Branding AASHE – It’s roundup time out west.
I see you work for AASHE; what’s that? For the past few years, I have been asked this question by a wide variety of people. Although I’ve got my own "elevator speech" for an answer, I’ve often wondered if that speech represented a shared understanding of AASHE’s identity. The importance of the question became clear to me when at an AASHE Board of Directors retreat we began discussing the need for AASHE to develop a marketing plan to reach our next thousand member institutions. As we began talking about a marketing plan it became clear that we needed to be consistent about what AASHE is, what it does, and why it does it. Although this may sound very business-speak it is equally mission-speak – that is, understanding your identity is critical to fulfilling your mission.
As we explored the question of our identity, we realized that among the board, the staff, and the membership there were many different ways we were answering the identity questions. Our elevator speeches often required really tall skyscrapers with really slow elevators. It became clear that before we could develop a marketing plan that would bring more institutions into the campus sustainability fold, we would need to clarify our identity and role. As a result of discussions at the 2010 Board of Directors retreat, we began making plans for initiating a branding process in 2011.
In early 2011 a group of AASHE staff led by Seann Sweeney (currently Membership & Marketing Director) began the process of vetting various branding companies to find one that could best meet the needs of AASHE. After a thorough review, we selected Tipping Gardner (TG) as our branding company based on their impressive work with both non-profits (including Rainforest Alliance and Amnesty International) and for profit companies (such as GORE-TEX, Pfizer, and Avaya). In the early phases of the process, TG conducted thorough research on AASHE, how it represented itself, how it communicated, how the staff and board understood AASHE, and how we were externally perceived. According to Martyn Tipping, President of Tipping Gardner, “When we began working with AASHE we found an organization that was unclear about how to represent itself. We've worked closely with the AASHE team over the past year to create greater clarity and build a more assertive, forward looking brand that's consistent with AASHE's role as a leader in advancing higher education sustainability.”
At the 2011 Board of Directors retreat, Martyn presented the board with a review of the process and a draft of identity phrases. After dialogue with the board, TG created a Brand Playbook that captured phases that AASHE could use in elevator speeches that would reflect a common understanding of AASHE.
We tested these identity phrases with the membership in our member survey last summer and received very positive responses. You have likely seen some of these phrases at the AASHE 2011 conference, on our website, and in media releases and newsletters. AASHE now talks clearly (and I hope boldly) about its role in “advancing sustainability” by serving as an “acknowledged thought leader” that provides “invaluable resources” to an “engaged, diverse community.”
In many ways these phrases are both affirming and challenging. They affirm our role in advancing sustainability but also challenge us to serve as a thought leader and to make sure that our resources are indeed “invaluable.” The last phrase challenges us to make sure that we are providing opportunities that promote community engagement. These phrases speak to an AASHE that leads while it serves it members and that ensures value in the resources and professional development that it provides and supports. In fact, these phrases became valuable as the Board of Directors shaped the Goals for 2015.
After reviewing how the new brand messaging would help us clarify our identity, we then began discussions about our visual identity. Two repeated concerns about AASHE’s visual identity were that it looked like it was an environmental organization (the green leaf associated with the letters in the logo) and the mismatch between the visual identity for AASHE and the visual identity of STARS. The board directed the staff to move forward with an exploration of a change in visual identity and we returned to TG to assist us in this process. In the very near future you will see how that process played out with new logos for both AASHE and STARS. Meanwhile, think about how those phrases above might help you explain AASHE to others on your campus (or on other campuses) who may not yet be engaged in sustainability efforts – and how AASHE can help them.
Posted: May 14, 2012, 10:38 AM