The Blog

Something we often see in the digital era of online businesses, online ministries, and even online churches, is a desire to automate as much as possible, to save people time. And you know what? We love that. The digital space has created a lot of cool opportunities for us to streamline our work so we can focus on the areas that are most important. (Admittedly, it’s also made real focus incredibly challenging, but that’s a different conversation!) 

There may be no place under heaven more prone to alphabet soup than the c-suite. CEO? COO? CFO? CCO? When will it end? Well, hopefully there’s room for just one more. There may be a CMO overseeing marketing or a CSO overseeing sales. But who is making sure the entire organization is aligned around values, vision, and core DNA? Who is looking out for your brand strategy?

Every brand has a voice. It’s the personality, tone, and style that sets it apart from competitors and allows it to connect with its audience. But when a brand’s voice becomes too loud, too aggressive, or too pushy, it can lose its ability to connect and resonate with its audience. That’s why rediscovering and maintaining your brand voice is critical to your success. 

Want to dive deeper into this topic, check out this FREE course on Sales Stewardship »

As we say often, every decision is a brand decision. Brand-minded people often shudder when money is brought up (as you'll see in these videos), and likewise, financial-minded folk often don't understand what their brand team does. Today we've pulled together a conversation to unpack the interplay between the two worlds, and how to shape the story money is telling you so that it's working for your organization's mission. We learned a lot from Michelle and are excited to share this with you.

At Resonate, we believe that Brand stewardship extends to all areas of your organization. Brand should be more than your logo or even your external reputation, but it should also be something meaningful and motivating for each person on your team. Team alignment is critical to organizational advancement. 

What is the most popular space at a middle school dance? The snack area! That’s where young boys are free to congregate and talk about baseball while ignoring the core problem facing them: they don’t know how or whether to ask a girl to dance. The gulf between the snack bar and the dance floor may only consist of a few feet, but on a deeper level, it spans galaxies. 

Branding is not just about becoming recognizable, it is about becoming and staying knowable, likeable and trustworthy to the people you are trying to reach. In a noisy world—please, for the sake of humanity … but also for the sake of saving ad dollars—don’t try to reach everyone, just try to reach the people you can best serve ...

Internally, we actually use the language “Visual Identity” to describe the logo and brand color palette. Eventually, your visual identity will also become other key aspects of your brand design, certain elements or strokes to supplement your logo and add robustness to your brand. We just said logo in the title because we thought you’d be more likely to click it. ;-) Were we right? 

 “Branding is the art of becoming knowable, likable and trustable.” ‍That John Jantsch pearl of marketing wisdom is the kind of statement that gets our wheels turning, because it speaks volumes in just a few short words. It’s not wrong, but we also think there’s more to branding. It’s an art, for sure; but it’s also a science.