted a little more because when we talk about the organizational identity we are talking basically in the context of nonprofits and we are not talking about one particular brand or one particular product which is launched by a commercial enterprise we are a nonprofit enterprise an organization which is a brand in itself the program, the organization is supposed to execute is the product and that's the brand and therefore it is the organization for which we have to create a very strong identity and that is raising of the brand having learned the basics of the brand raising meaning the foundation on which we expand and raise up a brand we now need to get into a little more details of the three levels that I talked about in the previous component in other words I am going to talk about the organizational level the identity level and the experiential level separately a little more in depth because there are certain elements to all these levels that need to be shed light on and they need to be highlighted in relation to their importance to the strategic process so in other words we are getting into added layers of the process in order to have better insight into the whole process so talking about the organizational level let me tell you that I have divided this particular level into two sub areas because the one area is undertaken by the top management whereas the other one is taken up by marketing people within the organization the reason the first area is undertaken by the top management because it consists of things like vision, mission, values and objectives and these are the kind of elements for which we need total dedication of the top management and when I say that it doesn't really mean it doesn't really have input from the other staff members like the marketing people in particular because you cannot really shape up your objectives and then translate them into very specific goals until you have talked with the marketing people but the point here is that it is the top management that looks into these elements and these are driven by the top management so to say and top management may also or rather they should involve important stakeholders like the board of directors and other sponsors who take active interest into your nonprofit we do not lose sight of the fact that we do approach our sponsors from time to time because of paucity of funds and not having to see the most appropriate level of the human resource and therefore sponsors who are from the professional world and who in themselves happen to be highly placed managers and governors of their businesses can help us with different issues in relation to marketing, finance purchasing and so on and so forth so that's why I said that the elements of the organizational level in terms of vision, mission, values and objectives at once that also maybe discussed with all those people who matter to us in terms of raising of funds and in terms of advocacy because without that help I think our importance would not really be measured as much on the same scale as we would like it to be the other part of the organizational level elements but into the marketing area in particular because here we are talking about positioning the audience and personality in particular there are other related elements to these three main elements of this particular part but I'm going to hold on to that until the time I start talking about all those one by one so let's go back to the first part which is vision, mission, values and objectives I think a lot has been said about vision and mission that they basically are founder driven and out of the vision we have the mission in place but here the importance of the mission factor is in terms of it being very explicit we always say that the mission has to be expressed in the very understandable terminology so that the audiences who are targeted are fully in a position to understand and appreciate what the organization is all about so it is not about only the external audiences it also is about the internal audience because when it comes to internal marketing we have to sell the mission to our staff members who have to own it because missing that ownership of the mission statement we cannot really expect total dedication and commitment of those staff members who have not been exposed to the mission statement and therefore they have to be taken on board in terms of making their inputs so that the words that have gone into the statement are weighed in their totality, in their entirety and nothing is missed out so consistency and clarity of the mission statement is of utmost importance here when you talk about the organizational level we may also like to talk about a change in mission well let me tell you change in mission doesn't really come about every now and then however depending on the external environment it may become incumbent on us to look into the mission statement and bring about certain changes and when we get into that situation of course we have to bring about all the corresponding changes and all the elements that are part of the process that we are going through right now same holds true for the vision statement which basically talks about the future and which could be lofty and futuristic because that's the statement which tells us that we're really we would like to be like five years hence, ten years hence so on and so forth and therefore anything that they may have bearing on that vision in the long term we have to take that into account and this also is a fact which is rather remote in terms of it's happening very frequently the visions don't really change frequently and whenever there's a need for that change nevertheless we have to look into that and adjust that vision so that corresponding changes could be brought about in everything starting from the strategic intent right down to the positioning and personality of the organization in the hope that we do not really have to carry out these changes frequently we stick to what we have learned about the vision and the mission factors if we say that a good mission statement it has to be audience centric in that it is simple, it is understandable it is the one which connects our audiences it really engages them it really motivates them into taking the action that we want them to take it brings about the behavior change and so on and so forth and it is the one which is helpful towards fundraising, advocacy and all those things then it has to be good at communication as well until the time it is spelled out very explicitly and in very clear terms it cannot be communicated in just about the same way and therefore the importance of communication comes here we have got to write down the mission statement why am I talking about writing down the mission statement because of the fact that we do not really want any vagueness in terms of our mission and we want to take any element of subjectivity out of the mission if you talk about your mission with the different people you may get the different answers you know why? because nothing is formalized in that particular organization so we have got to make the decision about formality and informality the fact is that the quality of the statement or the quality of communication so to say is a function of how formalized your communications system is and therefore I would rather advise you to have a formal and formalized communications system than having an informal one because people are not really on the same page when it comes to expressing their thoughts in terms of what exactly it is the organization is supposed to be doing this may sound unrealistic suspecting people not being on the same page in terms of executing the job they're supposed to be doing every day but the fact is if we do not really have formalized systems in place these kind of variabilities do show themselves and therefore it is the job of the top management and also everybody within the organization to make sure that they have formalized systems in order to take the element of subjectivity and the variability out of the whole process and to make communications very consistent the reason I'm talking about the variability in terms of expression of the mission on part of the different people is the absence of consistent communication and absence of communication which is consistent basically is due to the fact that the systems are not formalized meaning the communications system and that's what we have to look into so that we can come up with the most appropriate and effective communications toward the raising of the brand the next element I'm going to talk about is values the values also have a lot to do with the power of communication because the statement that we come up with in terms of values occupies a very important position in all the materials that we put together for promoting our organization what values really are well they are very strongly held beliefs in terms of working in a certain way the people working for the organizations can have a certain way of working when they come to work those who have good values are good workers now what are those values let me give you one example somebody working for a non-profit operating in the area of human services may like to be very passionate because it values sympathy and he values the saving of people's lives and what he values gets the expression or finds the expression into the way he operates and therefore the values become extremely important the way people work so in other words we can say that the people who do not really have good values are not good workers and the organization having those kind of people is not going to be in a position to achieve its mission because the way people within the organization work is not really conducive to the far achievement of the mission a collection of good values therefore reflects good culture and if the values are not that good then I leave to your imagination to guess what the culture would be like and the organization may not find itself in a position to accomplish the mission there are employees working for non-profits who are very sensitive to upholding good values and they subscribe to the code of ethics of good values so much that they prefer to leave the organization if they find out their organization not really following the values which it promotes so in other words the conviction on ethics is so strong that they want to strengthen the ethical part of the strategies they are a part of so in other words they are the people who wouldn't like to see their organization formulate and then execute certain strategies which are unethical so to say in very simple words and therefore the values have a very important place in terms of the brand raising and like I said earlier a statement on values is an extremely important statement which is part of all the literature that any organization puts together if it is going to keep its communications formalized and once those values are formalized I think it goes without saying that it brings the best out of all the people working for the organization and all the people who are associated with the organization because they know that the values have been communicated to everyone in the outer environment they are not really limited to the internal environment of the organization all the audiences know that these are the values that this particular organization is supposed to uphold and now if the organization does not do that it is going to be held to it and therefore formalizing communications a part of which also is coming up with a nice sounding statement on values is also an extremely important link toward the process of brand raising the next element of this sub-segment of the organizational level of brand raising is objectives and of course goals we know that objectives basically are an expression of a set of strategic guidelines which organizations follow in order to fulfill their goals and we also know that the goals basically are very specific translations into numbers of the objectives that the organization puts together as strategic guidelines and therefore all these meaning objectives and then goals they find a very strong connection with the mission and then communications so in other words it is with the help of communications that we highlight certain objectives we as any organization have to prioritize execution of different objectives it seldom will be the case that all objectives are equally important mostly there are certain objectives which take precedence over others and therefore it is going to be through communications that we shall decide the amount of resources to be deployed to certain objectives that demand a higher amount of resources so the resource centric objectives and goals are the ones which are going to be supported with communications in addition to other aids like resources that I just talked about do not lose sight of the fact that the elements that I have talked about so far the meaning, vision, mission, values, objectives and goals are the ones that happen to be the responsibility of the top management because these are the elements that really drive the execution of all the programs and in other words it really means that these are the elements which are basically responsible for a dominant portion of the programs they are the ones that define the direction of the programs they are the ones that commit the amount of resources to the programs which are to be executed and therefore looking at these elements in terms of their communication power is what we have to concentrate on we not only have to understand the essence of these concepts which we already know that we have to now understand how are we going to derive consistent communications out of having very explicit statements on all these elements so that we can keep subjectivity and vagueness out of the whole process and keep the creative exercise the very objective there is a good reason for keeping subjectivity out of the process because we here are doing something which is going to lay the ground for the next level of brand raising we still have to talk about the point of differentiation which is going to form the positioning of the program and then the personality and do not forget that once we are done with all this that is going to lay the ground further for the other levels of the brand raising exercise meaning the identity and then the experiential level in particular the identity because we have to do a lot of creative work in terms of creating the visual identity and also side by side the messaging platform it is this particular platform that we are trying to build in order for the remaining elements to really fall in place it is not only the positioning of the personality and audiences in relation to this particular level I am talking about it also is other elements of the remaining levels in particular the identity level which is going to be dependent on this particular platform so let us wait until that time I start talking about the identity