What is branding? Why is branding important for businesses?

 What is branding? 

Why is branding important for businesses?

What BRANDING isn’t?

• Branding is not a logo

(A logo is a very useful tool for a business, but it’s not the brand.)

A logo is a symbol for the brand.

• A brand is not a product

(When people talk about this brand buying this brand or that brand, they’re really talking about buying one product or another product.)

• The brand is not a promise

It’s not a promise that company makes to customers.

• A brand is not an impression

The Brand Is a Result

It’s what a customer’s really feels about a product, service, or company.

It ends up in their heads and hearts.

(They take whatever you’re offering to them, and they make something out of it).

So, they’re making the brand, they’re creating it.

In a sense when you create a brand, you’re not creating one brand, you’re creating millions of brands like however many customers or people in your audience.

Each one has a different brand of you.

The Brand Is a Reputation

it’s your business reputation and everyone’s going to be a little bit different about it.

But it’s okay if it’s beneficial to the company.

Some designer’s points of view are “that brand is something we’re doing, we’re telling a story, we’re making a claim, we’re making a pitch”.

But that’s not a brand it’s the result of that.

What’s right is what happens in people’s heads. Like what have we achieved?

What’s the reputation that we’ve created through the products we’re putting out, and the design of the products, the messaging we’re putting out, the look and feel of them, our culture.

How does that affect people? How our employees behave, how is that affecting our reputation?

All that stuff counts.

What reputation has your brand created?

Almost everyone in the company affects the brand, doing something with the brand, doing it for the brand, or hurting the brand.

So, you’ve got to think of it that way.

Brand Building

Building, maintaining, and protecting a brand can be a company’s most important investment. Branding efforts can be as simple as designing a logo, or as complex as developing a complete content strategy. Regardless of scope, your brand reputation is the key to your company’s success.

Whether you’re creating a new brand from scratch or refreshing a brand that’s been around for decades, there are

Some Tips for Building a Brand

1. Look at the competition

Take a look at other companies in your industry and get a feel for how they’re positioning themselves. If all of the competition is focused on the wide variety of products they offer, positioning your own brand to instead highlight quality or service attributes could set you apart of the pack.

2. Keep it simple

When it comes to branding elements like logos, taglines, and messaging, simplicity cannot be beat. one key benefit makes the brand that much more desirable and long-lasting.

3. Eat, sleep, and breathe the brand

Once your brand is in place, it should serve as the cornerstone for nearly every other marketing decision that’s made within the company. From collateral, to packaging, to content, to social media, all spokes of the marketing wheel need to be rooted in the same brand values and attributes.

Using these tips of branding will help you build and nurture a successful brand for years to come.

Brand’s mission

• Is to change things and make things better.

• It brings corporate strategy to life.

• Brand is the way you build and focus your reputation to reach out to the people you need and inspire them to act in a way that helps you achieve your goals. Whether your aim is to change people’s habits, get them to give money, inspire them to volunteer or come to you for support, or even to change law.

• Brand lets people know you’re here and that what you do matters to them. It answers question “Why choose me?”

“Brand is what people say about you when you’ve left the room” – Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and world’s wealthiest person

To have an effective brand:

• Characteristic (be Special): to stand out in a noisy world and differentiate you, especially in a crowded area

• Relevant: locking into your audiences’ needs, hopes and aspirations, and how you are the best vehicle for their generosity or their desire for action

• Capture the imagination: to reach into hearts and minds

you stand out more, by focusing your collective strengths. 

People understand the depth and breadth of what you offer, and you get the credit for everything you do.

“A great brand is a summarizer, a dose of steroids, a powerful shorthand, an incisive shortcut to help people understand all the amazing work that your organization does” – Joe Saxton, founder of CharityComms and sector commentator

Brand’s value also lies beyond the marketing department, acting as an amplifier or enabler for other parts of the organization:

• in fundraising it promotes awareness and trust, allowing the ‘ask’ to be more single minded and effective

• in campaigning and policy, it justifies why you should be heard and why your point should be taken seriously

• in service delivery, it adds additional value to the service being pitched to local authorities and funders

• in information provision, it proves authority and trust often for people in difficult times

• in PR it provides a platform for promotion and resilience in a crisis

• for volunteers, it creates the sense of movement and belonging

• for front line service delivery staff, it reinforces the wider value of what they do and inspires them to be their best professional selves

• for Boards and decision makers, it keeps the ‘mission’ front and center of decisions

• and for all staff, supporters, trustees and volunteers, it turns their individual voices and actions into a collective roar

Brand’s role and greatest value is as an agent for action no matter what size your organization is.

Brand as a strategic tool

1. Your brand and corporate strategy should always be aligned and reviewed in-line with your corporate strategy cycle. If you are updating your corporate strategy, it’s the perfect time to review and update your brand.

2. Use your brand strategy as inspiration for an innovation workshop. 

Strong brands are famous for one thing

brands largely say what they do on the tin. But it isn’t always that straight forward for a company that may do many different things from advice and support to research and campaigning. That’s why when developing a brand strategy, it is important to consider whether your brand positioning should elevate parts of what you do to increase public engagement.

When developing brand positioning concepts for audience research, ​it is useful to explore whether to focus on some areas of the company’s work (strategic pillars) more than others or whether to create a big idea that can span them all. It is also worth considering which areas the company invests the most in, as well as which ones are the most inspiring and engaging to potential supporters.

How are you doing? And how can you create an even better brand?

Understanding the value, role and strategic purpose of a brand is only the start of your journey to having a powerful brand.

Once you’re confident you understand the brand clearly it’s time to start assessing your own organizational brand. This can be done by applying techniques to make sure what is in place is uniquely attuned to the needs and aspirations of your organization.

Planning and managing a brand project

Having the right process is critical to the success of a brand project.

Brand development methodology will vary slightly from agency to agency or consultant but there are common stages, outlined here.

Preparation

Objectives

be clear on why you are embarking on brand development with clear objectives and a budget in place, thinking through what it will cost to develop, implement and market a new brand.

Have clarity about target audiences and audience segmentation as few organizations have marketing budgets big enough to shift public awareness, so being clear whom we want to engage with and why is essential.

A strong brand will support income generation, so be clear of your funding model and how the brand can support it.

Governance

Set up clear project governance from the outset as it will save you stress later. 

Engage

Brand development is not for the faint hearted, as passions often run high. Understanding of brand can be poor and resistance to change high.

Taking audiences with you is essential to create a brand with a strong sense of purpose, pride and commitment. So, take the time to put a good internal engagement plan in place to reach staff, volunteers and supporters.

The more you can engage people in the process the better.

Implementation

Insight

The first part of a brand project starts with discovery, which involves a brand agency or consultant getting to know your cause and sector, existing brand and target audiences.

Common tasks include desk research to review key documents, such as your history, corporate strategy and existing audience research or brand metrics. 

The output is often a debrief of the key findings and confirmation of the next steps.

Strategy

use key insights to inform strategic brand positioning territories.

This is your opportunity to consider how you want to position your company brand in people’s hearts and minds.

Brand strategy platforms come in all shapes and sizes, keys, onions and pyramids. 

Don’t let the jargon baffle you. There is beauty in simplicity.

The foundations of a strong brand are a clear articulation of what you stand for, why you exist, what you do and how you do it. 

Creation

Creative

the creation of a visual identity and tone of voice. Visual identity design involves defining the elements that make up a coherent identity system: logo, social media icon, color palettes, typography, photography, graphic devices, illustration and iconography. Put together they should reflect your unique personality and help you to stand out.

Activation

Once a new brand has been developed it’s roll out time. But make sure to take time to embed it internally first. Staff and volunteers are a ready-made salesforce, so make sure they all understand what you stand for. Embed your values in your culture to avoid any reputational risks. Then should you externally activate a brand.

When activating the brand, it is important to be clear which audience segments you want to reach and the response you’d like. 

 Top tips

• Be clear of your brief from the beginning, target audiences, objectives, deliverables, timescales and budget.

• Research potential partners before sending out your brief.

• Shortlist who you want to respond to respect partner’s time.

• Have clear selection criteria and be transparent.

Brand strategy and positioning

Your starting point when creating your brand should be ensuring that you have clarity about your target audiences and priorities. 

Once you are clear about your target audiences and priorities you can use this insight to start thinking about positioning and strategy in a way that intrinsically works for your brand.

What is brand positioning?

Brand positioning is essentially the heart of your brand.

It’s the core themes that drive all your audience engagement, from the messages and visual and verbal brand, to how these are used through all your channels. Bringing your corporate strategy to life, how you position yourself is a clear and compelling statement of why you exist, a company’s fundamental purpose.

And it must inspire people to think, feel and act.

How to position yourself

Brand positioning can be split into two key components:

Preference: The hook into people’s needs or drives, that inspires them to act: this is often where the emotional points of connection are found.

Trust: The ‘Why believe me’, that ‘I’ll do what I promise’ and ‘I’m the best option for you’: these are often more functional points of proof.

There is no one ‘right’ brand positioning model (such as vision, mission, values and purpose, proposition and personality) and the choice can be bewildering. What each should do is capture, in the most compelling way:

What you do
Why you do it
How you do it

Think about ‘brand essence'

Brand essence is an idea that the rest of the brand revolves around or is driven by. It’s a ‘short-hand’ or compelling idea that helps distill who you are into something everyone internally and externally can relate to. It doesn’t replace brand positioning but complements it – acting as the spark that often captures the emotional benefit of what you’re about.

Good brands have a ‘brand essence’ (or ‘big idea’) as their center of gravity.

Strengthening brand positioning with a clear proposition

Many brands have customer and employee value propositions that sum up the benefit of the brand for the audience. Being clear about what these propositions are and understanding how they distinguish you from others can be invaluable to helping you work out your brand positioning and how you can set yourself apart.

Organizational visions and purpose are often big and grand statements of intent so, it is helpful to condense these down into more personal and achievable propositions that are easy for others to digest. Think in terms of action and emotion.

In a company context a proposition should also sum up the benefit of supporting the company or the impact of support. Whilst some advice and support companies opt for one core brand proposition that works for ‘getting support’ and ‘giving support’, others choose to have different propositions for different audiences and products that work within one overarching brand framework.

A proposition can sit behind the scenes, inspiring key messages and copy or it can even be used as an external facing strapline or call to action. Either way a good proposition should be inspired by audience insight and underpinned by what you want people to feel, think and do.

What is brand strategy?

The phrase ‘brand strategy’ can be used in two ways.

First, the words carefully chosen to articulate what you stand for – whichever jargon or models you use. Second, the plan you put into place to build the right perception in people’s minds – and bear in mind that plan can be multidimensional.

The overarching role that brands strategy plays

Most people start by bringing the brand positioning to life via visual identity and tone of voice and implementing it across all touchpoints, as well as embedding the values and behaviors within an organization's internal culture. But the concept, and practicalities, of branding runs much further.

An organization's brand is increasingly used to inform the employee experience, user experience (ux) and customer experience (cx) design, as well as inspiring brand-led innovation; where the purpose is used to inspire new ideas and filter out old ones. All of which dovetails with marketing communications, digital, content and social too.

Therefore brand strategy is an essential part of helping you to cement the ideas of who you are and what you stand for into the public consciousness.

Approaching a brand strategy can take many different forms. Many people start with digital marketing, search engine optimization (SEO) and Google AdWords to get the right messages to the right audiences

 A content strategy is also popular, thinking about which social channels you want to manage, for which audiences, and what content you need to engage with people – emotionally. Then there are more traditional marketing communications. Where you consider things like which mix of marketing channels is right to reach your target audience segments, on the basis that different channels have different advantages from awareness to response and retention.

Your brand positioning, and subsequently your strategy for using it, should be a guiding star for everyone across the company and should be incorporated within all creative briefs for concepts and campaigns to be evaluated against.

Brand purpose

More companies are now defining and delivering purpose (why they exist and the value they create for society), at the heart of their business strategy, not just via their corporate social responsibility agenda.

This extends beyond traditional perceptions of what people think a brand is and dovetails with corporate strategy.

Creating a brand story

Branding is, and always has been, a transfer of emotion. It’s about changing how people feel. But first you need a story that people will believe in.

What is a brand story?

In essence a brand story is a short piece of copy that describes what you stand for.

Also known as a manifesto, positioning statement, descriptor or boilerplate, it is often put together at the same time as your brand strategy and positioning documents. A common structure is a description of the problem your company exists to combat, followed by a description of your solution, and then a call to action to involve supporters in achieving your vision.

Cementing your brand further through Key Audience Messaging

Brand story on its own is not enough though, to truly cement your brand into people’s minds you need to have clear messaging that continually supports this story of who you are and how you’ve positioned yourself in terms of what you stand for while reaching different audience segments. As you’ve probably already guessed this isn’t always as simple as it sounds.

Most companies have multiple audiences, each very different, and often you want different things out of each of them.

This is where Key Audience Messaging comes in. These are focused on the specific actions you want from an audience, their specific perspective and the specific messages that need to be sent to them.

Your brand positioning will have most, if not all, of the elements you need. It’s often a matter of interpreting the tone, emphasis and focus for that specific audience. Some things will be more compelling than others and need to be turned up. Others, less relevant and can be turned down.

Sometimes there will be specific things that the audience needs which aren’t in your brand positioning and aren’t relevant to most of your audiences. Audience Key Messaging allows you to enhance the positioning with these.

Developing Key Audience Messaging

The first step is to identify and priorities your audiences. Then, for each audience, map:

What action do you want them to take – the point of brand is to compel people to act so asking yourself this question is a good starting point
What do they think about your cause and your charity
What messages will, based on ‘what they think’, compel them to act

You can then interpret the brand positioning you’ve already established into a set of headlines and supporting points that narrate these messages for each audience, covering:

Context: what is going on that makes this important, the problem and issues
Belief: why we, as a charity or movement, believe this is important
How: how can we help or solve the problem
Response: What the audience needs to think, feel, say and do.

All of this brand story and messaging work will effectively help you engage each audience and keep a focused overall brand message but should be carried out alongside the building of a strong visual identity.

Visual identity

Nowadays a brand has to work harder than ever before.

It’s not just about competing against other companies in a crowded marketplace. As a sector, we have to stand out against well-funded commercial companies – while engaging the diverse multi-generational audiences central to our success.

That’s why getting your visual brand right is essential. Outstanding visual brands have the power to capture an organization's spirit and personality and cut through the noise to instantly convey core messaging. It’s much more than just ‘a great logo’. It’s harnessing an effective tool for tackling some of society’s most pressing social challenges.

Speak your truth

The most successful visual brands center around a simple truth that captures an organization's purpose and essence.

Yet they’re not rigid. They allow communicators to flex distinctive brand assets to help people tell their stories and speak authentically to different audiences. Coherence, not just consistency, is key.

Embrace your audiences

Brilliant visual brands aren’t created in isolation – ideas come from everyone and everything.

So immerse yourself. Live, breathe and absorb the worlds where your audiences live (and the worlds they dream of living in).

Question everything

Audit, analyze and question everything before even thinking about design. Consider ethos and define ambition. Stay open-minded and presume nothing. Only then can creative focus start to emerge: the beautiful idea that shapes every verbal and visual element of your brand.

Think beyond logo

Everyone loves logos that make them proud and that shout louder than the rest. But they can’t do the heavy lifting alone.

From fonts to images, everything needs to work together to speak in one inspiring voice to create change.

Having taken all of the above into consideration you can then start moving on to the practicalities of creating a visual identity that shines…

Craft your hero graphic

The right graphic device creates a powerful visual foundation to support your brand. And to work effectively, it needs to channel your brand essence.

This isn’t a fluffy connection. It’s solid, meaningful action that builds strength and resilience.

To capture this a connector graphic was created that allows them to speak across all dimensions. It can be flexed for any purpose, from social media posts to festival pop-ups, while being instantly recognizable and keeping Samaritans’ core message front and center.

Harness expressive colors, typefaces and icons

Colors inspire emotion. So do you want to be warm and calm, or vibrant and bold? Choose a distinctive palette that reflects this spirit and will outlive passing trends.

Meanwhile, typefaces should communicate your personality without any other visual cues.

Choose inspiring images

Images should capture a moment that draws people in.

Choose mesmerizing images that make audiences smile, laugh, even shed a tear. Create a visual world and invite people to experience it.

Communicate, customize, innovate

Visual branding should be considered in terms of its power to boost fundraising, engage beneficiaries and transform lives.

Brilliant visual brands flow seamlessly across every channel, giving the flexibility to speak to different audiences in ways that matter to them. They have strong, distinctive assets that help your teams easily communicate, customize and innovate.

So, to make your brand work harder than ever before… don’t decorate, communicate.

What is the tone of voice?

“Tone of voice” is the term used to describe the style of language a brand adopts to express its personality. A brand’s personality can be expressed visually in colors, fonts and graphics. It can be expressed in sonic mnemonics like the Intel tune or McDonald’s whistle. Or it can also be expressed in the words it chooses. Tone of voice means making sure the words used fit with brand personality and connect effectively with your target audiences.

The importance of tone of voice

Tone of voice should be an integral part of any brand, as it helps audiences recognize, locate and understand who the organization is and what it stands for. In an increasingly crowded marketplace, where we’re constantly bombarded with visual, auditory and text information, it is vital that every element of the brand is working as hard as possible to attract and sustain attention. To overlook language is to miss an important trick.

Creating a meaningful and memorable tone of voice means fully understanding the brand’s personality. If the brand is youthful, energetic and quirky, the language used will be very different to one which has a personality that is established, traditional and reassuring.  So that means it’s important to ensure clarity around the relationship the brand is to have with its audiences. 

Tone of voice’s central role 

 

Naming

Alongside the tone of voice, your name is the most important part of your Company’s branding. It’s a beacon that helps people find you. It’s a trigger for all the messages and experiences people associate with you. And it’s a multiplier, pulling together the sum of all your communications. It has great power to lift your company up or drag it down.

A good name should follow the same rules as all other brand and branding elements: it should be distinctive, relevant and capture the spirit of the company.

Assessing a name should follow the same brand rules too: will your company be successful ‘in-spite of’ your name or ‘because of’ your name.

And any proposed change of name should follow the same process of forensic, preferably research based, assessment.

With its place at the center of your branding, changing your name is the most visible thing you can do. Meaning it can be particularly useful if you want to:

• Signal a dramatic change in direction

• Flag a game-changing merger

• Create a step change in delivering your vision

• Or if you have moved or are moving into a new market space

• If you need or want to radically change external perceptions of your charity

• When your current name is no longer culturally or linguistically appropriate

• Or if it’s utterly obscure, meaningless or confusing in the eyes of your audience

Because of this high degree of visibility, you need to take all existing audiences with you. Start where they are, be understanding, logical, involve them where possible and invest the time to take them on a journey. Many will be loyal to all but the most ‘damaging’ of names because of history and heritage, or because they ‘feel beyond’ the name and associate it with a cause they are passionate about.

When looking at change, always map out the case for and against it from every angle and for every audience. This will prove invaluable in guiding discussions and reaching the right decision.

If the case for change isn’t clear, and the name isn’t helping you but it’s not dragging you down, then your strategy should be one of rehabilitation. With names that are slightly dated, undifferentiated or losing relevance, you can use the other brand elements to overcome flaws. For instance a change in logo, a radical new visual system, updated message strategy, or change in tone of voice can all help in the short and medium term.

It’s a tough call though, and let’s not pretend otherwise. While not changing a flawed name will hold you back and could lead to long-term decline, throwing away a valuable but tarnished asset could be contentious and even disastrous.

What happens once you decide to change your name

When you are set on a name change how do you assess good options? Well, essentially this comes down to two main criteria:

Firstly, and most importantly, can you legally own the name you want? If you can’t legally register it, you can’t own or defend it. You might end up having to change your new name or pay hefty damages if you infringe someone’s trademark. That’s why you should always have a short list of candidates, always use an experienced Trades Mark and Patents Attorney to conduct legal searches, and always be prepared to see many of them fall at this legal hurdle.

Top tip: An internet search is a good first step but remember it won’t give you the whole picture.

Secondly, does the proposed name capture the spirit of the organisation? A name is not a biography, it doesn’t need to say everything. The rest of the branding is there to support it and fill it with meaning. Names are rarely seen alone, without the context of a person or website or in an article.

Types of name

There are lots of different classifications​ of brand name, and the boundaries between them merge (naming is a crafty art not an equation).

Top tip: Beware of names that should be straplines…think short, memorable and no initials, and avoid acronyms unless it’s really clever and clear and you’re prepared to spend the time and money brining it to life!

There are of course other considerations when thinking about the naming of your brand, domain names etc, but problems with these can usually be overcome with a bit of logic and creativity if the name is ‘right’.

To rewrite Shakespeare, “would a rose by any other name smell as sweet or wither and die?”

And remember: For a company, the right name, whether it’s the result of change or rehabilitation, helps you fly, but the wrong name will make you struggle.

Make your brand work for fundraising

The relationship between brand and fundraising teams has historically been volatile.  Yet we all know that it is essential brands have the power to inspire support and raise money.

So why does this happen? Well, often tensions can be a result of  a silo mentality. But it’s important to appreciate each other’s specialist expertise for the greater good.

Embracing the creative process

When it comes to creative development, your identity should be consistent enough to be instantly recognisable but flexible enough to meet the needs of different audiences, products and services. Don’t forget to consider your ‘brand architecture’ here, and how you intend to structure and present your range of initiatives in relation to your Masterbrand.

Apply your visual identity and tone of voice to fundraising examples, which depending on which forms of fundraising you undertake could range from anything from individual giving appeals to community events. Individual fundraising teams might be nervous about moving away from their ‘banker pack’ (a successful direct mail appeal) with good reason, so you’ll need to demonstrate how any changes to the brand can work in a fundraising context.

A good way to ease people into this could be by making sure your brand story has a ‘case for support’ built into it; articulating the problem, solution and a call to action. Or consider creating a separate version of your story especially for fundraising that dials up the need and urgency.

Meanwhile, guidelines for visual assets such as favored photography styles should also be able to show the problem and solution, while still conveying need and emotion. And similarly, it’s worth considering how colors will need to flex in tone to stand out, say on marathon running vests and online donate buttons, but to be more subdued when communicating sad stories or to convey a premium product feel for high-value donors.

what has brand got to do with policy and campaigning?

brand is every aspect of an organization.

Like so many in-house brand relationships, there has to be cross-fertilization. To achieve charitable purposes, we may have to create models or campaigns for policies to help our beneficiaries. The nature of those policies and the strategy we employ to achieve them, helps to shape our brand – they are part of who we are. At the same time, who we are as a brand influences the choices we make about which policies to put at our heart – and how we choose to campaign for them.

Policy is very much a brand issue; how you as an organization campaign for policy change, perhaps even more so.

Embedding and living your brand

It is common to review a company’s values as part of a brand and corporate strategy review, as they help to inform both a refreshed brand personality and the internal culture.

Every single interaction we have with a brand informs our perception of it, including the way its people and volunteers behave. Trust in charities is fragile, so it is crucial that your people and volunteers can bring your values alive in person and act in a way that avoids possible reputational risk.

Too often, companies focus on the brand on the outside rather than the inside, having inadequately embedded it with their people first. Your people are critical brand advocates – and potential detractors if they are not supported to understand and live the spirit of the refreshed brand.

During a brand refresh, there can be a tendency for multiple types of “jargon” to fly around between HR and Communications. Concepts such as “values”, “principles”, “personality traits” and “behaviors” can result in confusion for employees. That is why it is preferable to focus on one neat set of values, which can guide the brand’s personality (visual identity and tone of voice) and culture.

Bringing brand culture to life

Galvanizing people isn’t just about telling them what the brand stands for and looks like. This is an outdated ‘top-down’ approach to communications that rarely achieves its objective. Instead, plan meaningful engagement with your people so they feel part of the brand development process and that their input has been heard and acted on.

Improving the brand experience for employees

Whilst a strong understanding of your purpose and values can help to inspire and unite your people, some organizations also develop an explicit ‘employer brand’. This is about defining the whole employee experience and culture, and what it feels like on a day-to-day basis. Getting this right creates a great experience for your people and will also help, to attract and retain the best talent.

If developing an explicit ‘employer brand’ it’s important to remember that integral to this is an Employee Value Proposition. This (EVP) communicates the mutual offer made between the organization and its people – the values and benefits, both operational and psychological, that – employees can expect and what they will offer in return.

Making your brand work hard

So, you’ve defined what you stand for, have a clear and compelling brand story in place, a stand-out visual and verbal identity and some stonking brand guidelines. Well Done!

But what if no one out there in the world notices? You need to make your brand work hard for you, which means embedding it at the heart of organizational decision-making and bringing it to life in a joined-up way across all your activities.

Think about the brand’s impact

When your organization is making decisions, is brand a key factor? If you believe getting your brand strategy right will drive success, then it should be right up there.

Lots of organizations take a ‘do no harm’ approach to this i.e. they try to ensure that decisions taken do not carry undue risk to their brand or reputation. For example, a charity will check that a new corporate partner doesn’t engage in working practices that are counter to their values or mission. This is, of course, very important. However, organizations that truly maximize their brand’s potential tend to take a more active approach.