It’s easy to overwork the logo and pack as much symbolism and meaning as possible into the design. But here’s my hot take: Your logo should be the clean symbol that identifies your church (that positive gut feeling): not an infographic. Cultivating a healthy brand means putting in the work to connect the dots between what you look like and who you are. You might be saying, “But Braden, people will never connect the dots between the logo and our purpose/vision/mission on their own.” You’re right! The logo is just one tool in a branding toolkit, with a specific purpose (instant identification). Just because you have a hammer doesn’t mean everything is a nail ;)

Energetic logo = energetic church? Not necessarily. Strong stable logo = strong stable church? Maybe sometimes. This is an easy, one-dimensional way to think about church branding. Here’s the problem: Logos aren’t supposed to speak for themselves. The purpose of a logo is to identify; not explain. If your logo is recognizable and memorable, it’s done its job. The explaining part is up to you. Thankfully, you can use other elements of your visual brand to help you do that explanation. The purpose of having colors, fonts, photography, and everything else in your branding toolkit is to flesh out the ideas that don’t fit inside your logo.

These days everybody and their dog are expected to have a website. Why is that? The reality is that it’s hard to exist without a digital presence. Tending your brand in the real world is only half the battle. Some churches will leverage social media platforms and tools like Church Center to do their basic functions of event planning, send emails, and make announcements. This can check off the basics, but there’s a critical way your website can make your brand truly galvanizing and memorable. Done right, your website is where your logo, photography, color, and copywriting tone of voice intersect with and reinforce your vision, mission, values, and origin story. I’ll go deeper on these in future posts. The point is: all those things become missed opportunities if you don’t have a digital hub for your brand. Tend your brand digitally too.

Get ready for a more streamlined experience! Starting today, Tend Your Brand is becoming a concise weekly digest of 6 valuable branding insights. That means no more daily emails. 😅 Each Monday morning, you’ll get a list of that week’s posts from TendYourBrand.com (still published daily, but only sent out once per week). We all have busy schedules and one inbox item is easier to manage than six. Plus, a weekly digest format allows you to quickly pick topics from the week that are actually relevant to you. Things that haven’t changed: Posts will still be very short and focused (<1 minute read) Content is still packed full of useful branding tools and strategies Intermittent GIFs and Office references I hope you enjoy the new format, and don’t forget to tend your brand!

Part of my process when I help a church to rebrand involves giving them what I call a “branding toolkit.” This is basically a set of logos, colors, fonts, patterns, textures, photography, etc. they can use to quickly create digital graphics or print pieces that look and feel like their church. In the past, I’ve handed this toolkit off as just digital files, stored on a hard drive or in the cloud. It worked, but it was a little clunky. Then I found out about Canva Brand Kits. These were a game changer… and the best part is, churches get Canva Pro for free. (Canva didn’t sponsor this or anything like that, in fact I despised it for a long time because of how simplistic it used to be... it’s a powerhouse now) With a brand kit, your whole visual identity is a living, breathing system. Your colors are live swatches rather than just hex codes. Your fonts are set up as different styles and apply with just a click. I think I’m behind the times on this, but I wanted to share it in case you or your staff haven’t taken full advantage of brand kits. Have you tried it? Hit reply and let me know how it went.

Last year, my wife started selling old-fashioned lye soaps and shampoos made from goats milk. To distribute and label them, she had to make some decisions about packaging. Clear plastic shrink wrap is easy and practical. It turns each bar of soap into a self-contained unit that wont get damaged or worn, shows the entire bar, and makes shipping so much easier. Makes perfect sense, right? After selling countless bars and getting a lot of customer feedback, she realized that her packaging was actually working against her. People were buying her soap because they wanted a more home-grown, organic, less commercialized experience. She was using packaging that was plastic, shiny, and sterile. It was communicating the opposite of her brand! When she made the switch to brown craft paper, she immediately saw a positive response from our customers. “It looks so eco-friendly!” “I love that I can smell it in the store!” Is there anything you’re doing that’s unintentionally sending the wrong message?

Have you heard the term "visitor journey?" A good rule of thumb for churches is that a visitor should have no less than 5 brand “touchpoints," or places where they can interact with your brand. The best way I've found to identify those touchpoints is to think about your visitor journey. What do they see? Who do they talk to? How long do they spend in each place? This is critical to get right for larger churches, but it also applies to a church plant reaching their community for the first time. Here’s a starter outline of a visitor journey: Visitor finds you online (do they see photos of your people, building, or logo?) They drive up to your parking lot (do they see the same people, building, and logo?) They walk inside (do they see wayfinding? A welcome banner? A greeter with a name tag?) They sit down in the sanctuary (do they see at least one announcement slide that is relevant to them? What about in the bulletin?) I’ll let you continue your list from there, but here's the thing: If you can’t remember what your visitor journey looks like, your visitors probably aren’t remembering your church either.

Especially in the ministry world, we tend to think of a brand as a logo, color, or font... something flashy and new to get people's attention. But this is completely backwards. Brand is the gut feeling people have about your organization. Branding is how we shape and cultivate that gut feeling. By being intentional with your look, feel, and tone, you're associating those things with your church: everything it does and stands for. Hopefully, that association is one of trust and goodwill. Your logo, colors, and tagline are just a few of the ways that association can be made, but these things are not inherently a “brand.” They're tools for the purpose of making a repeatable association. That's why its so important to regularly tend your brand. With patience and intentionality, eventually you will see progress. Your church will start to identify with your brand because it signifies their shared history, values, and purpose. That’s when you can start to reap the benefits of your people’s trust, unity, and zeal.

Have you ever tried growing a garden? My wife and I have tried many times. Last spring, we thought "This year will be the year." But what happened? We forgot to tend it. Sure enough, we walked outside one morning and realize "Oh... we haven't checked on the garden in 3 weeks." We tried to save it by dousing everything with the garden hose, hoping something would survive and "catch up" on its water needs. Even if you don't have gardening experience, you can probably guess that we didn't see a crop last year. You can't water once a month with gallons at a time! Just like cultivating a garden, building a healthy brand takes small investments of purposeful attention on a regular basis. Your brand requires tending. With patience and intentionality, eventually you will see progress. People will start to identify with your brand because it signfies their shared history, values, and purpose. When people see your logo and colors used consistently on their church bulletin, you're watering. When you review the tone of voice in your website copy, you're adding fertilizer to the soil. I don't want to push the analogy too far, so I'll stop there :) But that kind of patient consistency goes a long way toward building up familiarity, then trust, then action. Just for fun, here's a relevant quote from Michael Scott and Dwight Schrute. Michael: What is that thing that Dwight always says? Paper is the soil in which the seeds of business grow? Dwight: It’s not the soil! It’s the manure! Paper is the manure! On-time delivery is the soil! Aah! [runs into office]

Last time we looked at how most churches and ministries are probably not over-branding. People are forgetful and have lots of other things going on. To cultivate a brand that bears fruit, we have to cut through the noise repeatedly, with clarity and consistency. But how do we repeat ourselves without being annoying? The last thing you want to do is give people a negative feeling when they interact with your communications. The key to this is to say the same thing in different ways, over time. If your church has a tagline, or a "thread" like Mark MacDonald outlines in his book Be Known for Something, then you have your message - what to say. Now the trick is to repeat that message in different ways and in different places. Let’s say your tagline is “Alive To Christ.” First, you can put this tagline on your social media banner, website, and logo placeholder slide. These are semi-permanent places where new visitors and members will be introduced to that phrase. One Sunday a month, take 60 seconds of announcement time to explain what it means to be “Alive to Christ” and connect it to a ministry opportunity your church has in the upcoming month. If you livestream your worship services, you can even turn that clip into a social media post or a short reflection for community groups. Next you could design “A2C” mugs or a t-shirt that says “Dead to Sin” on the front and “Alive to Christ” on the back. These are just a few examples, but I think you get the idea. There a million different ways to say the same thing. Do you have a tagline or thread at your church? Reply here and let me know what yours is :)