Over the past 20+ years working with solar and energy storage companies, I have come up with several analogies to help frame all that goes into branding to a non-marketing audience. None have encapsulated it for clean energy brands as well as what I call the Branding Tree.
When most people consider branding, thoughts immediately go to the logo. Yes, a logo is a key player in the visual identity of a brand. But a logo is not branding. Branding is more than that.
Apple is often held up as a shining example of well-executed branding. I agree. However, in solar and energy storage, where many interactions are B-to-B, I find that organizations are hard-pressed to see how strategies that work for generalist B-to-C will work with more niche and technical B-to-B clean energy.
Looking at a different example, I go back to Charles Duhigg’s 2012 book, The Power of Habit. In it, he details a rebound of Alcoa. In 1987, Paul O’Neill, CEO, set a singular goal for the company: safety. Investors and analysts thought he was nuts. But by working to embed this one, single value across the entire company, he created brand magic. Duhigg noted that by O’Neill’s retirement in 2000, “the company’s annual net income was five time larger than before he arrived…” Growth followed the strengthening of the brand.
To develop a strong clean energy brand, define your branding roots before you get to your logo and style. These fundamentals are not seen by your audience but help drive the perception of your brand and are a key part of your organization’s healthy branding tree.
Without strong roots, a tree will weaken, die, and fall over. The same is true for your solar and energy storage brand. Without the fundamentals researched and defined, a brand becomes entirely defined by cost, leading to an inevitable race to the bottom on price.
What are Strong Branding Roots?
It is common for many of the fundamentals that make up branding roots to live inside the founder’s head. Small organizations may not see the value in defining their brand when it’s easy to keep everyone going in the same direction. Once an organization reaches a size where people don’t directly report to the founder/CEO, the story begins to change. Unless articulated, the brand starts to get muddled like messages from that 1980s game – telephone.
Roots fall into two categories:
- Research
- Articulation
Research roots include research to understand who you are, who your customers are, and how you fit into the marketplace.
Articulation roots combine your research with how you want the company to thrive. This leads to defining documentation that guides your company policy, communication, messaging, and yes, visual identity.
Guiding both research and articulation is your brand vision, or in the words of Simon Sinek, your company “why”. For more on how to find your clean energy brand vision, check out this recent post on how clean energy companies find their brand vision.
Strong Clean Energy Branding Roots – Research
In the span of a week, I had two separate conversations with clean energy leaders who said their company had tried performance marketing (paid ads, pay-per-click, adwords, etc.) with disappointing results. Through a series of questions, I asked how well defined their brand was. It turned out – not well defined at all. Why? Branding was seen as overhead, while performance marketing was seen as a direct path to leads.
Performance marketing can work when it has well-defined parameters. By performing research to define your brand, you will also help define those parameters.
Research roots cover
Understanding who your company is through a review of assets along with staff and leadership interviews.
Understanding who your customers are through customer demographic research and customer interviews.
And finally, understand how you fit into the marketplace through a competitive landscape review.
Strong Clean Energy Branding Roots – Articulation
You’ve defined your vision, your “why”. Your next step is to define your mission, or how your organization is currently working to achieve your vision.
Use your vision, mission, and staff/leadership interviews to define your brand values. Brand values should not be a laundry list of buzzwords. Create no more than three to five. Brand values are guiding principles in how your organization enacts policy, interacts with customers and stakeholders, and will eventually guide messaging.
Sift through your customer research and interviews to develop customer archetypes for your ideal customers. Again, skip the never-ending iterations and keep the count to a main few – and key – archetypes.
Combine information from your competitive landscape review, customer interviews, and staff/leadership interviews to define your company’s competitive strengths.
And finally, use your competitive strengths and customer archetypes to develop your company’s unique value propositions.
Once articulated, a good designer can take all of your root pieces and communicate them through an effective logo and visual identity. Your visual identity will reinforce your brand identity. It will make sense and feel whole.
And all of the brand root work you’ve done to date? If you’ve done the work and apply it with authenticity and consistency, every facet of your organization will be impacted by it. It’s worth the journey.