Earlier this fall, PPR Strategies participated in the launch of a new institute at Shepherd University: the Bonnie and Bill Stubblefield Institute for Civil Political Communications.
This Institute will offer students, staff and the public an opportunity to observe and study political civility and discourse between individuals with partisan and ideological divides.
PPR Strategies’s Communications Specialist, Ellen Buchanan, worked alongside the university to start this new venture!
This is the first project that Ellen has taken from the absolute beginning all the way to launch.
Her perspective was on everything from logo development to the website to displays at events to helping craft the message from scratch.
Here are three key takeaways Ellen had during this project, which you can also consider when creating a brand from scratch:
1. Start With Your Message:
When creating a brand from scratch, the options for every aspect of your new brand – from colors to font size to taglines – are limitless. Start out by defining your message and creating your logo. This is an exciting part of the process and will help guide and inform the rest of your brand creation.
2. Identify Your Brand Preferences:
Once your message and logo are created, identify the “voice” and look you’d like your brand to have. This will allow you to have consistency when creating copy, ads, newsletters, social media content, and more. Create documents outlining these specific preferences. These are also helpful to have when bringing on new team members.
3. Establish a Positive Relationship With the Media:
As a new organization, building a media presence with local outlets is vital to spreading your message. Personally inviting reporters to events and being communicative with them helps to build this list of contacts. As you gain more traction in the media, you can pitch more stories to more outlets.
Whether you are creating a new brand or you’d like to re-energize an existing brand, review these tips and think about how you can apply them within your organization. Share your takeaways down below in the comments!
‘Til next time,
Sandy
