Branding Basics for Libraries
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This document discusses branding and provides guidance on branding a library. It defines what a brand is as the amalgamation of all experiences a consumer has with a company. Branding is important to position an organization, differentiate it from competitors, and define the conversation around a product or service. The document then provides a 5 step process for branding a library: 1) research stakeholders, 2) write the brand story, 3) determine scope, 4) hire a designer, and 5) implement and assess the brand. Key aspects of an effective brand are discussed like logo, visual identity, and delivering a consistent look and feel.
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Branding Basics for Libraries
- 1. On Branding Andrew Colgoni, Services Librarian McMaster University, Hamilton, ON & creator Ad/Lib: adlib.info @adlib_info | facebook.com/adlib.info
- 2. What is a brand?
- 3. Logo Visual Identity Slogan Advertising Store Design & Layout Customer Service Quality of Product Mission & Promise Cost Ethics User Experience Availability
- 4. Personal Experiences Taste Preferences Opinions of Others External Trends Reputation Cultural Associations Media Coverage Historical Associations
- 5. What is a brand? “A brand is the amalgamation of all the different experiences and encounters a consumer has had with products, salespeople, marketing, advertising, and retail experiences (if there are retail stores). That’s why a brand is a promise…” (Leibtag, 2013)
- 6. Why brand? • Position organization within user’s lifestyle • Differentiate your product from competition • Foundation for marketing • Deliver consistent design and look/feel • Demonstrate relevancy to users • Define and lead conversation about your product / service • Say more with less (Doyle, 2011; Leibtag, 2013; Potter, 2012; Webber, 2007)
- 7. Telling the story of your library
- 8. branding From 20,000 feet in the air. In five steps.
- 9. 1. research Talk to your stakeholders: • Find out existing associations • “What three words do you associate…?” (Potter, 2012) • Discover apparent strengths • Understand future wants and needs
- 10. 2. Write your story • Back to basics: Mission and Values • What do you want people to think about when they think of your library? What will you want them to think in five years? Ten? Image credit: Armin Vit; Brand New http://www.underconsideration.com/brandnew/a rchives/the_lawrence_public_library.php
- 11. 3. Determine scope • Will you do a brand ‘refresh’ or total rebrand? • Will the branding rollout with: • Web redesign? • Marketing campaign? • Physical space changes? • Alternate service goals? • Etc. Wells County Public Library Rebrand was profiled on Ad/Lib: http://adlib.info/wells-county-public-library-rebranding-2013/
- 12. 4. Find a designer • My advice: find a professional designer • Give them your research, tell them you story, outline the scope • Create something unique and memorable Image credit: Jef Catapang; Design Edge Canada http://designedgecanada.com/news/kitchener-public- library-turns-page-with-intent-rebrand/
- 13. “An abstract asterisk is the library’s new centrepiece icon, playing on the idea that an asterisk signals more to come.” (Catapang, 2014)
- 14. 5. Implement & Assess • Did you set measurable goals? • Gate counts • New membership • Check-outs • Event attendance • Media coverage • What will success mean for you? NYPL’s 2009 lion logo was redone in-house led by Art Director Marc Blaustein. Image credit: Armin Vit; Brand New http://www.underconsideration.com/brandnew/archiv es/an_iconic_lion_for_an_iconic_institution.php
- 15. refs Catapang, Jef. 2014. “Kitchener Public Library Turns Page with Intent Rebrand.” Designedge. Accessed October 8. http://designedgecanada.com/news/kitchener-public-library- turns-page-with-intent-rebrand/. Doyle, Charles. 2011. A Dictionary of Marketing. New York: Oxford University Press. Leibtag, Ahava. 2014. The Digital Crown: Winning at Content on the Web. Waltham, MA: Elsevier. Potter, Ned. 2012. The Library Marketing Toolkit. London: Facet Publishing. Webber, Alan M. 2014. “What Great Brands Do.” Fast Company. Accessed October 8. http://www.fastcompany.com/29056/what-great-brands- do.
Editor's Notes
- Hi everyone. I’m glad you’re here. I’m going to be talking about what a brand is, why brands and branding is valuable, and what the process of branding looks like in a general way. I think branding is a really critical tool for telling the story of our libraries to our users, for helping our users understand what our libraries do, and do well. I also want to take this opportunity to plug my website, Ad/Lib, which I made so that people like you could see what kind of marketing and branding is happening at other libraries, and share what you’re doing
- On to the content, then. A question: is this a brand? How about these other two? Go ahead – shout out your answer, I’ll wait. I heard you, and for those that said “yes, but…” or “well, sort of”, you are spot on. It’s like Magritte’s “this is not a pipe”: what we are looking at are representations of brands – the logos, or visual identities of brands. The brand itself, is a much larger, much more complex thing. I’ll show you what I mean.
- A brand is more than a visual representation, a brand is all of the attributes, both tangible and intangible, that a company, product or service, has. Those attributes are many and complex. Some of them can be controlled by the institution themselves. If we Starbucks as an example, we have the logo, of course, and all of the visual identity that goes with that: from signage, to bags and cups, to employee outfits and so on. This extends to the stores themselves, which have been designed very specifically to convey an image to the consumer, and for the customer to interact with them in a specific way. You can probably think of lots of ways an organization or company might influence you to think a certain way about what they do: obvious factors like the cost, and the quality of the product or service, to how they frame their brand in advertising, to how you’re treated as a customer in their stores.
- But brand perception is also influenced by other factors that exist outside of the direct control of the organization. It can be influenced strongly by the personal experiences people have, and also by how other people view and talk about it: friends, family, the media. Libraries in particular, have various cultural and historical associations that come to mind when libraries are mentioned – these all intermingle with the aspects of the brand that an organization attempts to harness and define. Brands, therefore are influenced in very complex ways by the message the organization produces and how those messages are interpreted and altered by the personal opinions and experiences of the users.
- So to sum up what we just talked about: a brand is big mix of all the things that people think about when they think about your library. It’s about physical things like buildings and employees and visual designs, and about intangibles like feelings and associations. It’s about the expectations a user has for your product or service, and what your brand has promised them they will get.
- There are lots of good reasons to brand. A brand is one important way for a library to define itself and tell its users what it can do for them, and what makes it different from other things they have around them (that they could spend their money or time on). Additionally, a brand is way to bring consistency to advertising, webpages, signage and how we communicate to our users. Because a good brand stands for your library, it allows you to say more with less.
- What is branding, then? To paraphrase Ned Potter, from his Library Marketing Toolkit, it is the creation of a recognizable product or service, the building of an understandable identity that then be uniquely positioned in the marketplace. To me, branding is the opportunity to tell the world what you think your library is about: what it’s good at it, where it’s going, what people should expect from it.
- Let’s look at the process of branding from a very high level. What might the branding or rebranding process look like?
- Before you can do anything really fun, you’ll need to do some reflection. Talk to your staff, talk to your users. Find out what people really like about your library right now and also what they’d like from it in the future; where they see it going. What are the current associations for your library? Bring in your strategic plans and your environmental scans. Every library system and local community is different, which means your library needs to figure out what kind of brand will work best for it. You’ll be building on this research for the next step…
- Based upon all of that information you’ve gathered,, write down the story you want to tell. What do you want to people to think about when your library is mentioned? Is your library a venerable institution that represents a strong pillar of the community or perhaps it’s an active hub of community engagement, or maybe it’s positioned as a educational leader. Spell all of this out. You’ll want to tell this story in your visual design, and in the other ways you’ll be positioning your brand. You’ll also need this story for step 4.
- A branding exercise might involve small changes to the existing brand, a tweak, or a throw-out and start new approach. If you’ve already got a relatively strong identity, you might want to do a brand refresh that brings it in line with modern sensibilities. If you’ve got a weaker brand or one that feels really out-of-touch, don’t be afraid to try something completely different. When planning, you should be thinking about what brand changes you want to make: is it just the visual identity, or will you rolling out a marketing campaign, updating the space, changing your approach to service, etc. This will depend how you want to present your brand – go back to the story you wanted to tell: what will you need to update to get that story across? The images here are from a rebrand that Wells County Public did in 2013, matching their tagline ‘your go-to spot’ with an appropriately spotted visual identity.
- Now that you’ve done all the hard work, you can get to the really fun stuff. Finding and working with a designer. If you’ve got a really talented in-house designer, that might be your first choice. Keep in mind, though, that somebody within your organization will have a much different perspective then someone looking at it from the outside in. If you can afford it, working with a design company is my suggestion. The designer can also help you with steps 2 and 3 – many designers have experience working with clients to help them understand how best to position themselves. Otherwise, though, you get to tell them about all the research you’ve done, what your story is, how big you want to go, and then work with the designers to make something that is yours. In the image here, Kitchener public, and system near me, recently rebranded – opting to leave behind the book imagery for a colourful and modern asterisk.
- Here you can see the visual identity applied to cards, signs, kiosks and name tags. KPL worked with a design firm, Intent, to create the brand, which also touched their library magazine, exterior signage, and a brand standards manual, which would outline how and where the visual identity and font should be used, what colours are acceptable, how to use the tagline, what the mission and vision are, and more. The quote here describes what they wanted their visual identity to represent – I also read that it can represent a ‘hub’ at the centre, where people come together. This is echoed in the tagline written on the sign: Where community connects.
- I’m going skip over implementation, because I think the next speakers are better qualified to speak about that step, but it’s worth remembering that whatever you do, you should build assessment into the project and tie those to what you wanted to achieve. I’ve included on this slide some examples of institutions that have done brand refreshes over the years that have iterated on the original idea, which retains the brand equity the original visual identity had, but updates it with a modern look. Just one way to approach a branding project. That’s it for me. On the next slide I have some references, but otherwise, I’m going to pass it along.