Building brands for a crowd is hard.
Every stakeholder and business function has different priorities and needs when it comes to how they will use the brand.
For example, HR will want to send different signals to potential recruits than the C-Suite will want to send to the board and markets. Design and Marketing will focus on maintaining brand integrity by ensuring that color and language are used as consistently as possible, while Sales will prioritize communicating in ways that resonate with potential customers, brand integrity be damned.
These tensions between business functions are an inherent feature of how companies operate. I think of them as a sort of checks and balances that (ideally) keep an organization both financially sound and protect team cohesion. Brand use is a microcosm of how these tensions play out. Perhaps it’s idealistic, but I believe that solving for a more flexible brand can smooth other cross-functional interactions as well.
So how do we build a brand for a crowd?
Seek Simplicity and Essentialism.
Brands with many complex moving parts, expansive color schemes, and a high degree of difficulty in execution require design to get involved. This creates silos, slows down important processes like business development or recruiting, and amplifies cross-functional tension.
Democratize, with Guardrails.
Building a brand that is comprised of simpler building blocks makes it possible for business functions to address their own needs, accelerating processes and arming Design with opportunities to extend the brand in ways that support the greater needs of the business. This moves Design and Marketing from the role of gatekeeper to the role of advisor and partner.
Embrace Humility and Imperfection.
Democratized brand systems are inevitably less polished and consistent than top-down brand systems; they are also far more dynamic and tend to be embraced by the wider organization in meaningful ways. It’s a trade-off, but we believe imperfection is frequently preferable.
