What Business Are You REALLY in?

by: Steve Finkill

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What business are you in? The way you answer that question will determine who will engage with you in an increasingly digital world.

Most organizations answer this question with a mission statement. Too often, though, mission statements are long, confusing, and filled with insider terminology. Those types of mission statements are not helpful when it comes to the messaging on your website or social platforms. What do you do?

We’ve found that it’s helpful to have both a brand positioning statement and a tagline. These two, when they are developed intentionally, can work together to communicate your business on multiple levels.

What’s a brand positioning statement?

A brand positioning statement is a logical description of what you do. The best brand positioning statements are no more than 15-20 words in length, do not include insider terminology, and include some description of your uniqueness as an organization.

What is unique about your approach to your business? What sets you apart from your competitors or other organizations in your market? You may have heard this described before as your unique selling proposition.

Your brand positioning statement should tell people what you do in a way they can understand … while including some description of your unique approach or philosophy.

What’s a tagline?

A tagline is a short, memorable phrase that captures the key benefit you provide to your target audience. It does not describe what you do (that’s what the brand positioning statement is for), it describes the result of what you do in the lives of your audience members.

So, for example, Nike’s tagline is “Just Do It.” By itself, that doesn’t tell you what Nike does. If you had no other context for Nike as an organization, you wouldn’t know, logically, what they do. But you know that the desired result of what they do is empowering, equipping, and motivating people.

The tagline speaks much more to the emotive side of the brain—tapping into emotions, values, and results.

If you bring together Nike’s tagline with a logical brand positioning statement like “athletic equipment meticulously designed to help you reach your potential,” all of a sudden, their brand message becomes very clear.

So what business are you in? What is it you do … exactly? If you can answer that question from both a logical perspective (brand positioning statement) and an emotive perspective (tagline), you’ll communicate clearly to your audience and they will be able to more fully engage with you and your brand.

> Read more from Steve.

To learn more about these communications tools, connect with an Auxano Navigator. 

Tags: Brand Positioning Statement, Communication, ID Digital, Steve Finkill, Tagline

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Is Your Mission Well-Lived and Well-Seen?

by: Bryan Rose

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Nike just released yet another great video reminding everyone of why they are one of the top apparel companies globally. In it, Nike gives a clear example of why their mission is so effective, better than most churches’ missions.

Full disclosure, Nike has long been one of my favorite and most often used examples of the difference between a mission statement and a tagline. This blog on the subject a few years ago continues to be highly searched and read.

Nike’s tagline is one of the most well-known in the world: Just Do It. 

Nike’s mission [Bring Inspiration and Innovation to Every Athlete* In The World] is one of the most unknown in the world… with two huge exceptions.

Exception #1. Nike’s mission is well-lived by the team of executives, developers, designers, marketers and salesforce within the company.

Exception #2. Nike’s mission is well-seen by every person who wears a pair of their shoes.

Many pastors tend to be skeptical of investing time and resources into working on statements of identity like mission or values or taglines, especially when things around church “feel” like they are going well enough.

They wonder if the effort and discussions are worth it, and struggle to see the tangible practicality of clearly articulated vision. They question how important it really is to capture our Great Commission mandate in a contextual, concise and catalytic way for the church.

When any organization lives their mission, the results are seen – and life change becomes possible. The marketing piece below from Nike sums up why, for them, people living out their mission is more important than people knowing their tagline. And shows how good they actually are at living it, better than most churches.

Watch the video linked below and ask yourself, or start a conversation with your team:

How much more important, and eternal, is the mandate of the church than a shoe company?

How well defined and well lived, and resultantly effective, is the mission of our church?

Does your mission create movement and reflect the heart of God for the church or is it just words on a website or worship service bulletin? 

Check out this video from Nike and see why it matters.

> Read more from Bryan.

 Do you need help with developing statements of identity like mission and values? Connect with an Auxano Navigator and start a conversation with our team.

Tags: Bryan Rose, Mission, Nike, Tagline

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Developing a Tagline for Your Church, Step 1: Clear Vision

by: Will Mancini

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If you are new to my blog, you may not know that everything I do in helping ministries begins with clarity first. In order to help teams with clarity and vision, I developed a tool called the Vision Frame. The Vision Frame is discussed at length in Church Unique.

Before developing a tagline, it is important for a leadership team to know, agree on and articulate the primary strength of your ministry (I call this the Kingdom Concept) and to articulate the Vision Frame. Think of the Vision Frame of “knowing who you are” before you decide to “get dressed” to present yourself to people in the world. The Vision Frame is your internal language and your clearest expression of identity and direction. Your tagline is what you want to tell people before they experience your ministry. Obviously they must be organically connected and meaningfully related.

At first seeing, all sides of the frame might seem like a lot, but its not. Look for language you already use. Many times a church communicates its strategy in it’s mission statement for example. As you separate out the key components of your DNA, each component will become more clear and more transferable in leadership.

GO TO  Step TWO: Decide on a gospel-centered promise.

Return to Church Tagline Series Overview

Tags: Awareness, Tagline, Vision Clarity, Vision Frame, Will Mancini

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Developing a Tagline for Your Church, Step 7: Final Decision

by: Will Mancini

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By now you are ready to pull the trigger.

Use your external ranked list as a very serious perspective for input, but not necessarily  the final basis. If there is a clear favorite from the external audience, I would highly recommend using it, unless there is a compelling reason otherwise.

If two or three of the external opinions are equal weight, then let the team or the senior pastor (or however your church makes decisions) make the final choice.

The goal is to create a collaborative decision that will create confidence and enthusiasm from the leadership team first and then the entire body.  The collaborative decision should:

1. Represent the strength of the church
2. Create a seamless experience with the church’s first impression
3. Be based on the gospel
4. Represent at least two weeks of thoughtful leadership reflection
5. Not create confusion with other organizations’ taglines
6. Weight the external opinions highly
7. Rally leaders and the entire congregation to deliver on the promise

Be looking for most posts on branding and marketing you ministry.

Return to Church Tagline Post Overview

Tags: Awareness, Final Decision, Tagline, Will Mancini

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Developing Your Church Tagline, Step 6: External Testing

by: Will Mancini

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There are many ways to test your top five taglines. The most important thing is that you DO test it. It will be tempting to feel the excitement of your internal process and just skip this step.

While marketing companies produce very sophisticated testing techniques, here is a simple one you can do at no cost.

#1  Create small cards that you will use to record a response from at least 50 people. Use card stock and make a standard size note card. On the note care write, “Possible taglines for ABC Church. Please circle the phrase that is most attractive to you if you were to attend a church:“ and list the top five options with no numbers, just bullet points.

#2 Ask each person on your team to get 4-6 responses from people outside of your ministry. Encourage them to ask neighbors or other acquaintances for their input. Remind them that everyone loves being asked for their opinion.

#3  Make sure you get at least 50 responses but don’t be afraid to get hundreds. Because this is a very informal process also make sure that the folks recording answers don’t represent too limited of an age segment.  The main idea of this step is to get SOME outside input rather than relying TOTALLY on internal opinions.

#4 Tally the data and create a ranking of your top five list from the external audience responses.

GO TO the final step SEVEN: Make your final decision

Return to Church Tagline Post Overview

Tags: Awareness, External Testing, Tagline, Will Mancini

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Developing a Tagline for Your Church, Step 5: Top 5

by: Will Mancini

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Now its time to identify your top five ideas.

I recommend a two step process. Make sure you have had at least two weeks to reflect on your list of 100 or more ideas. The team should have a copy of all of these.  This is important as the creative blitz may produce excitement around ideas that won’t last. A great tagline will get even better in the first few weeks after some reflection.

Step A: After one week, have everyone list their top three ideas. Use this to create a ranked list with the highest rank at the top, but with all of the ideas still on the list.

Step B: Take one more week and encourage active reflection on the list. Now you have had at least two weeks from the brainstorm. Take a final vote and ask people to select their top choice.

Use this process to create the top five list.

GO TO Step SIX: Test your tagline with people outside of your ministry

Return to Church Tagline Post Overview

Tags: Awareness, Tagline, Top 5, Will Mancini

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Developing a Tagline for Your Church, Step 4: Collaborative Awareness

by: Will Mancini

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When developing a tagline for your ministry it’s important to consider the taglines of two other kinds of organizations in your ministry environment. Think of this next piece as a step toward ministry environment awareness. There are two kinds of organizational taglines to consider.

1. Collaborative environment: Other ministries similar or proximate to yours.
2. Competitive environment: Non-ministry alternatives that compete for attention and time of potential members.

For a local church, the collaborative environment (we are being kingdom-minded by not calling this “competitive”) includes other churches in you area that are trying to position themselves and build awareness.  Many churches find two to three others in this category.  For a competitive environment, think of any place that people may go other than attending church. Do you live near a waterfront community? What is the competition saying? Do you have lots of kids sports around? What promise are they trying to make?

Why is this scan important?

Before you begin reducing your brainstormed list, you want to know what’s happening around you so you can differentiate your “voice” and messaging. If you use a tagline similar to another ministry it may create confusion. For example a church once advertised itself as “the church that rocks.” Right down the street was a big sign for the “Church on the Rock.” Inadvertently, they were building awareness for the church down the street. (And as you might guess the promise didn’t fit.)

Keep your list from your collaborative awareness is a place for the team to see or reference for the next step:

GO TO Step FIVE: Reduce your list to the top five taglines

Return to Church Tagline Post Overview

Tags: Awareness, Collaborative Awareness, Tagline, Will Mancini

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Developing a Tagline for Your Church, Step 3: Team Brainstorm

by: Will Mancini

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With your new two-word brand promise in place, its time to engage a team brainstorm to list many, many, many and then many more tagline ideas.

The key here is, as you might have guessed, quantity. Most teams don’t spend enough time creating a high quantity of ideas. Remember in brainstorming, no idea is a bad idea and half-baked ideas might lead to break-through ideas!

Now the key with this brainstorm is that you want to think, “outside of the box, but inside of the brand promise.” That is you want to list ideas that flow out of your particular promise.

For example, if you brand promise is authentic excitement you might list:

• Discover something real
• Experience something real
• No perfect people allowed
• Life so good, life so real
• Know genuine life
• Stop being bored
• Lighting up true life
• Lighting up real life
• Unreal community, real life
• True excitement
• Live actually
• Fellowship of excitement

If you don’t have a list of 100 ideas you don’t have enough ideas.

GO TO Step FOUR: Review Taglines from other Ministries and Competitors

Return to Tagline Post Overview

Tags: Awareness, Tagline, Team Brainstorm, Will Mancini

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Developing a Tagline for Your Church, Step 2: Gospel Promise

by: Will Mancini

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Step two in this process is really quite fun. You now want to determine the best promise for your church to make to people outside of the church, in a way that will resonate with people inside of the church.

An import aspect of this promise is understanding that all products and services make a promise. And most of them over-promise. For example…

• Coca Cola isn’t promising quality sugar water, it’s promising happiness
• Southwest Airlines doesn’t provide a safe, on-time plane ride, it provides freedom
• Mary Kay doesn’t sell cosmetics but offers life enrichment for women

The exciting thing for the church is that we don’t over-promise when we make bold statements about transcendent ideals like happiness, freedom and life enrichment. For the church stewards the Gospel of Jesus Christ which can really deliver on the promise!

Yet, I do recommend that you refine your promise based on two criteria that you use to filter all of the potential promises that the gospel can make:

1. Your strengths as discerned and expressed through your Vision Frame (step one)
2. The strength of your church culture as experienced by an outsider in the  first four weeks

Since we dealt with the first criteria in step one, let’s talk about the second criteria.

Usually a church reflects one of its strengths better than others as you experience the church for the first time. For example a small church might create an intimate environment where a large church may offer inspiring teaching. And then think about it a step further. Is the intimacy of a small church more about acceptance or about transformation? Is the inspiration of the large church environment geared toward challenging a next level of growth or getting started with a second chance on life?

In order to discern this first impression I look for:

• An honest assessment of the “first-touch” environment, usually, but not always, the worship service.
• A good understanding of both worship style and personality of worship leadership
• A good understanding of the primary teacher’s style, gifting and personality
• Comments made from guests and membership classes/processes

Why do we look at this initial exposure to the church? While the church hopefully fulfills all of the facets of a gospel-community, it’s opportunistic to align the face of your church through branding and marketing to the strength of your upfront experience. It creates a seamless connection for your guests! In the long run, it most likely positions the greatest strength of your culture.

To determine your promise, use the Ministry Brand Promise Palette developed by our team at Auxano Design. Do this with your team:

1. Reviewing the Vision Frame and consider the first experience of your ministry
2. Ask each leader to select two “slices” from the palette
3. Tally the responses and select the top-two “slices” giving you four words total
4. Create a hyphenated two-word promise by picking the best word from each of the top “slices”

For example your promise might be:

• Authentic-excitement
• Growth-intimacy
• Freedom-new beginning

GO TO Step THREE: Brainstorm many possible tag lines

Return to Church Tagline Post Overview

Tags: Awareness, Gospel Promise, Tagline, Will Mancini

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How to Develop a Compelling, Gospel-Centered Tagline for Your Church

by: Will Mancini

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Sometimes conversations that mix marketing and ministry don’t go well. In this post, I will not being dealing with a biblical basis of branding or marketing, but I will discuss the biblical integration with one branding tactic- the development of an effective tagline.

TAGLINE BASICS

What is a tagline?

It is short, compelling phrase that makes a promise about your ministry to people both inside and outside of your ministry. Other words people might associate with a tagline are a motto, slogan, jingle or catchphrase. Historic examples range from Wendy’s “Where’s the beef?” to Nike’s “Just Do It.”  Recent examples from the 2011 Superbowl ads include Coca Cola’s “Open Happiness” and Chrysler’s “Imported from Detroit.”

What a tagline is not.

A tagline is not your mission or vision. In almost every vision session or marketing consultation I conduct, people are confused about the difference and appreciate constant reminders with clear definitions. Mission and vision language are for your internal ministry audience only. A tagline is for both your external and internal audience, with a special emphasis on the external– people who don’t know about your ministry.

What does a tagline do?

A tagline positions your ministry based on a promise. When marketers use the word “position” they are referring to both the “position” in someone’s mind (How do people file your ministry in their brain?) and the position relative to other ministry offerings. (How does our ministry compare with others?)

Do I have to have a tagline?

No, but generally it is an opportunity that can be missed if you don’t.

How long does a tagline last?

Depending on what industry it represents, taglines can change every 1-2 years or may last generations. BWM’s tagline, “The Ultimate Driving Machine” has endured for over 40 years. I think a church should be consistent enough to stick with a good tagline for 2-5 years. The key is to stay consistently consistent while remaining fervently relevant.

HOW TO DEVELOP A TAGLINE

Here are the steps required to develop an effective tagline. Each step has a post with further information and tools.

Step #1: Revisit your vision. You will want to first clarify the identity and direction of your church. Use this tool to assess your clarity.

Step #2: Decide on a gospel-centered promise. Use another tool, developed by Auxano Design,  to decide on what gospel promise your ministry best fulfills.

Step #3: Brainstorm many possible taglines based on your promise. The key is more. Follow these steps to make your list big enough.

Step #4: Review taglines from other ministries and competitors. Make sure your voice and message are unique.

Step #5: Reduce your list to the top five taglines. Don’t make the decision to quick. Follow some simple steps over two weeks.

Step #6 : Test your tagline with people outside of your ministry. Here is a quick way to test your external audience for free.

Step #7: Make a final decision. Take the ultimate test for your decision.

Tags: Awareness, Tagline, Will Mancini

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