By Sruthi Sadhujan, Senior Strategy Director at Hyperakt
Today, a brand is no longer just a communications tool, it is a tool for narrative and systems change. While crafting a compelling mission statement and designing a unique logo are still essential, they have become table stakes. A well-executed brand can go beyond the basics to shift your audience’s values and remove obstacles standing in the way of meaningful change.
Illustration by Merit Myers
In the work of creating sustainable systems-level change, obstacles come in many forms: poor physical infrastructure, lack of resources, imbalanced distribution of power, disinformation, and more. However, the most stubborn obstacle is often the deeply held beliefs and assumptions that shape how we perceive and interact with the world. These beliefs form our collective values. If society's values do not align with the change we are trying to make, our efforts to improve infrastructure, shift resources, and redistribute power will never stick and will always be in vain.
Narrative change exists to tackle this—to remake our values so that the concrete work of gathering resources, corralling political willpower, and pushing through new policies becomes easier. According to Narrative Initiative, one of the organizations pioneering and building this practice, narrative change is about changing “our shared interpretation of how the world works.”
Organizations are embedded within larger conversations. Narratives affect how we perceive organizations as much as organizations affect how we perceive their related narratives. For example, the Ford Foundation influences the narrative of the role of philanthropies—as when, in 2015, Darren Walker started spearheading, what he called, “a new gospel of wealth”—while at the same time, the larger narrative influences our perception of the Ford Foundation. The prevailing narrative of abortion—as a women's rights issue, with 63% of Americans believing abortion should be legal in all or most cases—affects how we perceive Planned Parenthood, but Planned Parenthood plays an influential role in how society perceives abortion.
Understanding this complex and two-way relationship is the first step towards harnessing branding to be a more effective tool in the work of social change.
The relationship between branding and narrative change
A brand is a concentrated dose of narrative change—clear and distilled language, aimed at shifting how audiences perceive and understand the stakes of a certain issue or field, delivered through the powerful and specific container of brand language. Because of the nature of brand, it can be delivered across multiple channels, to various audiences, and consistently over time.
But in order for a brand to step up to the proverbial plate, we need to ask it to be more than just a logo and a mission statement. A brand can set the context and frame the conversation. It can zoom out and help us understand how the world works and why it needs to be different.
When Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), a leading health philanthropy, rebranded earlier this year, there was a notable shift in their language. Previously, they talked extensively about health equity and the social determinants of health, packaged in a concept they called “building a culture of health.” The new brand language we developed for RWJF strikes a different tone and frames up a different conversation. “We take bold leaps to transform health in our lifetime and pave the way, together, to a future where health is no longer a privilege, but a right.”
In American lore, rights are inalienable. We are born with them and die with them. The framing of health as a right is a sharp and compelling idea that sheds sunlight on the darkest crevices of our previous assumptions. When access to health becomes a right, our values shift. When values shift, policies change. When policies change, resources move. And when resources move, change happens. We helped RWJF leverage its brand to do more than talk about itself and challenge entrenched narratives about who is deserving of health and why.
Brand your organization, brand your cause
Narrative change is grueling work. Progress is hard to measure and it can take generations for efforts to bear fruit. So it’s important to state that branding is not a shortcut. But if your organization is all about taking a systems approach to social issues, remember that branding can be a powerful tool to change the way we think about the world.
Next time you update your brand, don’t just ask what can be said about your organization; ask what can be said about the larger issues you participate in. Language, both visual and verbal, matters.
With the right words and images, branding can shake loose tired assumptions and clear the way for real progress.
If you’re interested in making your brand work harder for your organization, then reach out.
