Who You Are is How You’re HeardSteven Koster5Q GROK Webinar Series

YOUR THINGS ARE NOT YOUR BRAND

First: A Brand is A Promised Experience

A Brand is NOT…

• Branding is NOT a marketing logo or tagline, nor even your products, – These are expressions or marks of a

brand, but not the brand itself• Think in old fashioned terms

– What does it mean to a buyer to see your name on something you’ve built, like a chair or saddle?

• A Brand is a Promised User Experience

• ZAG: Your brand is the gut feeling people have about you.

• It’s what they’ve learned from hanging out with you and your friends.

Brand is Promised Experience

• Stop Designing Products– A directive from Peter Merholz, a user-

experience expert, writing on product design

– Notably, he was talking about designing hardware products, consumer electronics mostly.

• Your Product is not a thing, but an experience

Brand is Promised Experience

• Stop Designing Products

• Kodak: 1888– Roll film, a whole process– “You press the button,

we do the rest.”• Polaroid camera

– Not a piece of hardware– But the chance for instant

memories

Brand is Promised Experience

• “When you start with the idea of making a thing [like a camera, or a website], you're artificially limiting what you can deliver.

• “The [best companies] succeed explicitly because they don't design products.

• “Products are realized only as necessary artifacts [or by-products] to address customer needs.

• http://core77.com/reactor/06.07_merholz.asp

Brand is a Promised Experience

• Your Brand is a sum of all the experiences your products, your staff, your websites, offer to others

• You don’t control it, but can shape it– Ask diagnostic questions about past

experiences – and set direction for future experiences

Diagnostic Questions

• What do people experience when they hang out with you? – How do they experience you? What kind of

experience do they expect next time they encounter you?

– Have you actually asked? Focus group? Poll?

Diagnostic Questions

• To whom are you making promises? – Are there multiple promises to multiple

groups? – What do the experiences have in

common?– Are you telling the same story to all

audiences?

Future Questions

• What do you want people to think of when they think of you?

• What experience do you hope runs through all your projects?

• What story are you telling in which they can participate?

• What’s different about your experience from the experience others offer?

Your Brand = Promised User Experience

• As in, if you want to experience XYZ, then associate with me, we’re the XYZ people. – If you want to evangelize the world, Back To God

will help you “let them hear,” “tell His Story, Share his love.”

– If you want to see more of “God’s Story in Your Life” ReFrame Media can help you and yours.

– If you want to experience God more vigorously, then Walk the Way will challenge you to put your hands where your faith is.

THE BUMPERSTICKER PRINCIPLE

Passive Experience, Active Expression

Passive Experience, Active Expression

• People evaluate your brand to see if it connects to them

• Brands as not only promised user experience, but promised user expression.

• In other words: People use brands to say something about themselves. – Think ‘bumper sticker’ or ‘T-shirt’

Passive Experience, Active Expression

• This has always been obvious with Luxury items and automobiles, for example

– You don't drive a BMW just to commute economically and well

– you drive a BMW to show the world you're a BMW-type-of-person.

Passive Experience, Active Expression

• ID Branding: "Think of the owner of a Toyota Prius who wears eco-friendly Nau clothing, buy fair-trade coffee at Whole Foods, carries a Prada bag, and wears blood-free diamonds from Tiffany's.

• This person is borrowing the meaning from these brands to tell a story about herself that ranges from her commitment to social responsibility to her love of quality and style."

– Give Them Something to Believe In: The Value of Brand Culture

They Express Me

You don’t give to Back to God just to get rid of extra cash, you do it to evangelize & disciple the world

You don't wear a Walk The Way t-shirt just to keep warm, you wear it to tell the world You want to live vigorously for God.

You don’t re-tweet ReFrame Media material because there’s nothing else to share, but to show your friends more of God’s Story in Your Life (and to invite your friends to do the same)

Our Brand = your chance to express your identity

• We promise and experience AND a way to tell your own story.– What kind of citizens want to wave your

flag? – How are you enabling them to do so?

• What of you can they share with others? • How can they get involved and express

themselves?• What language, story, or event can they use? • T-shirt? Fundraiser? Facebook?

CAN’T FOLD A POTATO PRINCIPLE

Creating a Meaningful and Authentic Brand

Creating a Meaningful Brand

• How do you build a Meaningful Brand?

Creating a Meaningful Brand

• Merholz calls for an ‘experience strategy’ – Define the core: articulate the

core experience you offer• Be consistent across all your touch points

– A model, paths of experience building blocks• How do people encounter you first? What

happens when they do? • And what happens next? • What are the levels of involvement from

encounter to citizen to patriot?

Creating a Meaningful Brand

• HOWEVER, the user’s experience can’t be faked. – You cannot consistently deliver what

you're not passionate about– Over time, people will see what you care

about and what you don’t

– Brands cannot generally be manufactured

Creating a Meaningful Brand

• Your brand is who you are.• Your brand is your corporate culture.

– Is your team stiff? Disorganized? Wacky? Intellectual? Bored? Scared? Overloaded?

– Are they passionate about what they do? About your mission?

– Eventually it will all show through

Our Brand = Corporate Culture

• Discover and articulate your culture– "A company must develop (or unearth) an

ethos and worldview that it absolutely believes in, and then perpetually act in accordance with that ethos and worldview....

• Design experiences toward that culture– Customers shopping for meaning [to borrow] are

either drawn to that ethos or not." – But if attracted they "will not only patronize, not

only prefer, not only be loyal, they will embrace that brand as part of their own identity."

Ministry Funnel

Awareness

Knowledge

Interest

Investment

Sustainer

MinistryConversations

MinistryStewards

Payoff!

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The Kingdom of God is like?

• And he answered them, “Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, the poor have good news preached to them. And blessed is the one who is not offended by me.” – Lk 7:22-23

How will they will know we are Christians?

• A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.

• By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”– John 13:31-35

Our Brand = Our Corporate Culture

• Do we want to believe vigorously? • To let them hear? • To see God's story in your life? • To experience his Love? His Shalom? • Our brand can't be mere slogans;

they're a way of life.

Recommended Resources

• Whitepapers– Brand Culture Whitepaper, ID Branding– The branding process, ChangeEFFECT

• Books– Subject To Change, by Peter Merholz– Zag, Marty Neumeier

QUESTIONS

Contact Info

• Steven KosterReFrame Media6555 West College DrivePalos Heights, IL 60463

• stevenkoster@crcna.org• 800-879-6555• www.reframemedia.com• www.backtogod.net