In Lesson 2 teams work on building trust and forming their team’s identity. Forming an identity is also what’s known as branding. To help with the team’s branding process, here are some tips adapted from the book “The Brand Gap” by Marty Neumeier.
Top 10 Branding Tips
- A brand is a person’s gut feeling about a product, service, company or organization. It’s not what you say it is. It’s what THEY say it is.
- Branding should connect your team’s overall strategy (what you will accomplish and how you will accomplish it) with a creative message that makes it memorable.
- The foundation of a brand is trust. Just like you are building trust with your team, your brand name, logo/mascot and slogan help build trust with the public.
- Using symbols, analogies and metaphors in your branding can be emotionally powerful.
- It’s important for a brand to be unique and different than the competition. Think about how your team can position themselves to be different but still relevant.
- To begin building your team’s brand, ask yourself three questions:
- Who are you?
- What do you do or what will you do?
- Why does it matter?
- Having different team members with different skills work together to build you brand helps bring together both the creative side and the analytical side to meet in the middle. One plus one can actually equal eleven.
- When in doubt, seek creative collaboration with others outside of your team. Ask an artistic friend for help creating a logo, or making a commercial you can post through social media.
- Being innovative is often the best way for your brand to get attention. Try to think differently than your competition. Try to solve problems that others are not.
- Make sure your team’s brand name and slogan is memorable, brief, appropriate, easy to spell, easy to pronounce, and likable.
Bonus Tips:
- Get feedback on your branding. Ask other students, teachers, and parents what they think. Feedback can inspire new thoughts and/or confirm your team’s branding efforts.
- Once your team’s branding is set, it’s important you live up to your brand message. It’s all about building trust and the best way to do this is to “live” your brand everyday. Remember, your brand is actually what others think you are.