Your personal attitude is almost immaterial. I fact, it may be a sign of character to select a branding product you despise. Or a sign of professionalism. There are only two valid issues to consider: 1) whether the intended owner will like it…and value it…and use it. 2) whether that user will make a favorable association between the product and your organization.
Everything else, including your preference – is immaterial. Let your professional values control the selection process, not your personal taste.
Embarrassing Example (with a great punch line in the bottom Factoid: Some years ago, for one of NPR’s blockbuster shows, we rolled out a T-shirt with a new program logo. The nationally beloved host/star of this program is one of our favorite business associates, a long-time friend we never thought would give us unnecessary grief. So he surprised us by demanding his personal preference. Before production began this broadcaster reviewed a batch of HANES color swatches and insisted we switch from the tan T-shirt we decided would serve as appropriate background to the new logo to a bright yellow T-shirt.
VisABILITY carefully tracks professional market research. We were on solid ground when we explained to our friend that bright yellow will turn away part of the market, so stations won’t use the shirt.
• Many women avoid yellow, believing it does not harmonize with their specific skin tones.
• Somehow a number of men decided, or were told, yellow is a feminine color. Testosterone prevents these guys from wearing yellow.
• Bright yellow worked against the colors of the new logo.
The program host ignored these facts. Said he liked bright yellow just fine. It’s his program. He insisted. So we switched to yellow and reduced the initial production run from 1200 shirts to 288. We were a bit embarrassed to do this because we knew the new logo on bright yellow would miss the mark.
RESULTS: Six months later – after public radio stations failed to buy those shirts – he relented. We corrected this branding mistake by reintroducing the logo on a tan T-shirt as originally intended. Public radio stations purchased thousands! It was no longer a dead investment. Once it was in the right color, everybody benefited from this shirt: stations, their contributors, the program and VisABILITY.
The yellow-shirt incident was a failure of brand-stewardship. We have seen this failure hundreds of times. You may never carry a tote bag, you may hate desk calendars and you may not use a coffee mug. But other people like those items. Conversely, just because you love fountain pens, collect pewter miniatures and wear sun visors doesn’t mean those products will appeal to your market.
Closets of organizations across the nation – nonprofits and for-profits alike – are filled with leftover branding products that were selected because they appealed to an official of the organization. Unless your office has plenty of empty closet space, don’t bully the product-selection process by imposing your personal preference. Instead, think only about what your target group might like to own and use. Those are the items that can be effective branding products for your nonprofit.
If you listen to public radio, you know our yellow-shirt pal. You probably love him as much as we do. So you’ll enjoy this irony:
Our friend rejected professional advice about market response to bright yellow. He insisted on his personal color preference. But the color he saw was not the yellow his listeners would see. This beloved broadcaster is moderately blue-yellow color-blind!
[...] CONTROL YOURSELF: a tough lesson for nonprofit managers to learn. [...]