Bringing "Branding" Into the Conversation

Branding differs from marketing, in that marketing is the broad strategic process of satisfying customers' wants, while branding in an organization's positioning within that overall process.

A brand is the proprietary visual, emotional, rational and cultural image associated with a company or a product--the sum total perception others have of an organization.

This is a pretty good definition of branding, but every marketer and brander has a different definition. It is the kitchen sink of marketing--just about anything can be justified under the heading of "branding" whether it really is branding or not. Realize that very few people really understand branding as a strategic concept, and that none of those people are in ministry.

The origin of branding. Branding, like marketing, is a modern discipline, whose defining roots date back about 200 years. Probably the very first "brand" of any kind can be attributed to Pears Soap, circa 1780 in England.  Another early brand was Proctor and Gamble which appeared in the northeast United States in the early 1800s.

During the industrial revolution, as manufacturing of goods moved from the local level to factories, suppliers began "branding" their shipping containers with their company name and rudimentary logos.  Yes, this was actual branding, with a hot iron burning the logo into the side of a wooden crate. Because these companies were trying to sell their products to a broader variety of consumers, they found it difficult for "generic" products to compete with well-known local companies. They were trying to build trust in a non-local, factory-produced product.

The first definition of what has become known as "branding" was probably created by advertising pioneer James Walter Thompson around 1900. He reasoned that advertising based on trademarked names could be effective in helping people differentiate similar goods from various manufacturers. By the 1940s it was widely recognized that branding was a valid discipline in the marketplace and that people established emotional, social and psychological connections with products and services they trusted.

The broad stroke of branding has been used to cover anything from simple logos, slogans and the "look" of an organization to strategic thoughts, ideas, emotions and connections an organization desires others to make with respect to its mission and vision. Branding is among the most misused and misunderstood concepts in all of marketing.

It's important to note that just having and using a logo is not branding in and of itself. A logo is an element used in branding, but it is not your brand. A slogan or positioning statement is an element used in branding, but it is also not your brand. Nor is consistent image and professional communication. You can have a basic and useful image or icon and maintain a high degree of excellence in your communications and not really engage in branding in a meaningful way. That's just being smart and thoughtful in your communication. In fact, few if any churches will realize branding with any significant and useful level of exposure.

The work of branding is the science and art of exerting influence on an audience to affect its perception of an organization, product or service to create a positive economic result.

Branding is a mass-audience phenomenon. The reason the local church and branding will seldom if ever meet is that the effectiveness of branding really only works with a very large audience--hundreds of thousands, or millions. The tools of branding are mass-market tools because level of investment necessary to exert the influence of a brand are in the mass-market realm. If you were, for instance, trying to equate your shoe company with empowerment using a phrase like, "Just Do It," you'd need to repeat that message many times to a large audience in order to affect a sizeable portion. A local shoe store probably could not muster the media to alter perception on that scale. Indeed when you look at just about any recognizable brand, it's a national phenomenon and not a local one.

That's not branding. Books, references and marketing speakers in recent years have saturated the branding conversation with the idea of "micro-brands" or even "personal brands". These writings and teachings have completely mis-defined branding in an attempt to broaden its relatively limited application. Branding doesn't hold up well in a micro-market environment. Here's a quick exercise to prove my point. The following are icons of some well known companies. For each one, you can likely name the company, their main product(s) and some aspect of their corporate culture (what they are about):

Now, here are the logos of five of the largest churches and denominations in the United States. You may be able to name one or more of the groups, but it is unlikely you will be able to say much about their core beliefs or even their philosophy of ministry in the broadest sense:

Why are the companies familiar but the mega-churches or religious organizations unfamiliar? Simply because the largest of these churches has an annual budget less than the marketing budget of the smallest of the referenced corporations. The companies are engaging their customers in the marketplace with millions of dollars of brand-centered advertising year upon year upon year. The churches, other other hand, are professional, have a consistent image and may do a little advertising in their region, but are not engaging in branding in any meaningful form through their media.

Within your own city, can you identify the "brands" of even ten churches? Even if you can name a few, really think about the answer to this next one: does "branding" of these churches make any significant difference to you or anyone when it comes to your opinion of or involvement in their ministries?

Back to the Word. Again when we consider branding with respect to the church, just as with marketing in general, we need to focus first on God's Word, and discount anything in the branding universe that is not in alignment with Scripture.

  Next... How to Begin Unbranding

  Why There Is No Such Thing As Church Marketing
  The Actual Plan for Church Growth
  The Advertising of Abundance by the Church
  Unbranding Main Page

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