 Hey, welcome and thank you so much for joining us for another episode of the nonprofit show. Today we are starting with this bright light, Mandy Love, and she is going to talk to us with about all things branding and how it is more than just a logo. So Mandy, we're excited to have you and before we dive in, we of course want to say thank you to Julia Patrick for joining us today and almost every day. So we're so glad to have you here. Julia is the CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy. I'm Jarrett Ransom. I get to play her co-host on TV or on screen. It's so much fun and she allows me to keep showing up. So I'm Jarrett Ransom, also known as the non-profit nerd, but also really Julia's private non-profit nerd. And we are so thrilled to start every episode by saying thank you and demonstrating our appreciation to all of our presenting sponsors. We are so extremely grateful for your investment, not only in these episodes but truly the sector at large because you allow us to continue these conversations with some amazing professionals throughout the nation, just like we have here today with Mandy. So Mandy joins us and again Mandy Love, Creative Director and thank you. Thanks so much for joining us Mandy. We're glad to have you here. Well thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here today to talk about one of my favorite things, Brandy. Okay, I have to tell you, you made us look like super geniuses because last week The New York Times had a big article and it was like literally like almost the same title and it was kind of the gist was don't get caught up in your logo and confuse it with your brand. And it went through all of these different organizations about branding versus logos and I think in the non-profit sector we fall into this trap so often Mandy. So I'm really excited to have you here to kind of help us flush out what some of these things mean and and how we, even in the non-profit sector, we need to be looking at this. So first off we have a lot of questions for you. What is a branding element and how do we understand that? Okay, yeah so branding is of course more than just a logo. Branding is basically your messaging, your values, and in what how you perceive yourself to consumers, to donors, to the people outside of your company. And so that's why it's important when you're branding to lay that foundation of who you are, what you say, and what you want the world to see you as. You know 40, about 46 percent of how someone perceived your brand is how you tell them to perceive it. They also make up their own but you can steer that direction. That is interesting. 46 percent, now say that again Mandy. So 46 percent of the way people perceive your brand is how you've told them to and did I get that right? That is correct. So of course they also make up their own mind and we all trust when someone tells us oh this brand is awesome or you should try this. That's going to have an impact of how we see a brand is someone else already enjoying it and recommending it. But most of what they start out with is how we tell them and what we tell them. So we have to make sure that that message is consistent throughout everything and that we are living up to what we tell them we are. Otherwise they're going to see through it and know that we're not authentic. I know. So I always say this in the work that I do is you know well it's not rocket science but literally what you just said Mandy is rocket science to me because that is not my zone of genius. It is not what I do every day so I have a feeling you probably have said the statistics many times throughout your week or month but I just heard it for the first time and I'm like wow. So that means for us as nonprofit leaders it's really providing that narrative that we want to have repeated in the community of why we are the solution to the community problem and how perhaps we can continue to invite supporters, partners to work with us to help solve this problem. 46% comes from us. Yes. Yes and so that's why it's so important to keep that brand that message on brand and so that's why it's important too when we talk about branding. The logo is an element of your brand of course it's it's the visual icon that people see and say oh that's yeah the glasses that's Jared that's non-profit nerd. Right. But if you don't have that consistent messaging behind it. They're right here. There you go. Yes. Yeah okay no wait now let me ask you what she just did would you say that's part of her branding message? Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely definitely and and that's kind of the thing is is they disappear. As we go further and further and people are getting more emotionally involved in branding and brands they want to resonate with you. They want to know that you have the same kind of beliefs that they have or that you have the same the impact they want to make on earth and so that's important for nonprofits to let people know hey this is what we stand for. We we offer this because people like to feel good about their donations and what they give back to and so we have to make them know what we're doing and why we're doing it and if we just throw a logo together on a website and we don't back it up with what we feel and what we want others to feel it's the logo can be pointless it really can and I hate to say that because there are beautiful logos out there but if you don't have the messaging and the branding behind it and the consistency and then you're going to hear me say consistency a lot because it's so important and one of the I know later one of the topics where the impact of brand awareness but I kind of want to jump to it one of the four pillars of it is is making sure that everyone in your basically you have company-wide innovation on your brand so I know a lot of people who might have say an assistant layout social media on camera and there's nothing wrong with that but they need to make sure that that person knows the message that is clearly spoken the colors when you're scrolling through instagram if someone cares about your organization but just scrolling through they can't tell that your organization because it's totally off brand they're going to keep scrolling and your message is going to get missed so you have to make sure every person that touches your brand or that's part of your organization knows hey this is this is what we do this is what we say this is how we say it so this solidifies with the audience that this is our brand you know I have seen that happen all too often especially with organizations as they grow is a department creates their own signature block or somebody creates kind of you know well this is this is who we are so I'm going to alter our logo to include what we do and even just kind of like those mission statement moments are created personally in kind of each department and so it really starts I'm going to say to like decompose you know the overall brand because each of those elements have been shifted and shaped without that consistency I'm going to help you reiterate that word because I believe it's so important too so how do you Mandy go about expressing the importance of brand awareness for organizations to use this in that consistent way well one thing that I do when I create a brand or work with it of any company nonprofit whatever is I make brand guidelines and even if you see like let's talk about some nonprofits like American American Red Cross or Habitat for Humanity either one of them if you work with them they send you a brand guideline and and you can actually I can show you links to some of their little cheat sheets but they tell you how the logo can be used how far it can be from copy what colors you can and can't use it in these are the fonts you can use if you're part of the organization here are the colors and just detailed and that way if if a brand outside is supporting them or maybe they're sending this off to a magazine to lay out an ad they know hey this is this is the guideline you need to follow and if you have a guideline and you make it part of your company policy that everyone has to go over that and just make sure that you know you often bring it up in the second that you see someone in the company not following those guidelines have a an open conversation and let them know you know this is it's for a reason and it's for a good reason it needs to just be part of standard in your company and and it should be clear that no changes are to be made to a logo logos are like we talk about logo is not the brand but it's the visual of your brand so you really can't have people going out there changing colors or or altering that logo because it still is your representation and you don't want to confuse or alienate any of your current audience unless for some reason you're doing it for a purpose but if you're doing it for a purpose it needs to go through a why and not just I use this term all the time willy-nilly not just like yeah throw it out there yeah absolutely and I think that in the nonprofit sector we see you know these things happen because so few of our organizations can actually have a marcom a marketing and communications department or to have the structure of of who is the officiator of how the logo and the branding is going to be used and so it's kind of like having a police action because you really should have some sort of structure that says if you're going to send out something that has an affiliation to our brand or a marketing or a logo it should be check I mean this is my sense it should be checked yeah you should definitely have someone double check it and sometimes triple check it because as someone that designed something if I'm spending a lot of time on it after a while it looks right even if it's not like the copy looks right and I could have you know a letter transposed on a web address but I've seen it 60 times so I don't catch that and so it's good to have someone else read over it and then a lot of times when you're designing I'll copy the the web address and put it in the web browser just to make sure it works but it's so easy when we see something every day and do a day in and day out to overlook it because we know how it's supposed to look so easy I've done that so many times I I maybe have a curveball question Mandy and I'm hoping you're you're able to knock it out of the park but I have seen I have seen over time many non-profits in particular in businesses too right whether there's a merger acquisition or just saying hey this logo that I use it is so outdated and we want to you know come up to the times we want to modernize our look we want to modernize our values and our messaging is there like what is your thought on rebranding if that's even the right term and correct me if it's called something else but if there's an organization that has always had this visual element and now they're going to this visual element is there a certain like I don't know can you only do that every 25 years can you do it every year I don't know like what does that look like I would not recommend if you're having a rebrand every year you're probably doing something wrong yeah because unless you're there are several times when you should do a rebrand one is if you're messaging sometimes as people grow their messaging might change so they need to make it and revamp that other times maybe you're a non-profit that just started and at the time all you could afford was your nephew in art school to do the logo and they did a good job but they were in art school and now they're much better yeah so now you're growing and you want to expand on what you already have which I do a lot of rebrands on that where someone started a company or a non-profit and they were on their own and just did a quick little logo and then as they grow and they know to go to the next level they have to rebrand so when you rebrand it needs to be a thought process there needs to be a genuine reason for the rebrand and not just like I said every year would be I would be like what are you doing wrong um yeah because I don't and I don't think there's a true timeline uh but when it comes to a logo uh again that's based off your brand but your logo should be I use the acronym smart and what I mean by that is it should be simple memorable appropriate resizable entitlements love it love that you use the word uh resizable yes that's a really interesting thing um you know we were chatting in the 2D chat chat you know I've spent the majority of my life in the publishing world and it's remarkable to see how effective effectiveness of logos change as they are scaled up or down and um you are right there's something to be said for that understanding that um you know how it's going to be used I I want to follow up with Jared's um question because I have a sense that a lot of times internally we get brand or logo fatigue because we see it and then there's this false sense of well we need to shake it off we need a new logo and it's like yeah no you don't because you kind of got to start over right in your communications right because anytime you're laying that brand down you need to start with your messaging and there may be where again you've done a logo and even though your message is consistent you realize after we've been using this for 10 years it really doesn't match our messaging then you definitely want to revisit but it should match that foundation that you have built and that's everything you base off of any kind of design changes should be based on that foundation if that foundation of your messaging your your client persona you know everyone has a customer persona who is their dream uh person to I mean anyone else outside of that so a lot of times we get this who is your target audience when we're branding for someone and they're like everyone and you can quickly debunk that because for example if you're going to start a non-profit for pit bulls you're not going to target Michael Bick as your I don't know people but you're not going to target him as your target audience and so that's the example I use and I know it's so out there and so but it's the point across it gets the point across hey this is no not everyone is a target audience right and and it's not to say okay well here's my target audience I can't serve anyone out outside of that that's not the case you have your target audience and that's your bread and butter anyone else is a bonus anyone else that comes to those doors that you get is just a bonus on top but if you don't have that target that you're really trying to to reach you're going to hit the mark miss the mark with most everybody because nobody knows who you're speaking to because you're trying to speak to everyone you're trying to speak to the michael vicks and the dog lovers like it is from a glockland like totally different perfect oh my god I will remember you yeah it's like that's opposite extremes oh my god that's fabulous jerk so I think even the dogs cry yeah so Mandy one of the things I've seen organizations do and it sounds to me like you're maybe leading us there that you would actually sit down and and create a profile create a profile of who you want your donors who you think and who you want your donors to be so for example you know sticking with the theme of animal welfare um you know predominantly women women of a certain age people living in this geographic area are you saying that I mean are you absolutely create this this absolutely you can even name them you could even sometimes we even go as far as to to maybe make three clients three dream clients and we name them maybe Sarah what's going to be Sarah Michael and Jared we've got three personas so we have to nail down who they are what they do what they even do for fun you know in our idea what we because that helps us target where they're at and what they do and know them better and so yes you definitely want to go down all the way down to that level of creating a persona of who you're trying to market to and who you want your message to get to as I said those people are your dream clients anyone outside of that total bonus like extra icing on the cake extra and I love the brand guidelines I think that is perfect for any age size organization um and once those change or are altered internally you know and properly through the consistent channels then that needs to be updated organization why I'm I'm assuming and I think that's that's really just so wonderful and just a plug for Canva I love Canva and for those of you that may or may not know it um canva they actually offer a free I think it's like the pro platform for a non-profit so you have to like submit your certification and whatnot but they have I want to say nandy a template for brand guidelines which makes it you know super easy to help identify this but I do think working with a creative director and really understanding so you're not just picking your favorite colors and your favorite fonts it's taking it deeper into what are we trying to convey right and what are those colors that are going to help us do that um and that is so it's so important and critical I think to to an organization especially when now tell me that percentage again is it 46% of what they think is what you tell them to think I had a dyslexic moment I was going to say 64% it would have been like oh my god I know I just flipped it in my head but yes 46 is still a pretty high number because there's so many things that can influence people so to know it's that high is very high yeah so let's talk about that a little bit more because we are now in the nonprofit sector leading into one of and I hate to use this phrase but make it or break it times of the year where we have huge huge demands put upon us in terms of fundraising in terms of events going into the holidays for many reasons year-end all this stuff this is a big time and if our branding if we're struggling with our branding um what does that look like or or if we're successful how is that impacting our fundraising well branding definitely impacts fundraising and in the experience ipad and what I can go on is that your strong brand helps your organization right raise more funds and more volunteers and creates a sense of loyalty and that's what keeps them coming back and what does that is your messaging when you your message has to resonate with that target persona that you've created it has to make them want to feel good about what they do feel good about what you do and if you're not living that they're going to know it we're in a a place where it's all about how people perceive you and how they feel about you it's no longer like this is what I offer it's more like I want to feel like I know you I want to feel like you're doing good and so it is I understand and making breaks for for nonprofits but I definitely know that when your communication across the organization works hard to support what you do with your brand and and just you have your marketing and development goals goals and it all funnels into the same thing it will be effective for you it's it's but it's it's hard work it's not like you just build this brand and you just get to stop it's every evolving and even if you don't change your logo and you don't evolve your colors you still have to keep up with what people think and people are going to constantly I think different than my parents I'm sure younger generations think different than I do and so we have to continue to evolve and we have to sit down and have those conversations like you said you don't want to every year step down and say oh we need a new logo or we just need to change for change and then we also going back to Jared talking about things we like it's not about us it's not it's not about the nonprofit it's not about the business it's about the person that's donating their time and money it's about the person receiving the donation it's what do they get out of it if the color don't resonate with them but it's our favorite color it's not going to matter if the logo is beautiful but the people that are reading it and looking at it every day they don't feel it it's pointless you can have the most beautiful graphic I've actually done designs that aren't the best but the it works for the clients and it sometimes it blows my mind because I'll hate it but it works and so that's what's important is that it works and if if it's not working it may be time to reevaluate where you're at what your message is and why where where the deconstruct this where where do we need to reevaluate so when I hear you say this I my mind goes to the use and the practice of focus groups or getting some of that evaluation and so how would we do that I mean how would we figure out it's not what we think or what we like in the break room but at the at the community that we serve what are your thoughts on that well there are different ways you could send out send out surveys which sometimes are good and sometimes aren't sometimes you have to do incentivize people you know hey just give us your your opinion and we'll put you in a for free something which may not be really good for a lot of nonprofits I don't you know I would they would have to look at their budgets but another is just research as well different colors have different meanings to different people and and almost every color has a meaning and so if you're trying to perceive a calming experience for someone you're probably not going to have bright red or black because it's not going to calm you you're going to go with a color that comes so if you don't have a lot of money or time for market research there are ways around it by just diving into like what the meanings are behind what you're doing and what the meanings are to things around you and to be consistent and I'm curious Mandy because I'm I'm sad to see that our time is coming short what are some of these consistency tips that you can give us you know like where do we need to put that into practice I don't know if you could just kind of give us some of your step stand on your soapbox and talk about consistency for a minute that would be great for me consistency is everything your fonts need to be everybody needs to have access to your fonts and so used to when I very first started I would just get whatever if it costs $300 for the font and I really wanted the person to have it I was just like you have to buy this font but what I found is that people weren't willing to put it on everybody's machines if they had it or they couldn't and so then you have people not having matching fonts they would just substitute it so the first thing you want to do is have a font that's accessible so now I use a lot of Google fonts everybody can access them and then everybody and doing that quality assurance that you were speaking of earlier where somebody else takes a look at it you see a font not used properly you see that they've messed with the logo no no go back and do it again and you're not being mean about it you're being consistent and you're thinking about the brand first and and you just have to train people keep them going keep you know you have to educate you have to be on your soapbox you have to say hey no no no we don't do this and make it from the hires up you know that's another thing is leading by example if you can say your vice president he doesn't care he's not in marketing and he just sends out something you have to be like you can't do that you know and it's hard to step up and ask someone higher than you please don't do that but sometimes that's a conversation you at least have to try because it's important and it may be just as much as like having a quick meeting with newbies and including you know a 20 minute session with the marketing department you get a new employee it's like part of their training is being with the marketing make sure once a quarter your guidelines are being emailed out to the whole company make sure everybody's on the same page have an open door policy if I don't understand what this means on this brand come and ask there's if you make people feel like they can ask about it versus I can't believe you don't know this by now it opens up that communication and makes them feel like hey I don't understand is this right so that's another thing I think sometimes when people mess up and we kind of berate them it makes them feel like I can't ask and so if you were that open hey please if you don't know come to me because I want to educate you versus even if they have that 20 times sometimes you always get that one person you're like oh god they should know by now well they don't and you want it to be right so unfortunately you're going to have to answer it and make them feel like it's okay even if you're frustrated and you're just like I can't believe you're asking again you know I like organizations that actually have designated the title brand champion and they can and it's it's um and I've heard organizations also refer to these people as the brand nazis which is unfortunate but the reality is that if you have that one individual that is wearing the crown of of of champion it makes it positive and then it's like okay well we got to run that by you know Betty Liu because she's the brand champion and it just gets everybody rowing in the same direction and understanding that it is this important to for all of us to understand you know that we need to understand that every time that our logo or branding is going to be used that we are adhering towards this this policy I love grand champion because that hits it uh if you're the champion and you're approachable and yes you have to sometimes put that hammer down because it you're doing it for the better of the of the organization as long as you're in a fair way and you're keeping it consistent well you know I'm telling you you are my um long lost sister you might we started in the chitty chat chat about um my favorite real I'll pretty much almost my favorite movie of all time our is Helvetica and and it's just like the coolest thing and so we were chatting about it and um I love what you had to share with us today so important and Jared you and I see this every day don't we all the time yeah yeah it's fascinating here's if you or anyone has questions that didn't get answered feel free to shoot me an email over I'm happy to answer at any time well you've been lovely here's Mandy's information um I I think that it's cool that you have the name love because I can tell you love this concept and you love sharing and we have really been fortunate that you have shared um with with us today um on the nonprofit show again I'm Julia Patrick CEO of the American nonprofit academy been joined by my nonprofit nerd right on brand branding the best yes spirit ransom awesome awesome hey again we want to thank our presenting sponsors with all of their brands and logos with us daily to help us remind ourselves of why it's so critical that we reach out and support um our nonprofit sector again I'm Julia Patrick and we are so delighted that you were here with us today and as we end every episode I think maybe Jared it is kind of part of our brand isn't it I think it is it definitely is yeah I hadn't thought of it but we have this mantra that we say every day and it goes like this stay well so you can do well we'll see you back here tomorrow Mandy thank you you're a rock star