Branding Cattle on a Thousand Hills

After finishing a rebrand project, I used to caution clients against using their new logo on everything, warning them about the dangers of "brand fatigue." I've changed my perspective on this now. It feels counterintuitive, but your brand should be 99% repetition and 1% novelty. As a ministry leader, you'll get tired of hearing your core values long before your audience even remembers one of them. You'll be dreaming in only your brand colors before anyone even notices that there's an intentional palette. In fact, there was a study done to see how well regular people could recall major brand logos from memory. The results were pretty shocking. If regular people struggled to remember the TARGET logo, then your church probably doesn't have to worry about "over-branding." That said, there's a simple principle that can help you give your church more brand "touchpoints" without going overboard and getting on anyone's nerves. I’ll talk about that in the next one. See you there!

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.

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.

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.