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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 :)

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?

You’ve probably used and taught evangelism methods before. These tools make the Gospel easy to understand, remember, and share. Have you ever considered how your church brand works the same way? Evangelism tools introduce words, pictures, and frameworks to help people explain the Gospel message to someone. What are the words, pictures, and frameworks your members use to tell their friends, neighbors, and coworkers about your church? For most people, inviting someone to church is already nerve-racking enough. Part of that is your unique church identity - it’s hard to sum up on the spot! The solution is to give your congregation a framework with visuals to help them understand, remember, and share your church. Give them words to use. Give them memorable visuals. Use visuals that reflect who you are and who you want to be as a church body. These are all things branding effectively aims to do. We have a gift of eternal and unmeasurable value in the Gospel and in the fellowship we experience through the local church. Shouldn’t we be valuing that gift more highly and helping others do the same?

Tending your brand is so much deeper and wider than using your logo. That’s because a brand is much, much more than a logo. Look at the image below and tell me, do you recognize the brand it belongs to? Of course you do! But wait, there’s no logo to be found… That’s because Chick Fil A doesn’t need to put their logo on everything for you to know it’s theirs. The emotions and feelings they’ve created are more than enough to identify them. This is done with interior design, photos, colors, textures, and font choices, which are a critical part of what we call “branding.” The logo is the “tip of the spear” in a brand. The logo is the “tip of the spear” in a brand, but the other branding elements, the “shaft of the spear” are what should be doing the heavy lifting. They’ve curated a style that gives people a sense of joy, trust, and cleanliness. Here’s the question: Did Chick Fil A stumble upon their style of branding by accident?

This topic is one that goes wide and deep, so I’m going to try and give a 30,000ft snapshot. A church’s identity is made up of the themes and threads from its unique past, present, and future - things which make that church distinct from the church down the road. Visual identity is the symbolic representation of that, which is why it goes so much deeper than a logo or carpet color. Turning a church identity into something visual is a tricky process, but not impossible. Here’s my thesis: Starting with your intangible identity is the only way to create a meaningful, long-lasting, and copycat-proof brand. Let’s say you hire a graphic designer to create a beautiful visual identity that’s based on your preferences and current design trends. What happens in two years when those preferences and trends have changed? By going deep on your church’s intangible identity, you can emerge from the woods with a look that actually captures the uniqueness of your church and lasts for decades. Your visual identity won’t be able to be copied or replicated, because it’s grounded in the stuff that makes your local church, "local". Otherwise, you’re probably just copying someone else.

Building a brand isn’t as hard as you might think. When you boil it down, all you have do is decide what you want to be known for and work backwards from there. If you’re in ministry, you already have a “why,” but your core message (“what”) is the first building block. To turn that core message into a brand, you need two more ingredients: A communication plan (“how”), and consistent repetition. Distilled into three steps: Choose what you want to say Choose how you want to say it Say it over and over again in different ways Summed up in a formula: Brand = Message + Delivery + Repetition