I imagine you're questioning this analogy! But think about it with me, starting with the definition of a brand: "A brand is a sign of a benefit aimed at a market."
This definition of a brand, inspired by semiotics and developed by Lencastre since 2002, has the excellence of being a short definition and, at the same time, immense, due to the many strategic facets it includes and which must be respected when managing a brand.
In a nutshell: a brand is a sign. Now, the sign of a brand includes three levels of identity: core identity (the name), tangible identity (the design, lettering and coloring) and extended identity (the slogans, product and packaging forms, mascots...).
The brand is a benefit: the benefit of the brand is its promise, its value, its differentiating factor that must be consistently delivered through marketing strategies (let's list the traditional ones: product/service, price, communication, distribution, physical evidence, processes and people).
The brand is aimed at a market: the market is made up of all the brand's stakeholders: customers, employees, partners, suppliers, shareholders, the community, ... ). It sounds like a simple definition, but we quickly understand its complexity. But it's not the purpose of this article to describe each of these three pillars... just to point out the challenges of each of them when we talk about the brands of non-profit organizations.
In a word: managing these brands is a huge PARADOX.
Why is that? Well, if in brands in other areas the search for the differentiating factor is a daily battle, in order to find the promise that the brand must have with its publics, a promise that these publics attribute value to and are willing to pay more for this differential value... in non-profit brands, apparently this benefit is their very essence, their reason for existing. A promise of something that, from the outset, any audience of the brand will value, any audience would be willing to make an exchange relationship. It even sounds much simpler! The dream of creating a brand that already has its differentiating factor defined and attested at birth.
Well... that's not exactly how it happens. Because, although the benefit of brands associated with social causes is the value of their own cause, the value attributed by their audiences must include other aspects. Many other aspects. Definitely, the value of the cause in itself is not enough... these brands are faced with the need to add to the noble value of their cause, other values that the market appreciates and is willing to "pay for". I mean pay in the sense of adhere. Because these brands need to be paid, they need volunteers, donors, funders, partners, among many other issues...
It's here, at this point, that it's worth thinking about how demanding it is to manage the exchange value of non-profit brands. The paradox they face!
In fact, these brands support critical causes for the good of a society, be they social, environmental, educational, cultural, health or rights defense causes, etc. But this "benefit" is the brand's benefit to society; then these brands, like all others, have to have a benefit for their audiences, who are not directly impacted by their actions, but who allow the brand to survive, to be sustainable. We're talking about sponsors, volunteers, partners, etc. And what is the value of this exchange relationship for these audiences? What is the value of getting the sponsor to support this cause and not another initiative? Why the cause of children and not that of seniors? Why domestic violence and not access to education? Why one brand, one cause and not another? Why cause C and not D? If all the causes are noble, authentic, if they all seek to have an impact on society and make a difference to people's lives? Ah... because some are perceived as having more "value" than others. But what value is that? Media exposure? The people who founded it? The brands associated with it? Its geographical origin?
Well... managing a brand in this area is extremely demanding: it has to have multiple benefits, which have to be valued by each of its audiences, who, if they don't collaborate, won't allow the brand to be sustainable, no matter how deeply impacted the audience of the cause is and how immensely they value the benefit of this brand.
This is where I leave the provocation: "A city barber shaves all the men who don't shave themselves, and only those men."
The question is: who shaves the barber?
The same seems to be true of non-profit brands.
A non-profit brand cares for, feeds, all those who suffer from the cause it embraces.
The question is: who cares for, who feeds, this brand?
