How to brand for Multiple Audiences?
Recently we have been working on a few projects that involve an 'all-inclusive' approach to the target audience question. With a standard brand there is often a clearly defined audience for you to build your brand towards, but how do you proceed with a brand that really does need to appeal to anyone? A brand with multiple audiences?
We’ve just launched the St Peter’s brand – a church building that houses two churches, each with fairly distinct cultures – Open Heaven and Elim – and we are looking forward to working on a few more similar projects in the near future. Of course a church needs to be inviting to all kinds of visitor, so we needed to take a different angle on this project – a project with lots of multiple audiences. Our initial response might have been to balk at the thought of ‘trying to say too much’ but we’ve been trialling a few tools that have made the process of identifying the cross-overs and recognising the power of simplicity, easier to navigate.
In this instance, we actually want to change our focus from being primarily about the audience to being more about representing the identity of the organisation itself. We believe that a logo or brand doesn’t need to represent all aspects of a church, business or charity’s workload, or to even necessarily be too literal about what that organization does. Instead we can subtly communicate a few core values that are key to their identify, for example authenticity, freedom and a feeling of being welcomed. It’s a more delicately balanced job because you’re weighing up the perception of multiple groups within your audience, but the aim is to show some personality and create the right ‘feel’ while not targeting any specific demographic above another.
We will be posting a series of blog posts that will look into branding in more detail, which hopefully will be useful! Please do get in touch if you would like to find out more about how we navigate this process or for further information.
