Building Your Brand

1. Building Your Brand Emerging Program Institute | February 15-17, 2009 Hosted by HUB-BUB and McColl Center for Visual Arts

2. What is a brand? • Trusted promise • Encapsulates a Big Idea

3. Examples

4. Involves the whole organization • More than just materials: all communications, partnerships, programs, etc. • Requires mass buy-in: all staff, board, and volunteers • Reflected in alumni and audience

5. Who cares about your brand? • Board • Staff & volunteers • Artists • Foundations • Individual donors • Community leaders/partners • Other program participants

6. Branding • Defines you relative to the competition • A view from the outside looking in • Takes into account the needs and motivations of the customers • Answers “What do I have that’s worth attention, time, effort, and money?”

7. Benefits of branding • Promises you are unique • Projects your values • Makes you recognizable • Builds reputation • Builds trust • Gives you an expressway into the target’s mind • Makes communications more efficient • Builds loyalty • Celebrates differences

8. Effective branding is... • Repetitive • Consistent • Highly focused • Makes a connection

9. Branding components • Customer: Who needs to know about you? • Competitive Advantage: Who do you compete with for their time/money? • Core Competency: How can you make the mission relevant in their lives?

10. Step 1: The Customer • Who are they demographically? • What are their wants, needs, desires, attitudes, interests, barriers, concerns, pressures? • How could you benefit them? Solve a problem? • What, if any, position or image do you conjure in their minds already?

11. How to get customer info • Artist applications and exit surveys • Alumni surveys • Donor relationships • Foundation research – Chronicle of Philanthropy, Foundation Center, local Donor’s Forums

12. Targeting your message • Who needs to know about you? • What do they need to know? Example: Donors need to know you are professional and socially relevant Example: Artists need to know you are supportive. Depending on your target artists, what else might they need to know? scenic, fun, accommodating, hands-on, hands-off...

13. Exercise – Defining your customer • What kind of artists do you want to attract? (disciplines, demographics, temperament, values, etc.) • What do they need to know about you?

14. Step 2: The Competition • What are the competition’s strengths in the customer’s mind? Weaknesses? • Where is the competition on the customer’s mental ladder? (How much familiarity do you have to overcome?) • How do you compare? Contrast? • Is there an unoccupied position you could claim?

15. Who is your competition? • Who do you compete with for artists? • Who do you compete with for funds? • Who do you compete with for community support? • What is the comparison (from the customer’s perspective)?

16. Exercise – Competition • Identify one competitor for each category: competing for artists, for funds, for community support • Think beyond other residencies, e.g., what are artists doing if they’re not coming to your residency? • Identify one comparison in your favor and one in your competition’s favor • Is this from the customer’s perspective?

17. Artist competition • Staying home, working in own studio • Other artists’ residencies • Personal/work obligations • What else?

18. Foundation/donor competition • Non-arts issues – poverty, hunger, environment, education, health, etc. • Other arts organizations – presenters, museums, community-based centers • Other artists’ communities/residency programs

19. Community support competition • Other local events • Other arts organizations • What matters to your community? What impresses your community?

20. Differentiation in the field • As funders and artists become more savvy about artists’ residencies, how you differentiate yourself from other residencies is increasingly important • How well do you know the field?

21. Step 3: Core competency • What do you do really, really well? • What impression do people have of you now? • What is unique versus the competition? • Where are you vulnerable? • What do others need to know about you to buy-in to the organization?

22. Knowing your vulnerabilities... • Is critical to your trusted promise • Allows customers to self-select • Sets up appropriate expectations • Example: Art Farm Vulnerabilities: Extremely rustic, isolated, antiquated, few creature comforts Branding: “Time is measured by sun and night sky, not by clock or calendar. Space finds its borders by proximity to sound and silence. The sky and your ears are full of sounds and shapes of birds and bugs. And, like it or not, the weather will be your collaborator in all undertakings.”

23. Exercise - Vulnerabilities • Where are you vulnerable? • How can you turn that into a benefit?

24. Communicating uniqueness • Once you know what makes your organization unique, how well do you communicate it? • Messages • Materials

25. Kitchen table test • Spread out all of your communications materials, and all of your competitions’, and ask: • Does it speak to the heart? • Is it clear who the audience is? • Is there a consistent aesthetic? • Does it stand out?

26. Example – Kitchen table test

27. Director’s quotes – Unique? • “The Residency program provides artists with focused time for unfettered exploration and completion of work in a supportive setting. The program encourages personal growth and interchange between artists.” • “The XXX Center is a place where artists are granted the opportunity to be productive in a supportive environment conducive to self-challenge and experimentation.” • “Our desire is to provide a place that is both supportive and nurturing; one that encourages creativity, collaboration and experimentation.”

28. Director’s Quotes – Unique? • “Time at XXX is an opportunity to work, relax, reflect, and be inspired by the quiet refuge of the countryside.” • “The program provides the ideal combination of seclusion and community in a setting of truly inspirational beauty.” • “The solitude, uninterrupted time, and an appropriate workspace, all within a supportive community of other creative people, make for the perfect environment.” • “Artists have the opportunity to spend their residency in quiet, contemplative solitude and immerse themselves in their work.”

29. Director’s Quotes – Unique! • “Time is measured by sun and night sky, not by clock or calendar. Space finds its borders by proximity to sound and silence. The sky and your ears are full of sounds and shapes of birds and bugs. And, like it or not, the weather will be your collaborator in all undertakings.” Art Farm

30. Example – Art Farm www.artfarmnebraska.org

31. Director’s Quotes – Unique! • “Art Omi is guided by the vision that creative work is a vehicle for knowledge and understanding that transcends political and cultural boundaries. As an integral part of our programs, Omi broadens the scope of traditional retreats by hosting visiting New York critics, gallerists, publishers, collectors, curators and agents who help residents cultivate valuable career opportunities. Our strong commitment to fostering professional success and growth in the lives of serious artists, writers, dancers and musicians makes Omi unique.” Art Omi

32. Example – Art Omi www.artomi.org

33. Getting to your uniqueness • List 5 things your group, and only your group, is/does. • Focus on benefits, not facts. • If you move to another city, what do other organizations there have to fear? • If your organization died tomorrow, how would it be eulogized?