With limited resources compared to other For-Profit Organisations, it is heartening to see how Social Enterprises and NPOs (Non-Profit Organisations) are able to pull off impactful work. One thing for sure, it usually boils down to their tireless efforts to pursue their mission through their day-to-day work for the community.
But sometimes, prioritising operational work might make NPOs and Social Enterprises neglect important strategic groundwork such as Branding — which is a strong tool to help the organisation stand out from the crowd in the increasingly noisy world.
Easily, one of the initial steps to start branding is by creating a solid brand statement. Here are the benefits of having a brand statement for your Social Enterprise and NPO:
- It attracts donors who resonate with your story and mission, thus adding an opportunity to get greater financial support.
- It creates a greater partnership between organisations due to shared purpose.
- It helps your audience to understand what your company does, what is its purpose, and what makes it unique.
What Is a Brand Statement?
Photo source: Shutterstock
It is a sentence or paragraph that describes a company’s mission, expertise, and promise. Some people are wondering whether we can refer to brand statements as brand positioning. In its practice, a brand statement and brand positioning have the same purpose and goal. Phillip Kotler defined brand positioning as the act of designing the company’s offering and image to occupy a distinctive place in the mind of the target market. They both define how a company or an organization has special offerings that leave an impression to the target audience’s mind.
Why is it important? A brand statement is usually short in form, can be a single phrase or one-to-two sentences. The purpose of a brand statement is to help others understand what your company does, why it does it, and what makes it unique. It helps brands be perceived as favorable, different, and credible in consumers’ minds.
3 Qualities of Effective Brand Statements
To help you get a better grasp, we will provide one example of a strong brand statement that has a clear purpose and goal in mind. Featuring Bernice Tan, the CEO and Founder of Kind Citizen — a Singaporean marketplace platform that connects people and corporations to pay-it-forward, where donors pay for essential products and services from merchants which can be redeemed by beneficiaries on the website.
Video source: Kind Citizen — Payitforward.sg
“Kind Citizen is a social impact marketplace with the concept of Pay-it-forward. The Tech-for-good platform allows everyone to contribute meals and essential services to the beneficiaries under various Social Services Agencies, enables Corporate Social Responsibility by connecting individuals and corporations and creating multi-stakeholder partnerships to deliver a better future for all.”
Defining your purpose and goal in mind are fundamental steps to create a memorable and compelling brand statement. In addition, your brand statement should also have these 3 important qualities.
1. Relevance
How can your products or services help your customers? If you are a social enterprise, does your product or service solve people’s problems? And if you are a non-profit organization, does your program create an impact for people’s lives in the most meaningful way to them? Answering these questions will help you create a relevant brand statement.
2. Quantified Value
An effective brand statement should contain the specific benefits of your products, services, or programs. What positive impacts does your company or organization want to make? Your product or service should aim to address customer pains and provide a solution. By identifying your value, people will get a clear picture of what you actually do.
3. Differentiation
You need to give people a reason why they should choose you instead of others? Identifying your unique selling point (USP) or questioning why you are different is crucial to create a distinctive point for you to stand out from the crowd.
How to Write a Solid Brand Statement
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When writing a brand statement, there are many important aspects to look for. From a surface-level such as choosing the right adjective or other linguistic components, down to a deeper-level such as insights about your customers, brand purposes and services. You need to understand the anatomy of a brand statement, and consider these 5 components:
1. [your target customer]
Write down who your current target market, audience, or potential consumers are.
2. [statement of need or opportunity]
Write down what your target audience or customers need. In this step, you can identify customer’s pain points.
3. [your product/service name]
Write down your product or service name that you are going to offer.
4. [what your product/service does]
Write down in short, what your product or service does to help your target audience achieve what they want. What values you can give to them so that they will count on you.
5. [statement of benefit]
Write down the benefit(s) that people will gain from you, what impact(s) you want to make.
Once you understand the anatomy of a brand statement, you can use this message template and start writing your brand statement:
“For [your target audience/people] who is in the need of [an opportunity that you can help with], they can rely on us with our [your program/service/product name] where we will do [what your product/service/program does] that will give them [benefit/impact that you give].”
By writing it down, you will get a better picture of what you want to resonate with through your brand statement. Now, you can start to rephrase your sentence, make changes to the copywriting, and make your brand statement more appealing.
Before creating a brand statement, you need to incorporate 3 qualities: relevance, quantified value, and differentiation. Understanding the anatomy of a brand statement will come in handy. Make sure to ask for feedback from your colleagues and employees.
At Epic Dialogue, we help mission-driven organizations amplify their brand and CSR initiatives through our unique combination of digital marketing, events, and branding capabilities. As strong believers of doing well by doing good, we propel businesses to greater heights through our 360° Sustainability Communications Solution.
If you need assistance in crafting a compelling brand statement for your Social Enterprise or Non-Profit Organisation, we are more than happy to help you. Talk to us at hello@epic-dialogue.com!
