Branding

Branding is among the first steps an organization should take. Careful focus on the values the brand conveys and is associated with needs to be decided early. Although branding is associated with imagery, such as a name or  icon that appeals to the public, effective branding is driven by the ideas and values an organization wants to project.

• What are the organization’s core values, the contributions it is making and the benefits it provides?
• Consistency is proven to be one of the most important elements in maintaining a brand. But there needs to be accountability and commitment within an organization to the values and strengths it wants its brand to be associated with.
• These are the elements of the brand. Maintaining them and the strength of the brand itself are consistent with an organization’s efforts to support its reputation, acceptance and utility through its communication activities.
• Trust and credibility supported by authenticity are common to branding and an organization’s success in its outreach activities. The measure of the strength of both is the effectiveness of the conversation the organization conducts with its stakeholders. Flexibility is a necessity in both branding and communication. 
• Re-branding is more challenging. However, an example is the effort to re-brand nuclear power as a green technology because nuclear fission does not produce carbon emissions.