Part 3: The Brand

Part 3 – The Brand

So far we have discussed in Part 1 how we made the decision to change our church’s name and in Part 2, the process of choosing a new name. Now, from a communications perspective, I will share about the brand.

I was hired at the Church of Pembroke Pines (our former name) in March 2006 and had no idea what branding was all about. I had just graduated college with a major in journalism, but I quickly found that my education didn’t prepare me for all that I would face in my first “professional” job.

Before I was hired, the church had just changed logos to get by while they changed the name from “Church of Pembroke Pines” to “Church of Pembroke Pines & Hollywood Downtown”. Basically they took two logos and created one to reflect the “new name”. They were pretty bad (see below) and really said nothing about who we were as a church. It was then that I really sought out to learn more about what branding is and why organizations do it.

What is Branding?

During this transition time in our church I looked to some communications professionals who have been there, done that. One of those people is Kem Meyer, communications director at Granger Community Church in Granger, IN. Her blog is indispensable to me. I’ve never met her in person but she’s definitely up there on my “cool and amazing people to meet” list. Ok, there’s no such list, but if there were, she’d be at the top! Here’s a great definition of a brand from Kem:

What is your church brand? A brand is not what you think you are. It’s what others think of the experience you offer, not your logo or tag lines. Good brands are built through an authentic and consistent experience…it doesn’t contradict itself. Is everything linked to your brand a good, consistent experience?

Take for instance, McDonald’s: when I see the golden arches, my brain immediately thinks, “Yes, I want fries with that!” You remember the experience you have had with that particular brand. You can apply this to almost any brand: Starbucks, Southwest Airlines, Apple, Google and more. If I had a horrible dining experience at, say, Chili’s, wouldn’t I tell my friends about it in an effort to deter them from having the same experience? Lifewise, if I had a great flight with Southwest, I would tell all of my friends to start flying with them. Your brand has everything to do with the outside world and very little to do with you.

Who is your audience?

One of the most important things I learned about brands is that it’s not about a logo or a tag line or a website. None of that matters if it doesn’t reflect and appeal to your audience. It has to fit your demographics. The key is to really research your surrounding area. Here are some questions Kem suggested asking when researching your demographics:

1. Why would people want to spend their time and attention on your church?
2. Is it relevant to their life?
3. What makes it worth the hassle?
4. What is their comfort zone?
5. What do they do with their free time?
6. What do they hate?
7. What do they wear?

We attempted to ask these questions. We observed the people that enter the doors of our church every week. As a team, we threw around the idea of possibly hiring an outside branding company to come in and help us; to be “fresh eyes”. Later we decided that a company from the outside wouldn’t know our style and culture as well as we would. Obviously this doesn’t apply to everyone. I know several churches that have used outside companies and have been very successful. For us it wouldn’t have worked. There is no place like south Florida. Being a native south Floridian myself, I found it fairly easy to define our audience. Here’s a sampling of our audience (side note: this is stereotypical and does not apply to all people in our area. However, we have found that it fits the majority of our audience):

• Primarily unchurched. The majority of south Florida is unchurched, meaning they don’t normally attend church unless it’s a major holiday like Christmas.
• Multi-ethnic. South Florida is a “multicultural mosaic” (according to Wikipedia.com) of ethnicities and cultures! Our church alone has more than 70 countries represented. This is a very important aspect of our church; for every country represented, we hang its flag in our auditorium.
• Casual dressers. Most people wear sandals, shorts, jeans and t-shirts. Not many suits and ties around here! It’s hot and humid most of the year.
• Transient lifestyle. People are constantly moving in and out of the area. We have lots of Snow Birds.
• Language barrier. We knew we needed a Spanish service as one of the most common languages in south Florida is Spanish. Many immigrants and the generations preceding them still speak Spanish as their first language.
• Laid back attitudes. We have a large population of Islanders. If you’ve ever been to Jamaica you know that one of their mottos is “No problem, Mon!”
• Hard workers. The cost of living is extremely high. Most people need more than one job to survive. According to Immigration Statistics, “Miami, at 60% Immigrant, has the largest percentage of immigrants of any city in the world…” People move here for the American dream and are willing to work very hard to get it.
• Always on-the-go. With several jobs, family activities and other obligations, many people don’t have time for church. This is why we created 7 Nights of Worship (7NOW). We are the only church we know of that offers a church service 7 days a week, 365 days a year, every night at 7 p.m. This is in addition to our five Sunday morning services at three different campuses.
• Broken homes. This is a trend all over the U.S., but south Florida has many interesting home arrangements. In some homes, there may be up to two or more families sharing one house! This also includes divorced families, single parents, widows, etc.

Applying the Brand 

Once we discovered who our audience is and what kind of experience we wanted to give the outside world, we knew the name Oasis and tag line of “Refreshing” would fit the needs of our community. It doesn’t hurt that we live in Florida; what many consider to be an “Oasis”…a place to come and be “Refreshed”! 

We then began the work of making a logo to fit that theme. We used a graphic designer who happens to be Kevin McCord’s brother-in-law, Mark Brewer. He has been to our church and knows a lot of our background, plus we trusted his judgment and design work. He gave us the initial logo of a tear drop (see below). Most of our team liked the idea but weren’t crazy about the colors.

We got some more ideas from the same graphic designer and others but we still weren’t satisfied with them. Our team kept going back to the drop. We liked that it was iconic and was simple. We felt like it described as Oasis without being too obvious. We started playing with more colors and landed on these (see below).

From these we ultimately chose these colors (see below). We even went so far as to name the colors, and with some research, defined what they mean to us. To further define our brand, our Communications team created a Style Guide (free download: oasis_style_guide.pdf). It is not heavily enforced but it is there to help our staff when they need it.

As a team we felt that our branding should have some pecking order: first the name, then the logo, tag line and finally the website. Everything we print has our logo on it to reinforce our brand. We constantly put it out there. I should say, however, that we aren’t “brand nazi’s”. We have a couple of ministries that don’t use our logo…in fact they have their own logos and have chosen to brand themselves. Here’s an example of a ministry’s logo that works well with our brand:

Our Children’s ministry logo:

Stick around as I will share next week in Part 4: The Announcement about how we shared our new name and look with our church family.