The Case for Brand Alignment

If your words and graphics are telling different stories, your audience may be walking away feeling that something isn’t quite as it should be at your organization. And that’s enough to lose donors.

We’ve put together some ideas that will help you tell if your voice and visuals aren’t in sync, along with some steps to bring them closer together.

Over the past three decades of supporting nonprofit communications, we’ve seen brand incongruity too often.  Sometimes a logo and color scheme developed early on go untouched for far too long. At other times, nonprofits rely on different consultants for messaging, visuals, and web support. Unfortunately, there are times when the different parts of the brand never get the chance to connect to each other. 

While brand alignment may not seem to be urgent, the results inevitably show up where it matters:

• Better recall – When your visuals contradict your voice, audiences have a hard time forming a clear picture of who you are.  A brand that’s unified helps you stay top of mind when it comes to choosing a partner or making a gift.

• Better reputation – Every interaction with your audience either builds or erodes your credibility. Donors, community members, and other partners make fast judgment and a confusing or sloppy impression can hurt you.

• Better teamwork – When brand misalignment is present, every new campaign starts with a debate.: “Should this email match the website or the brochure?” “Why does the appeal letter look like the one we just received from their competition?” Making sure your voice and visuals match gives you and your staff a solid foundation to work from, instead of starting from square one every time.

A Good Question to Ask Yourself:

if this piece of copy were a person, would they wear your website, pick that typeface you’re using, or feel at home in your current color palette?

If the answer is no, taka a deep breath. The information you need to align them already lives in your strategy and with your team. All you need is an efficient way to pull those ideas out of their minds.

To jumpstart a discussion with your team on this very important topic, consider these key elements:

*Your brand’s purpose – Why does the world need you and how do you fill that need across your various audiences?

*Your brand’s positioning – What do your audiences get from you that they don’t find anywhere else?

*Your brand’s personality – How do you want to come across to your audiences—bold, traditional, friendly, or innovative?

From there, you can evaluate your content and designs to make sure everything fits. Consider color palette, photo choices, key messaging, and even headlines and sentence structure. Sometimes just one or two areas need to be tweaked. At other times, both voice and visuals need tweaking.

At Rescigno’s, we take pride in helping nonprofits look as good as they sound and vice versa. We’d love to help you figure out if your brand’s voice and visuals are in alignment.