New research by Harvard’s Nathalie Kylander and Christopher Stone suggests why. Drawing on interviews across 41 organizations, Kylander and Stone identify four reasons for skepticism toward branding among nonprofits:

1. Nonprofit leaders widely associate branding with “the commercial pursuit of monetary gain,” which debases their work.
2. A brand is often seen as “peremptorily imposed from above” in lieu of a strategic planning process, which is viewed as more participatory.
3. Some believe leadership vanity is a larger motivation for branding than fulfilling a mission.
4. Large nonprofit “bully brands” overshadow weaker organizations and “give brand management a bad reputation.”

These and other reasons for skepticism can’t change one fact: Any organization, nonprofit or for-profit, has a brand the moment it opens for business and people experience it. The question isn’t brand or no brand; it’s how well the brand is managed, communicated and experienced.

Branding, the nonprofit way

In an era of proliferating nonprofits, declining public and donor resources and rising demand for charitable services, the competition for financial, volunteer and partner support is greater than ever. Nonprofits that ignore their brands risk irrelevance and indifference among their stakeholders. And yet most charitable organizations – knowingly or unknowingly – take the risk.

Beyond skepticism is a more basic reason for brand neglect: a widespread lack of understanding of what a successful nonprofit brand looks like and how to create one. Here we have some good news. Nonprofit leaders now have two recent and smart contributions toward a deeper understanding of the whats, whys and hows of creating and managing an effective nonprofit brand.

One is Kylander’s and Stone’s article, “The Role of Brand in the Nonprofit Sector,” in the Spring 2012 issue of the Stanford Social Innovation Review. The other is the 2011 book, “Breakthrough Nonprofit Branding: Seven Principles for Powering Extraordinary Results.”

Both works go far to defuse doubts about the value and desirability of a strong, well-managed nonprofit brand.

A nonprofit brand framework

Kylander and Stone, both with Harvard’s Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations, found the tools and models available to nonprofit brand managers rely too much on the brand language and approaches used in the for-profit sector.

To rectify that shortcoming, the authors offer a conceptual brand framework designed specifically to help nonprofit leaders better manage their brands. They call it the Nonprofit Brand IDEA, the culmination of an 18-month research project.

From their 73 interviews, they concluded the role of brand is changing among nonprofits:

A decade ago, the dominant brand paradigm in the nonprofit sector focused on communications…Branding was a tool for managing the external perceptions of an organization, a subject for the communications, fundraising, and marketing departments. In contrast, the emerging paradigm sees brand as having a broader and more strategic role in an organization’s purposes, methods, and values. Increasingly, brand is a matter for the entire nonprofit executive team.

The four principles of Nonprofit Brand IDEA comprise brand integrity, democracy, ethics and affinity:

1. Brand integrity: “the organization’s internal identity is aligned with its external image and that both are aligned with the mission.”
2. Brand democracy: “the organization trusts its members, staff, participants, and volunteers to communicate their own understanding of the organization’s core identity…(This) is largely a response to the growth of social media, which has made policing the brand nearly impossible.”
3. Brand ethics: “the brand itself and the way it is deployed reflect the core values of the organization. Just as brand integrity aligns the brand with mission, brand ethics aligns both the organization’s internal identity and its external image with its values and culture.”
4. Brand affinity: “the brand is a good team player, working well along side other brands…Organizations with the strongest brand affinity promote the brands of their partners as much as or more than they promote their own brands.”

Balanced against brand skeptics in the authors interviews were brand enthusiasts who believe a strong brand builds cohesion and capacity.

When an organization’s employees and volunteers all embrace a common brand identity, it creates organizational cohesion, concentrates focus, and reinforces shared values….Strong cohesion and high levels of trust contribute to greater organizational capacity and social impact.

The new nonprofit imperative

While Harvard’s Kylander and Stone contribute a useful model for constructing a nonprofit brand, they don’t offer much guidance in how to actually build one. That’s where the four authors of “Breakthrough Nonprofit Branding” come in.

Experienced in marketing, communications and public relations, the authors provide a comprehensive, step-by-step approach to branding the nonprofit, backed by a breadth of research and numerous case studies. Breakthrough branding, they argue, is “the new nonprofit imperative.”

More than simply a cosmetic makeover, at the base level, branding is the about identifying what your organization stands for—the unique, differentiated ideas that sets it apart. To build your brand requires forging an emotional and personal connection with your core stakeholders. Your brand must stand for a cause—something bigger than organizational activities, something your constituents care about and believe in. Yet, to truly break through calls for you to rally a community around your brand’s meaning and inspire action.

The book examines what the authors call “the Seven Principles of Breakthrough Nonprofit Branding” accompanied by examples of standout nonprofits of all sizes and locations putting the principles to work:

1. Discover the authentic meaning of your brand: “A brand is the bridge between an organization’s unwavering mission and its evolving strategies.”
2. Embed your brand meaning across the organization: A breakthrough brand (BNB) “embeds its brand meaning into every organization function, from people management to information technology systems.”
3. Rally internal brand ambassadors: “A breakthrough brand continuously attends to the way its brand is expressed through the actions and attitudes of its internal stakeholders.”
4. Develop 360° brand communications: “Utilizing a variety of integrated communications, including both online and off-line tools, the effective brand dynamically expresses its essence in ways that are meaningful and relevant to them.”
5. Expand your brand by mobilizing an external community: “A BNB acts as a connector. It builds external communities, knowing that a critical mass of the right people mobilized behind its work is the most effective way to propel its cause.”
6. Cultivate partners to extend your brand reach and influence: “A truly breakthrough nonprofit brand values strategic alliances that offer access to new expertise, relationships, and assets.”
7. Leverage your brand for alternative revenue and value: “Breakthrough nonprofit brands use their brand meaning to extend reach, generate untraditional revenue, and build brand equity through their entrepreneurial endeavors.”

What about the small nonprofit?

While nonprofit leaders reading the article or book should be persuaded of the value in managing their brands, they may still resist because they lack money, staff and/or expertise. Small, under-funded nonprofits are the norm. Branding, even if considered desirable, can be seen as out of reach for the average organization.

Neither the article nor the book go far enough to address this perception. While branding, like fundraising, is really not a choice for any nonprofit, the question for the small nonprofit remains: How can we pull it off?

My reply is: Focus on what you can do and can afford and do the work of branding piece by piece over a period of months, even years. Take stock of what you can accomplish via staff, board or volunteer leadership and contributions. And raise or set aside some budget to supplement where needed with outside professional help, such as consultation on a branding approach, integration with your strategic plan, graphics design or marketing communications.

Branding can be expensive, but it doesn’t have to be. As the article and book authors make clear, there is also a cost in neglecting your brand — and a mission to be achieved by giving it your time and attention.

In a recent Huffington Post column, nonprofit consultant Thenera Bailey says social change organizations understand the need for long-term impact.

But too often along this road of change, many of us somehow get sidetracked. Creating sustainable solutions to social problems gets replaced by the creation of solutions that will sustain our organizations and keep our doors open… Non-profits need to be in the business of putting themselves out of business — not with unwise spending, but with strategic and long-term solutions that will put an end to their cause.

Why not hold business to the same standard?

Imagine this: A CEO stands in front of his or her team and proudly announces, “Congratulations, we’ve accomplished our mission as a business! As of today, the question we will be focusing on is whether to begin closing our company down or finding a new reason for being.”

Hard to picture, isn’t it? Why? My educated guess is businesses rarely identify missions with a concrete, measurable end point in mind. A point at which those who run the company know they’ve done what they or the founders ultimately set out to do. And now the choice is to either close up shop or start over.

I put this out there because I wonder whether “mission-driven” will be as good as it gets in business. Or might some of our most admirable companies hold themselves to an even higher standard — accomplishing their mission?

Patagonia and B Corps

Consider Patagonia. In January 2012, when Patagonia became the first company to register as a benefit corporation in California, company founder Yvon Chouinard applauded the new state legislation that provides a legal foundation for mission-driven businesses.

“Patagonia is trying to build a company that could last 100 years,” said Chouinard. “Benefit corporation legislation creates the legal framework to enable mission-driven companies like Patagonia to stay mission-driven through succession, capital raises, and even changes in ownership.”

I am one of Patagonia’s biggest fans. I am also an enthusiastic supporter of B Corps’ pioneering efforts to create a thriving sector of businesses driven by socially and environmentally responsible missions. And I think the problems in front of us ask us to complete our missions and produce lasting solutions.

Missions without end?

Awhile back, I came across a succinct and useful distinction between vision and mission: Vision is something to be pursued; mission is something to be accomplished.

Having reviewed hundreds of mission statements and helped organizations create or change their own, I am wondering whether we too often confuse vision for mission. Our missions routinely fail to establish an implicit or explicit point in the future when we’ve achieved our purpose as a business. Instead, the most we can say is we are in constant pursuit – we are mission-driven.

Patagonia’s mission statement, for example, reads: Build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis.

While I applaud the values demonstrated here, I don’t see where Patagonia’s purpose will ever be fulfilled. The quality of “best” is evolving constantly, so Patagonia won’t reach a point of having the best products and announcing “game over.” And “the” environmental crisis is sufficiently vague and unbounded as to be unsolvable, at least by any single entity. It reads more like a vision Patagonia is pursuing, along with their stakeholders and many other individuals and organizations across the globe.

The distinction between mission-driven and mission-accomplished isn’t simply splitting hairs. It’s significant. I can imagine being driven by a desire to build the best product while protecting and improving the environment. I could also imagine a company, like Patagonia, being driven by that desire for a century or more. But that also suggests a company’s mission — its reason for being — is without end.

Longevity vs. accomplishments

This begs the question: Is an organization’s longevity more important than its accomplishments?

Being driven to achieve something is much different than actually achieving it. The former means we’re motivated to keep trying for however long it takes. The latter means we can stop trying because we accomplished our goal. And now we have a new decision to make: Do we put an end to our business, satisfied that we achieved our mission, or do we find a new reason for being?

Thenera Bailey says social change nonprofits have raised millions of dollars and broadened awareness for issues such poverty, water security, HIV and human trafficking. “But at the end of the day,” she writes, “many of these issues are no closer to being solved than they were a decade ago.”

She’s right. What we desperately need are solutions. Patagonia and other benefit corporations give me great hope. And I also believe a higher calling awaits the mission-driven. It sounds something like this: Problem solved. Mission accomplished.

The results aren’t surprising, although they are telling. Independence is a cherished trait for governments, businesses and individuals, especially in a country whose Founding Fathers didn’t put their lives on the line for a Declaration of Interdependence.

And yet, to be truly independent seems largely a fantasy. Are we ever not subject to the authority of someone else, not influenced by the thoughts or actions of others, not depending or contingent upon something else for existence or not relying on others for support in one form or another?

One reason we cling to the notion of independence is no one likes the idea of being dependent. Who wants to be powerless?

Not Independent, Interdependent

Certainly we all start out in life as dependent upon others. As we grow, that changes. We assert our independence, or so we think. What we really reach is a state of interdependence, where we and others are mutually dependent. We depend on others. Others depend on us. It’s that way in our relationship with the environment. We depend on it. It depends on us.

And it’s that way in business. The quaint idea of the independent business on Main Street has its purpose; namely, to differentiate itself from the faceless, corporate-owned businesses, otherwise known as chains or franchises, occupying blocks of faceless strip malls.

But the idea of any business being truly independent is simply untrue, even self-defeating. Success in business doesn’t come by setting your organization apart from  customers, employees, partners, suppliers, communities and, yes, the environment. Our businesses depend on others, just as we’d like to think others depend on our business. It’s when we dismiss interdependence as a sign of weakness that we get into trouble. Arrogance takes root. We think we know what’s best for us and for others. We stop listening. We exhibit no curiosity about others. And then we wonder why our competitors are lauded for their creativity and innovation.

We don’t succeed alone

Business being a competitive sport long played primarily by men, perhaps interdependence is unmanly. And yet, name a championship athlete that rose to the top on his (or her) own. Certainly, not in a team sport. How about tennis players, golfers, runners, skiers, wrestlers or any other individual sport athlete? They absolutely depend on others. Even if it’s only other competitors. There’s no sport without competitors.

Interdependence isn’t about weakening your position or relinquishing control. I learned early on as a business owner that “being in control” was a myth. Once I started taking on employees and clients, I quickly became aware I didn’t call all the shots. My clients could come and go as they please. As could my employees, especially my best ones. And that’s saying nothing about the economy. None of us can prevent bursting bubbles and recessions.

The best thing we can do in business is to recognize we are not independent actors. Our businesses are who they are as the result of a complex interplay of customer decisions, competitive maneuvering and economic and environmental systems that sometimes work to our advantage, sometimes to our disadvantage. Conditions around us are changing constantly, a response to this endless interplay, which seems to only have multiplied and accelerated as technology races on.

What we can control

What we do have something to say about is how we respond to situations as they arise. It’s not as though everything is outside our control, so nothing that we do matters. We can control the reason we exist as a business, the larger purpose or motivation for showing up to work each day. We can control who we are being as a business — a business others want to come into contact with and benefit from. We can control the values we operate by. We can choose to bring passion and compassion to our work. We can put resilient systems into place. We can rethink our products and services. We can compete like hell to win. In short, we can do everything that businesses have been doing forever.

We just can’t do it by thinking we can do it all alone. There is a world that depends on us. And we depend on it. So let’s take good care of each other.

That’s how it is across professional service markets such as legal, health care, accounting, business consulting, marketing, engineering. Setting aside superficial points of distinction such as name and logo, too few firms are finding substantive ways to stand out from the crowd. And no good comes from that, as business advisor Scott McKain argues in his 2009 book, “Collapse of Distinction”:

If you cannot find it within yourself to become emotional, committed, engaged, and yes, fervent about differentiation, then you had better be prepared to take your place among that vast throng of the mediocre who are judged by their customers solely on the basis of price. It is singularly the worst place to be in all of business.

And yet, that’s where most businesses, service or otherwise, find themselves. Rather than dive into the many reasons for this state of affairs, I’d like to address just one: Too few in business understand how to create relevant distinction.

When I say relevant, I mean distinction that identifies you as different from your competition and is meaningful to your clients and other stakeholders in your business. After all, you may be truly different but if that difference doesn’t matter to your clients or those who work for you, then it’s of no value.

I share McKain’s perspective:

Creating differentiation doesn’t mean you have to become completely, totally unique from your competition from top to bottom. It simply means you must create small, solid points of distinction that are recognizable and important from the customers’ perspective because customers perceive that different is better.

7 dimensions of service brand distinction

So how can you create these solid points of distinction for your service business? I just answered that question for one of my clients and will share what I came up with. I call it the seven dimensions of service brand distinction. I’m confident you will find valuable areas of relevant distinction in one or more of these realms:

1. What we do: The obvious starting point of distinction for most of us is what we offer and the needs we address. Here our differentiation strategy is on providing a unique service or solving an unmet market need.
2. How we do it: We might look to our models, methods and systems we use or the culture we’ve built to deliver our services. Our focus is doing the same or similar things better than our competitors, whether it’s being smarter, more strategic, more creative, more prepared than those like us.
3. Who does it: This dimension asks us to examine our collective character and personality – who we are being as a firm in the conduct of business. This strategy asks us to see our firm as more than a collection of unique individual service providers and find ways to adopt and exhibit a shared set of traits. We’d emphasize training and careful hiring that stress the ability of employees and partners to consistently be who we say we are as a business.
4. For whom do we do it: This looks for distinction in the markets and clients we serve – a commonly used method of differentiating. We would focus on serving niche or specialty markets or parts of organizations that are under-served or poorly served today.
5. Where do we do it: This isn’t just about differentiating on where our offices and clients are; it can also be about where we concentrate our services – the strategic front-end of an engagement, the tactical back-end execution, somewhere between or all of the above. Our strategy may include being the best provider in our service category in our community, focusing on building an expertise and national reputation in a specific industry niche or identifying specific points upstream, midstream or downstream in solving a client’s need.
6. Why do we do it: This is what I would call the existential point of distinction. It derives from our mission (our reason for being as a s business), what we stand for, our core beliefs and values, the difference we want to make. Here we focus on engaging like-minded stakeholders in our overarching purpose and demonstrating we do what we do to make a larger social, environmental or economic difference.
7. Do we do it: Here we emphasize proof. We are who we say we are, we do what we say we do and we deliver what we say we’ll deliver. It may be that all our competitors are saying the same thing. We are the ones who actually walk the talk. Our strategy is on delivering on the client experience we promise, measuring and being accountable for positive client outcomes and cultivating and communicating proof of performance.

This list is not an exhaustive source of where you can find and create those “small, solid points of distinction,” but it’s a great place to start. What this list presupposes is you also have a solid understanding of 1) what your clients want and need and how they experience your business today and 2) what distinction strategies are being used by similar or competitive firms. Otherwise, you run the risk of being both irrelevant and indistinct. Chances are that’s a position your competition already owns. Gladly leave it to them.

Photo credit: MrB-MMX at Flickr

My consulting practice centers on progressive businesses and nonprofits that are trying to change the world, their organization or their stakeholders in ways large and small. We all know from experience that personal change can be hard. So it’s no surprise that trying to influence change in others can seem impossible or painstakingly slow. And if we’re not careful as marketers, throwing more content at the problem will only make matters worse.

The world is drowning in content generated by marketers — blog posts, case studies, white papers, ebooks, videos, photos — and the social media meant to publicize and disseminate the content. It’s axiomatic in marketing circles that awareness precedes action. Some content is aimed at creating initial awareness. Other content is produced to generate leads, establish thought leadership or deepen customer loyalty. Too often, however, the marketing objective becomes producing more content instead of the change we seek.

Bridging the say-do gap

Content marketing conforms perfectly to marketing’s traditional role of providing the customer or audience with all the information they need to act. Thanks to digital and social everything, what’s changed is our ability to cost-effectively create, deliver and promote content in multiple forms, across multiple channels and track who and how many access our content. And with news media in decline, marketers can no longer rely on editors and reporters to pick up and run with their stories. Getting the word out depends more than ever on filling the content developer void left by the news media.

So it’s easy to see why content production and distribution is becoming the largest piece of the marketing pie. But is all this informative and entertaining content making a difference?  When it comes to sustainability, for instance, research shows a large say-do gap. Among its results, a 2010 Yale study found:

• 88 percent of Americans say it is important to recycle at home, but only 51 percent “often” or “always” do
• 81 percent say it is important to use re-usable shopping bags, but only 33 percent “often” or “always” do
• 76 percent say it is important to walk or bike instead of driving, but only 15 percent “often” or “always” do

Clearly, most Americans are aware of the importance of certain “green” behaviors. We’re just not doing what we say is important. The Persuasive Tech Lab at Stanford University offers up the Top 10 Mistakes in Behavior Change. Number 7? “Believing that information leads to action. We humans aren’t so rational.”

We don’t simply need more information. We need help bridging awareness into action. This strikes me as the new frontier for marketers: creating behavioral change — not just content for content’s sake.

‘Make people feel something’

“Knowing something isn’t enough to cause change,” say Chip and Dan Heath, brothers and authors of Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard. “Make people feel something.”

People have a rational side and an emotional side, and those wanting to create change have to reach both, the Heaths argue: “But when it comes time to change the behavior of other people, our first instinct is to teach them something.”

In other words, we produce more content and feed it to the rational side. That’s the easy part. The harder part — and the part marketers need to master — is recognizing, finding and connecting to the emotional side of our audience in ways that influence and inspire concrete change. Not just through clever communications but by learning and deploying behavioral change techniques.

In Switch, the Heaths lay out a three-step template for creating change:

1. direct the rational side by cloning what’s working, scripting specific behaviors, pointing to the destination
2. motivate the emotional side by finding the feeling, shrinking the change so it’s less daunting, instilling a growth mindset
3. shape the path by tweaking the environment or changing a situation, building new habits, capitalizing on the tendency for behavior to be contagious

Of course, you’ll need to read the book to fill in the many blanks in this template. But notice the strategies listed here. It’s not simply a process of producing more and better information. It’s understanding how to stimulate and guide change in others. And tapping into the whole person, the rational and the emotional.

For those of us whose measure of success is positive change, being a purveyor of content is not enough. Content untethered from proven strategies for creating change renders marketing ineffective. If you want your marketing to reach greatness, learn how to create change. And let that be the king of your content marketing.

I could only identify two stores along the three-block downtown that were there in my childhood. Most of the businesses appeared to be on life support. Further south from downtown a once modest commercial stretch reminded me of an abandoned cowboy town. Only the tumbleweed was missing. My high school had been leveled and rebuilt on the north edge of town. My parent’s last and once-proud home, across from the school, stood lifeless. And the downtown store my dad started in 1948 and sold in 1980 is teetering on the verge of going out of business. Perhaps the hardest change of all to swallow.

Hometown lake in Minnesota

Little about my hometown seemed as I remembered it, except the pretty lake at its center. It hadn’t died as a community. It only felt that way. So much that anchored my memories of growing up there has now disappeared, if not physically, then emotionally. I told my wife the last morning we were there, I’m not sure I will ever have the need or desire to return.

Business is never usual

As I write this post, the Occupy Wall Street movement remains in full force, joined by Occupy Portland and dozens of other Occupy camps across the country. Who knows what will become of their protests. Something positive, I hope. Regardless of the outcomes, there’s no going back to business as usual. BAU, as I have seen it referred to elsewhere, is a myth. Nothing ever just sits, immune to the one thing we can’t change: the constancy of change itself.

After nearly two decades away, I could see the etchings of change all over the community that raised me through high school. As much as I wanted it to still be the Mayberry of my memories, that community is long gone. Replaced by something different. And if I return in 18 years, it will be that much different again.

Wiser people than me long ago recognized that all that exists is this moment, right now and now and now. The past is gone, the future not here yet. I have made a career out of marketing and communications. That means telling stories. Sometimes the stories of returning to the way things once were. Other times imagining a future yet to be. What feels in short supply are the stories of delight with what it is now, today, in this moment.

Branding in the moment

“Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans,” John Lennon sang. Is it any different for a business or a brand? We make plans to celebrate the past. And we make plans to dominate the future. But what about now? What are we doing and experiencing as an organization today? And what about our customers, employees, markets, competitors? Are we attached to relationships and conditions as they once were or obsessed with a future that may never arrive?

Or are we finding ways to share the pleasures that today brings with the stakeholders that help our business prosper? I’m not saying it’s easy, but I’m pretty sure the business, the brand, the person that accepts change and stays awake to the opportunities present in any given moment is the most satisfied of all.

And right now, I suspect some young boy is riding his bicycle around my hometown lake, oblivious to all but the red autumn leaves blowing across his path.