Number 4: Operationalize Your Brand

Now that you’ve thought big, nailed and validated your positioning with research, it’s time to get organizational buy in. We call it operationalizing the brand.

The idea is to get everyone in your organization living and breathing the brand.  When folks in your organization talk about your nonprofit they do it consistently and passionately. This includes the board, CEO, Executive Director and receptionist.

The point of operationalizing the brand is to inspire, enable and empower everyone to be accountable to the brand. To tell the brand story.

How do you achieve this?

Start with a good presentation to the organization that tells them the brand story you have created and worked so hard to develop. How you got to where you are, why it’s right and how it will move the organization forward.

It needs to inspire! Here is one of the best, most inspired, brand presentations I have ever seen.

Video combining sight, sound and motion is probably the best way I know to get the emotional buy in that you’re looking for.

When I was at Leo Burnett we had an amazing culture and organizational buy in. Everyone was invested in the idea of creating superior advertising. That when you reach for the stars you might not come up with one, but you won’t come up with a handful of mud either. It was about apples, too. The “When to Take My Name Off the Door” speech lives in infamy.

So tell your brand story and get your team to buy in, to live it and breathe it every day.

It will make a world of difference in enthusiasm, retention and, ultimately, donor acquisition.