By: Rev. Anna Golladay
As some of you may know, I’ve been running for public office here in Chattanooga. There were 4 of us running for my district’s CIty Council seat and the election was this past Tuesday. Because no one in my race achieved 50% + 1 vote, it is going to a runoff. I’m one of the top 2 vote-getters, so I’m going to be campaigning for another 5 weeks.
I was at the polls greeting folks and someone approached when they came outside to say “I just wanted to tell you that I voted for you.” I thanked them and assumed they would be on their way (we aren’t allowed to engage in a bunch of banter in front of the polls). Then they said something that struck me. “I wouldn’t have known who you were if it weren’t for your marketing. Your brand was never compromised, your delivered the right messages in the right formats and I always felt like I knew where you stood on the things that mattered to me most. You should give your marketing person a nice bonus.”
I chuckled, knowing that the marketing person they spoke of was right in front of them. My campaign was lucky that the candidat (me) is also a trained designer, digital and print marketer and communications specialist. It helped that I didn’t have to hire someone to manage those things for me, but it also allowed me to have the control when it came to how I presented myself to folks and what stories I wanted/needed to tell in those moments.
It got me thinking about how our congregations share with others who we are. My colleague, Jim Keat, is a genius at all things digital, and he has a wealth of resources available if you are looking for advice on how to get started with certain platforms and understand the best practices for each. But I want to talk today about your brand. Your image. The feeling folks get when they look at your materials. Have you ever thought critically about that? Let’s take a look at a few of the key components of your brand and break down some dos and don’ts.
Logo
One of the biggest mistakes that congregations make is in believing that their logo should be the logo of their denomination with their name added beside it. That’s not to say that if you are a United Methodist church, you can’t have a flame somewhere in your logo. But it is to say that there are visceral responses to denominational logos by those who have experienced church trauma. Just because your are denominationally tied doesn’t mean you shouldn’t blossom into an identity that is uniquely your own. Here’s a few examples of well done church logos.
Brand Identity
You might think that brand identity and logos are the same thing. It is easy to confuse the two if you aren’t familiar with terminology. Your brand identity includes your logo, but is much more than it alone. It also includes the fonts that you use in your materials, the color palette that is approved for your brand, and a style guide that shows how your logo can and cannot be used. Have you ever seen a church create graphics or send out a newsletter that looks nothing like “them”? This tends to be because their brand identity is not a part of each piece of their image.
The easiest way to explain this is to show you examples of good style guides. If churches have these, they aren’t always available on the internet, so some of these examples are of other types of organizations that are doing a good job at creating brand consistency.
In my next article, we will dive into how we fold our website and social media feeds into our branding. What are your thoughts on how your congregation is doing with branding? Could you use some help from Convergence to get your brand brought into 2025? Just reach out.
