Build a Brand Ready to Verb, Day One

At Hush, we talk about brand strategy as a verb. It is only useful if it can be set in motion. When building a brand, the team must prioritize action and build it not just from the top down, but also from the ground up. For a brand strategy to verb, it must include elements that are directly connected to the business strategy AND the a communication strategy from day one. Shifting the siloed and misaligned processes to a single, action-oriented and people-ready tool, This ensures that the brand will not only be understood but actually utilized and successfully activated across the entire organization. 

How?

You must teach everyone the importance of branding. Oftentimes brand building work remains siloed within leadership – results are presented in 15 minutes to the organization in a company-wide meeting. If we want people to utilize the brands we build, we have to teach people the power and pragmatic use of a brand.

Expand beyond stakeholder input. Most people, when building a brand, ignore the eventual users in the process of building it, sticking to gathering input from leadership and brand audience only. We’ve found that it’s crucial to collect input from the people who must use the brand as a tool in their day to day work – both internally and externally. After all, the most effective strategies will always be the ones people understand and believe in, find connection to, and can feel their contribution within.

Build action-oriented tools and training, not just words. We all know the 100 page strategy deck and the long-winded purpose statement. Don’t do that. During strategy distillation, transfer the findings into simple tools that are easily implemented regardless of strategic skillset. When you deliver the tools, deliver them with training to ensure people feel comfortable AND motivated to bring the brand into their day-to-day work.

We’ve invented a product (and process) that gives our clients actionable brands – we call it the Brand Field Guide. The Brand Field Guide process was designed to produce or adapt existing brands to brands that verb. While our Brand Field Guides are customized, all of them contain a unified set of brand and comms tools built with the team and organizational structure in mind.

What’s included: 

Strong Brand Foundation. A custom set of tools that detail out both the intentional and experiential elements of the brand and how it manifests within the organization and the outside world.

Systematic Comms Guide. A custom set of tools that make the brand easy to activate within the dynamics of the organization’s current operations – helping move the brand and its strategy through the organization.

Training. We always include training as part of the Brand Field Guide process no matter the size of the project. Within our training, we enable learning, motivation, skill-building, and working through practical application in real world scenarios.

Hush works to customize our approach based on where you are in your journey – whether that is just getting started or with research and hypotheses of your own to share. We work in a collaborative manner that deepens your connection to the work and the outcome. 

If you or your team could benefit from a Brand Field Guide, please reach out to kate.moret@hushcollaborative.com for more information.