Kindling 39: Solidarity, not alignment

A thought from me

There are a few reasons a rebranding, repositioning, or new website could go wrong. Assuming the agency or studio is good at their job, the most likely reasons for failure are simple:

1. You never got solidarity within your organization. Everybody needs to agree on the importance of the new brand, including and especially the president, founder, and CEO. And once everybody is on board, everybody needs to learn to speak the same language and learn how to talk about the brand and identity of the organization with a shared vocabulary. The brand is an organization-wide initiative, at all times, and the gap between ​“organizational alignment” and ​“organizational solidarity” is as large as the gap between wood framing and a concrete foundation. Solidarity requires participation, where alignment only requires agreement.
2. The rebranding or new website is an attempt to fix a different problem. A lot of organizations — nonprofits especially, but not exclusively — have Founderitis, which is what happens when the founder can’t imagine a company without them. In that case, the problem is succession planning, which involves a brand that relies less on the founder’s face and more on the organization itself. This is a political problem internally, and requires careful navigation. Sometimes, an outside voice can be just what you need. Sometimes, you’ll sadly need to wait it out. The easiest way to see if you have a path forward is to return to Number 1. Attempt to get solidarity and ongoing participation from the founder, not just alignment or agreement. For many founders at this level, it is too easy to say ​“yes” to something and pretend it doesn’t exist.
3. The identity was delivered, but never implemented. Most design studios and agencies wrap the project up after the logo is designed. Sometimes, that means you’re left holding a logo and some colours without any idea what to do with them. It’s important to get your designer to help with either the transition to your in-house team or assist with the remaining deliverables, and account for them in your budget and timeline. The work doesn’t end with the logo; it ends when the outside world sees that logo across all your materials.

The most difficult part of any rebranding is getting everybody on the same page. Getting all the stakeholders to agree on an identity and a direction, and helping your internal teams understand the new direction, is the lion’s share of the work. 

The final identity design is usually the bottom 10% of the work. If a project went wrong, it’s somewhere in the top 90%. 

Things worth sharing

1. “Data is a risk… Data is distracting… It becomes a job.” Is your organization collecting too much data? ​“Each morning at 10am, I get an email from Caroline in the finance team showing the cash we have in the bank compared with the same day last year. This fact offers no hiding place.”
2. Designers are trying to figure out how to use AI in their work. Harvard Design Magazine calls AI a design medium: ​“In the studio, this feels less like a revolution and more like a continuation, yet another material showing up on the table, just as disruptive as all the others — volatile, powerful, uneven, full of possibility. Something you do not just use. Something you work through.” (Simultaneously, Figma is rolling out their own design agent. I don’t have access yet, but I’m keeping an eye on this space.)
3. Google is transitioning from Google Search to an LLM. No more blue links. In the future, it’s all chatbot, all the time. But what happens to the ads?

A question to ponder

Your organization’s website might be getting fewer and fewer hits from search engine traffic. Soon, every website will be affected by these changes. How are you preparing for that sea change?

Until next week,

Nathan

PS. Ken had the dream job, and he threw it away.