How brands are pivoting to advocacy, and what advocacy organisations can learn from brand marketing

One of the things that has struck me over the last (strange) 12 months or so has been the increasingly blurred lines between brand and advocacy. Working at an advocacy organisation, the Wellcome Trust, that has a relatively low brand profile, it’s been fascinating to see how high-profile global brands have used their platform for advocacy.

It’s made me think about how ‘brand’ itself can be leveraged as a campaigning tool, recognising that it takes time and significant investment to get a brand to a point where it’s strong enough to do this successfully, meaningfully and authentically.

A couple of (very different) examples I think have been particularly powerful are:

• Nike’s “For once, don’t do it” campaign following the murder of George Floyd;

• KFC’s “Remember our slogan? Great. Now forget it.” as Covid bumped up against its finger-lickin’ good brand identity (read more here).

Over the course of this year, I’ve been working on the development of a new brand campaign for Wellcome. Many former colleagues and contacts across the commercial and NFP sectors have been generous enough to share their brand management expertise with me. Here’s what I’ve learned and plan to apply to the campaign.

How are brands you’ve actually heard of thinking about brand?

Brand is not a literal definition of who you are; it’s not defined by your logo or strapline. It’s about saying “does X meet our brand standards?” or “has X met the promise of our brand”. It’s delivered by what you actually deliver, how you behave, and your attitude - whether that’s through your staff, social media posts and, perhaps most crucially, your reaction when things (inevitably) go wrong.

This in turn means brand becomes coupled with the new level of promise in the brand, i.e. if expectations are higher, your brand needs to rise up to meet them. This is what differentiates “brand” from “marketing campaign”.

What are the drivers for a rebrand (or tweak of your brand identity)?

The recognition that other brands are (subtly) tweaking their identity all the time. It’s actually more unusual for a brand to go “BANG” here’s our whole new identity. When that does happen it’s often driven by necessity rather than choice e.g. for legal reasons around M&A.

Brands evolve because they’re constantly looking at the way other brands are being consumed across their whole corporate identity. How are great brand identities working across digital platforms, shopping bags, labels, delivery vans, signage etc?

Beyond that, are content, product and brand all pulling in the same direction and working equally as hard as each other? For example, could you look at three pieces of content and know immediately which one belonged to your brand?

How big a role does digital play in all this? (spoiler: big)

In short, one of the biggest drivers for a major rebrand is recognising that the new landscape of everything and everywhere that the brand and identity has to deliver is straining under the old constraints.

And tied to that, recognising that your competition and market positioning might have changed as well. In retail for example, Covid has only accelerated the existing e-commerce trend.

What needs to happen internally to take the business/organisation with you when you reimagine your brand?

Internally it’s important to move the conversation beyond “should we” to “how will we do this”.

Spell out what the fast and slow versions of the rebranding process look like: what can be done quickly / what can be done at zero cost / what things be replaced as part of their natural lifecycle. But also recognise that even as little as say 5% of assets changed over to the new identity can have a big impact if they’re the most high impact then it will “feel” different quite quickly.

Accept that a full rebrand might take 5-7 years, i.e. from launching the rebrand to getting the last product rebranded within the new identity.