Building Out the Systems That You Need
Once you’ve conducted your assessment, you will be armed with lots of information and new insights. Now it’s time to turn those into actionable changes. There isn’t really one way to do this. Strategies will look different for different organizations. What’s important to remember is that your strategy should:
- Be informed by data from your assessment
- Keep users at the centre of the solution
- Follow the principles of agility and centralized decentralization
Your strategy will include building out resources and systems to help you manage your brand at scale. In our experience, there are a few things that every organization should consider as they start their process. Let’s go over a few of them.
In complex organizations, you’ll need to build out systems and structures that can help support the initiatives of your central marketing team. Instead of relying on manpower, these systems do the heavy lifting and help address some of the issues that you might currently be facing in your organization.
Defining Brand Systems
A brand system is the Library of Alexandria for your organization (at least while it was still around). It’s important to make a distinction here between Brand Systems and elements of it such as Design Systems and Brand Guidelines. Although key elements, the latter two are merely parts of a larger system. In addition to visual guidelines, brand systems also outline your brand story, its voice, its strategy, symbols, mission, purpose, vision, and everything in between.
Taking a comprehensive approach to a brand system is needed because it covers all points at which people interact with your brand. Because it’s easier to assess visual brand touchpoints like user interfaces and websites, subtler aspects like voice and messaging are frequently left out. To facilitate brand consistency, you need your team to be competent in all aspects of your brand.
There are many ways to set up a brand system, and it differs depending on the size of your organization and the type of work it does. An app developer may have a greater need for icons and assets than a retail company. A restaurant chain may need to specify interior design choices while a cloud hosting company may not. In each case, the conversation around creating these materials should ensure that it provides the most value and clarity for as many people as possible.
In an article from Smashing Magazine, author and brand design expert, Laura Busche, talks about the six things that all brand systems should be:
- Accessible
- Empowering
- Holistic
- Extensible
- Flexible
- Iterative
Essentially, brand systems must be open to everyone. This attitude brings all team members into the brand, rather than dictating to them a set of arbitrary rules. It also prevents brand silos from occurring. Brand systems should also be simple to use and provide access to templates, images, and files with clear directions and explanations. With the right navigation and set-up, people will find what they need, and it’s much better to give them more resources than fewer.
When setting up your brand system, you can lean on knowledge experts within your organization. A graphic designer is likely the best person to prepare the section on logo use, while a copywriter may be better suited at explaining tone.
Training Infrastructure
You’ve probably tried to implement some sort of design standard or brand guideline within your organization before. The only thing less read than a brand guideline is the terms and conditions for new software or hardware. Regardless of the number of examples you provide and the number of times you refer to a brand guideline, it feels like no one uses it.
One reason might be that while you have the materials in place, you lack the proper training infrastructure. Training infrastructure refers to regular events that focus on building skills at all levels of your organization. Through hand-on training, employees can better develop their understanding of the brand, its guidelines, and improve their ability to independently execute on tasks.
Brand training should be part of the onboarding process and include:
- A working knowledge of the brand and its significance to the organization.
- Guidance on how and when to use a Brand System.
- Examples of correct and incorrect brand use, specifically tailored to the situations that the trainee may find themselves in.
- Contact information and support services for questions and issues.
However, training doesn’t stop there. The most successful organizations are ones that continue to offer educational opportunities that cover topics such as basic copywriting, image modification, and tips and tricks for office software can drastically improve the polish of independently created items. These regular meetings are also opportunities to encourage cross-departmental collaboration.
Ultimately, even with comprehensive training and detailed guides, mistakes are bound to be made. As part of your training infrastructure, be sure to include regular check-ins and audits. These can help identify weaknesses in a team’s skillset which can help suggest strategic improvements like adjustments to your brand management, topics to cover at the next lunch and learn, or hiring requirements for a new job position. They are also opportunities to establish a dialogue between central marketing and distant departments. This is a key component of a collaborative brand model.
How to Prevent the Silo Effect
One of the issues with decentralization is that teams quickly get siloed in their approaches and fall into repetitive patterns because there is no interaction with the rest of the company. To address this, part of your brand management system should include network hubs.
Network hubs are subject specific groups open to any individuals in an organization, regardless of their position or team. The goal of the network hub is to build competency and share ideas related to specific fields. For example, there may be a Network Hub for Social Media, for Event Planning, and for Retail Displays.
Network hubs operate on a principle of cross-pollination. The idea behind this is that best practices are shared horizontally across an organization rather than standardized vertically. What this means is that skills, resources, tools, and standards are collaboratively determined. One team may discover a neat software and share it at the next network hub. Other teams may choose to adopt it or share their solutions. Eventually, the most effective solution becomes a defacto standard that was co-created rather than dictated from above.
Cross pollination is extremely effective because it prioritizes user needs, encourages collaboration, and creates a culture of sharing. It also facilitates coordination and discussion beyond the constraints of a single team since network hubs apply to subjects and skills, not just departments and individual teams. Furthermore, when information sharing is democratic, it is also more widely accepted and practiced.
In your organization, you might have several brands that manage many different social media channels. A social media network hub would be a place to discuss the best tools and software for editing photos or videos, copywriting practices that have resulted in the best engagement, and more efficient ways of content scheduling and reporting. The knowledge of one team is benefitted by the many.
Network hubs should have the opportunity to meet regularly and discuss their challenges and successes. It’s a collaborative way to troubleshoot issues and share tips that teams have discovered. For companies with virtual team/chat software like Slack, specific channels or groups can be created for this purpose.
Network hubs also reveal opportunities for collaboration among departments. Joint events and marketing initiatives can be shared among a set of interdisciplinary teams that lessens individual loads and creates a better product.
Principles of an Agile Organization
As you start to implement some of these systems within your organization, it’s important to remember that they all work off a strong foundation and culture of collaboration, openness, and flexibility. The principles of agile organization perform best when this foundation is cultivated across all levels and departments of an organization. In fact, a foundation like this cannot be compartmentalized because, by its very nature, it needs to flow through every single person and part of a business.
Despite what many books and blogs may claim, there is no one way of becoming agile, and implementing another company’s system may not necessarily produce the same results in yours. What’s more important is to understand the principles behind these systems, find specific ways to apply, and then grow them within your organization through exemplary, dedicated leadership. It may seem like hard work, but it has enormous benefits.
As you go through your brand management improvements, you’ll observe the most success and the least resistance when you implement these changes alongside a cultural shift within your organization. No amount of slick brand systems or learning lunches will fix the issue of an unmotivated, incapacitated organizational structure. As I mentioned before, shifting towards a model of centralized decentralization can both benefit from your brand management goals, and influence them.