Recently our founder, Evan, traveled to California for the North American Christian Convention. No matter where he travels, he always loves to make connections. One of the people he connected with after NACC was Matt Curtis, Communications Manager at High Desert Church. They chatted all things church, communications and Kingdom impact. Matt shared their story about a recent transition from a 'house of brands' to a 'branded house.'
Guest Author: Matt CurtisLike many churches making the move to multisite, we’ve found that adding a campus doesn’t just add complexity – it multiplies it. When we made the move from three campuses to four, a tremendous amount of complexity was added to our communications team just in trying to keep track of what logos applied to which ministries on which campuses.
As soon as our logos needed campus-specific versions, I knew we weren’t going to be able to sustain this approach. Rather than figuring out the next step in the development process, I decided to start from the beginning. If I were starting from scratch, how would I brand a multisite church with four campuses?
This is where Fishhook's blog post about a 'house of brands' versus a 'branded house' was so helpful. As a communicator, your experience has developed pretty reliable instincts on how to communicate. But as a part of an organization, that is rarely enough. You need to cast a vision to your team and to your leadership to help others see the value. Fishhook's blog post gave me the starting point I needed to develop five motivations for our brand philosophy change (more on that later).
Below you'll see some visuals that show our shift from a 'house of brands' to a 'branded house.' In order to show the difference between the two approaches, I put together what you may encounter visually when you visit one of our campuses. As you can see, the shift is very signficant, especially for someone who visits our campus.
A 'house of brands' approach
So, why change our branding philosophy?