Why Every Organization Needs an Identity Kit - Now!
Call it what you will – brand book, branding guide, or identity kit – my bet is yours is either outdated, incomplete, or non-existent. I say this based on years of experience working inside organizations and in agencies.
An Identity Kit (my preferred term, and I’ll explain why in a bit) should be the messaging touchstone of your organization.
Done well, an Identity Kit is a living document that reflects your organization’s values, its mission, its voice, its presentation, and its core messages to both internal and external audiences. I’ve seen companies fail because they haven’t harnessed their identity, and others thrive because their identity is consistently communicated in everything they do.
Identity vs. brand
I’ll explain my full definition of brand in another post, but here’s the pixelated version: your brand is the culmination of the promise you make to your audiences, the experience you deliver, and the reputation that results. Your brand can change in an instant – think Volkswagen emissions cheating – and parts of it are out of your control.
Your company’s identity is a foundational part of your brand, but it changes less quickly and you can exert more control over it. Your identity also flexes its muscle internally and externally, while your brand lives mostly outside. So, your Identity Kit codifies key elements of your brand expression, but it doesn’t encapsulate everything your brand represents.
This is important because it allows organizations to think about their messaging and presentation without awakening the sleeping giant of branding. Creating an Identity Kit is primarily a task of collecting and organizing what you’re already doing, then filling in gaps and correcting inconsistencies as the Kit comes into focus.
Some assembly required
Think of an Identity Kit as one of the most important tools in your organization. It should be used every day by every employee, and parts of it should be available as a resource to outside vendors, the media, and others. Creating a tool this important takes a bit of time because it requires some introspection on the part of leaders and key employees. You’re essentially defining the soul of your organization, so the conversations are invariably interesting, rewarding – and sometimes difficult.
“An Identity Kit codifies key elements of your brand expression, but it doesn’t encapsulate everything your brand represents.”
It’s helpful to think about assembling an Identity Kit like building a house. Start with the frame, then finish the interior. Here are the foundational pieces:
Audience definitions should kick off your Identity Kit. Identifying your audiences and explaining what motivates them in plain terms is the most important part of the Kit, and of branding in general. The most successful companies in the world are obsessed with understanding their audiences, and share that understanding throughout the organization.
These personas don’t have to be exhaustive, although a plethora of data makes that possible. It’s more important that they’re easily understood and accessible to everyone. An organization with a shared understanding of its audiences is poised to leapfrog ahead.
Presentation includes all the elements of your company’s graphic personality. This includes obvious pieces like your logo, the typefaces you use, and your corporate colors. But this is an opportunity to be prescriptive about how each element is used. Specify colors using the Pantone Matching System, CMYK, RGB and Hex notations. Clarify how and where your logo can be used, and be explicit about its size, positioning, and alignment with other elements.
This is also an opportunity to establish other “look and feel” parameters. Links to templates for stationery, email signatures, and PowerPoint presentations should be included, as well as any layout systems and photo styles your graphic design team uses to reinforce brand personality.
Voice and tone attributes are key elements of an Identity Kit. B2B brands might use terms like “trustworthy,” “accurate,” “responsive,” and “professional” to describe their written personality. Walmart, by contrast, uses “caring,” “real,” “innovative,” “straightforward,” and “positive” to define its tone and voice to its customers.
Mission and values are central to an Identity Kit and answer the “Who are we?’ question. In our experience, articulating mission and values clearly and simply is difficult for many organizations. The CEO might have a strong opinion about these attributes that doesn’t align with other leaders in the company. Or leadership will suggest a mission statement that doesn’t reflect what the marketing or sales teams hear from customers.
That’s why this aspect of the Identity Kit is so important to pursue. And also why it’s often helpful to bring in someone from the outside to facilitate these conversations. In our work, we’ve found it effective to hold an initial leadership workshop to talk through some of the central mission and values issues. We sift through what we’ve heard and create a draft document to present back to the leadership group. It’s in that conversation that we’re able to nail down a strong, accurate statement of the company’s mission and values.
Messaging is the culmination of the Identity Kit’s component parts. Tapping into the shared understanding of your audiences, mission, and values and using the tone and voice you’ve established, you have a framework for distilling your messages.
But messaging is an art, not a simple recitation of the Kit’s components. You’ll likely need to develop different messaging for all you audiences, including (and importantly) your employees. We’ll take up messaging more fully in a future post, because it’s at the heart of what we do.
