EPISODE 75

Derek Welcome to Brands Made Meaningful conversations with the team at Sussner about how purposeful branding inspires unity, identity, and powerful change for growth-minded organizations. Welcome back to Brands Made Meaningful. And if my math is right, this is our 75th episode of this podcast.

Tucker The Diamond episode. I think that’s what 75 is.

Derek Who’d have thought that we could have waxed on about branding 75 times? I feel like we’re just getting started, though.

Tucker I agree.

Derek We’re just digging in.

Tucker Those who know me are not surprised.

Derek We’re in the midst of working through the implementation of a brand with a client right now, with a club. You and I were looking back at a conversation that we had about ten episodes ago that was really specific around brand guidelines, the brand book, the specific deliverable component that gets put together by us or by any creative firm at the kind of culmination of a creation of a brand identity that comprehensively puts everything together, outlines how to use it, and when to use it to help with cohesiveness and consistency, etc. But what we’ve been working through currently is the concept that that isn’t an end-all, be-all, carved-in-stone document but that it’s actually a living, breathing thing, just like your brand. Your brand isn’t that you do it, set it, and forget it. You do it, create it, set it, and then nurture it and take care of it. And I think what we’d like to talk about today is just that concept. There’s a term in the golf club industry called governance, and we’ve adopted it as it applies to a brand, especially once a brand starts to get implemented. And we’d like to dig into what that looks like in this conversation today.

Tucker I think when a lot of club leaders think about their membership, it’s an evolving piece. It’s not like your membership today is going to be the same as it is ten years from now or even ten years ago. And that’s what we really need to consider when we’re talking about rolling out brand assets. So when we talk about brand governance, it’s going to be focusing on what are the strategies. What are our rationales? Why are we doing certain things? What is our core identity? What are we trying to build? And then how that gets applied rather than saying, well, we only use this logo at this point and that’s what we have to do. Those are guidelines rather than, I would say, laws for our clients. That’s a hard thing for them to kind of overcome when we get through this process.

Derek I’m not sure when this episode comes out, but it’s football season right now. And so football is on my mind. I apologize. But these branding guideline components are like a playbook. And when you go in and you’re on offense and you call the play, you then have to read and react to the environment. The defense or industry or business or real life, from a brand side, as I kind of work through this metaphor, is dynamic. It’s changing, it’s evolving, it’s moving, it’s not static. And so as much as we want to set rules and guidelines to help people be consistent and cohesive as they roll this out, it also has to be adaptable within that framework at the same time. I feel like we’re kind of speaking a dichotomy and that we’re talking about rules and guidelines. But there’s a need for people to understand that there is adaptability and flexibility that is part of this implementation also.

Tucker I think that it makes it easier when you think about specific memberships. So when you have an example of maybe a younger membership that’s more technologically inclined, where they maybe leverage more digital assets or they leverage an app that helps them do things around the club or any of those, it makes it easier to say, Okay, well the way that we’re going to apply that brand identity for ourselves is going to be different for them than maybe a more traditional focused membership that’s worried about the way that we used to do it and more historical applications of brand assets and all of those other things. And I think that flexibility is important because the jump isn’t always going to be one or the other. It can shift from one to the other in a matter of a couple of years. And that’s where you really need to have an understanding of what is our identity, who are we trying to convey ourselves as, and then how we do that might change over time.

Derek We’re defaulting to talking about creative, but this is not just for creative. This applies to the cultural components of the organization. I think of core values and the attributes that are important to your organization, that you hire staff and promote staff on. Those 4 or 5 core values and their sentiments might not change, but how you continue to define them as it is relevant specifically to your organization, to the people that you have that you’re looking to keep and attract, and what that means to you, you can set a set of core values. We talk about living your brand in a previous episode, but how one learns what is successful for them and how that brand gets lived is going to evolve and change over time even though the core values and the core sentiments stay true. So that’s where this whole brand governance, which is a lot of syllables, it’s a lot of words, it sounds very serious, but the importance of it is to help, to guide, to be a resource so that the flexibility doesn’t feel quite as, I don’t know, overwhelming or scary while helping that brand remain consistent.

Tucker It all feels like it’s a moving goalpost. If I go back to your football example, it’s never always the same, and that makes it hard for a lot of people to grasp. And I think our clients, when they start this brand governance process, it feels very murky and hard to understand. But I always urge our clients to understand why we’re doing things rather than what we’re doing, and that can really help them just kind of take the applications as more conceptual rather than literal and saying, Well, we did this specifically on the website, we have to do that exact same thing on our envelopes for business stationery. Well, that’s not necessarily the case. Those are completely different things. And the way that we go about them is different. So we can’t just rule them all as one cohesive piece of material.

Derek There’s something we’ve come across just recently in our office in working with one specific club where a very specific application came out as being needed. We were looking at the appropriate graphics and assets that had already been included in the brand book – the brand style guide – that we had delivered. And the client, who is actually her team, her marketing communications, her and her team are the ones that are in charge of implementing this and she showed us a version of a mockup that she had put together using the assets that we had provided and the way that it came together didn’t take advantage of the very specific medium and how that medium was trying to communicate. And there were some questions as to why I used the graphics that were in the book. Why isn’t this working quite right? And I think what it came back to is that in the building of the assets, in the creation of all these creative identity components, we’re trying really hard to envision all the ways and places that the identity is going to live so that we can anticipate all the rules and assets and the guidelines around how to use those which can be helpful. But inevitably, like in that football play, something is going to happen or something is going to come up that we just would never have been able to anticipate. And that gets us back to this flexibility. That’s where we can then go back and say, Okay, using the guidelines, using the structure, using all of the structure that we did put in place, how can we now leverage that to help us to solve this, but to continue to grow the brand, grow the identity so that this very specific medium not just looks and feels cohesive, but actually is super successful and effective in its own right based on what that thing needs to do.

Tucker I think it’s easy for us because we’ve done it so many times in different ways. It’s the same reason why if a club comes to us and says, Hey, can you design our newsletter? We like that club’s newsletter that you already did. Can you just do that for us? That’s not a simple answer because the way that your newsletter should be designed or how it should roll out or how it should feel when you’re reading it is probably very different because your membership is different. Their expectations are different. The level of what you want to communicate is probably completely different. And so when we get into these conversations, it’s helpful to look at other clubs as maybe reference points. But understanding that what they’re trying to do is very different than what you might be trying to do. And that’s true across almost every touchpoint. For example, that newsletter could be 35 pages at one club every month, or it could be four pages every month at a different club because they have a different membership that needs a different level of communication, and wants to know different levels of things. And so that’s where when you get into governance, I really stress that idea of understand what you’re trying to communicate from a brand level and then allow the medium or allow that application to really dictate what you can do and how you’re going to communicate that. Not that every single thing needs to look exactly the same and sound exactly the same. That consistency is really tricky for some people who feel like it needs to be really rigid.

Derek You make a great point that I think we take for granted how to follow the guidelines and yet be flexible at the same time. We see, not just with the work that we do, but we see brands that are crafted and built very strategically rooted in vision and very future-forward, very strategic, very thoughtful. And then those brands get handed off to another partner or in-house or another entity. And then that partner, when they recognize that a new opportunity has come up or a new medium and that brand now needs to be adapted to fit that medium, sometimes when they follow this conversation of flexibility and adapt towards it they execute it really well and you can tell that they follow the strategy and they’ve solved the thoughtfulness while still being creative. Other times it goes completely sideways and it becomes off-brand and contradictory to the strategy. So I understand the frustration or the challenge in how do we be structured. How do we follow the rules? But you’re also telling me to be flexible and to grow within this living, breathing system. Which one is it? How do I navigate that?

Tucker And I think that’s where you hit on the head of why it’s really important to have a creative partner. And I know that my goal here isn’t to be like, Hey, hire us. But that conversation of having someone who is more objective around what are we trying to get done? Rather than I like it or I don’t. I think that when you ask members or maybe committee members, Do you like this or not, they’re just going to give their subjective opinion on something. That’s not what our team’s job is. Our team’s job is to understand what brand, and identity we’re trying to create and make sure that what we’re doing hits that on the head rather than just saying, Well, we have a rule book, you’re going to pass us over something, we’re just going to kind of make it as we would with just a generic rulebook. And so when it comes to understanding those things, like the client that you referenced right at the beginning of the conversation, we’re in this phase right now of brand governance, of not necessarily just saying, here’s your rulebook, let us know if you have problems, but saying, as you move through things, you will have problems. Let’s talk through those problems. And how can we make sure that the identity that we’re crafting is meaningful to who you are and what makes you special? And that’s not necessarily an easy thing to take out of your opinions of maybe what you’ve done at a previous club or what other clubs down the road do compared to you.

Derek The creative partner that you have worked with to help you build this brand very likely has a vision for how it will continue to grow. There just hasn’t been the opportunity to create the assets or to show you what that looks like. And so it’s like leveraging them because that’s their expertise. That’s their specialization. It’s the world that they live in, especially if they’re the ones who helped you craft strategy in the first place. My guess is they’ll be able to answer implementation questions and evolution questions in a fraction of the time that somebody who’s inside in the weeds overwhelmed by having to produce and develop and meet other certain sort of deadlines or published deadlines just doesn’t have the time to do. But make sure that partner, whose goal is to not only make you look great but to make sure this brand continues to be strong and effective. And I think over time, very quickly, I believe it will get easier and easier as everybody really starts to live what this new brand is and what it stands for. And the strategy starts to become second nature. And what I like is your comment back to the strategy and the objectives that are guiding these creative decisions and not just I like it or I don’t or that looks cool or I don’t, but it actually has that additional level of meaning.

Tucker The big takeaway I hope that people get out of a conversation like this is that a brand isn’t just a set of rules that you’re saying, Well, the logo can only be in these colors. But absolutely, those rules can really help your team. But really, that brand is the idea. The idea of that identity you’re trying to create – the perception that you want to create. And it’s changing. It’s evolving. You say that it’s living and breathing. It isn’t necessarily, we made it on this date and it’s going to be like this until ten years from now, and then we’ll just do a hard change again. It should shift. It should evolve just as your club and your membership does, right? Your club might have the facilities, but you might change certain things as you keep going or your membership might be a certain way today, but then it evolves to maybe being older or younger, depending on what is needed and how that all works. And so embracing change can be really hard for a group of people who aren’t tasked with maybe reimagining a lot of their applications. But that’s going to be really critical as people move through the evolution of their brand throughout their club.

Derek I think my takeaway in addition to that is the concept that once the strategy is put in place and the strategy is right, that should not change. But that should help guide you and allow you to be flexible as the rest of the evolution happens, and as the rest of the creative rolls out. Be flexible and adaptable in how you use it and how you apply it, but be steadfast in the soul and the heart of what that strategy landed on in the first place. Let’s wrap up here. Thanks for joining us today. If you have any brand-specific clubs or specific topics that you would like us to wax on about, we would be happy to add them to our queue.

Tucker Just let us know.

Derek 75 times. We’ll see you on the next 75th. Until next time. Have a good one.

Tucker Thank you.

Derek Sussner is a branding firm specializing in helping companies make a meaningful mark, guiding marketing leaders who are working to make their brand communicate better, stand out, and engage audiences to grow their business. For more on Sussner, visit Sussner.com.

Learn more about Sussner’s work with private clubs here.

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