Your association’s brand is far more than a logo or color palette. It’s an experience your members have with your association; it’s how they feel after interacting with you and essentially the adjectives they’d use to describe the association to others.

Those of us who work in the branding, marketing, and communications fields are often frustrated when brand and logo are singularly equated. But are we our own worst enemy? What else are our teams and colleagues to think when the information we give them tends to solely focus on visual style?

The traditional style guide—meant to ensure no funhouse mirror effects are applied to our logos and that no stray typeface enters our collateral—may in fact reinforce the fallacy we try so hard to negate.

The National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO) recently moved from a style guide to a brand book. While you can find numerous articles debating the semantics of this terminology, I see the style guide focusing on visual identity, whereas the brand book is a step back (or a step up) to look at the brand holistically. Maybe it was just the jolt I needed, but the brand book lens gave me the perspective to capture and share the je ne sais quoi that makes NASCIO, well, NASCIO.

While the style guide often feels like constrictive rules, the brand book creates common understanding.

Brand Book Components

Early in the brand book, we outline who we are and why we exist. This addresses more than just our mission and vision. It goes a step further to tease out the culture of the association. Our answer is:

• State CIOs have tough jobs. Our job is to support them.
• NASCIO is a respite from the pressures of the job. State CIOs come here for support, advice, knowledge and camaraderie.
• We build relationships and create experiences that make members feel supported, appreciated, and respected.

The brand book also addresses our personality and the experience we strive to create. Rather than just listing those as adjectives though, we paint a picture:

Personality. We’d be the one in school welcoming the new kid to our lunch table and sharing our chemistry notes.

Experience. Events have a buzz of excitement; gatherings feel like a reunion; service feels like that of a five-star concierge.

Knowing the core of who we are makes other decisions very easy. For instance, defining our visual style acknowledges what we’re all about:

• The life of a state CIO, and all NASCIO members, is one of constant demands, emails, meetings, reports ...
• NASCIO is a pause in the chaos. We are a break—visually and from demands. We are free of clutter, we are direct, we are simple. We are solution- and needs-focused.
• Our use of images and color should be purposeful and never compete with the content.
• Whitespace can go a long way, but we don’t look sterile.

The descriptor allows anyone who works on materials for NASCIO to understand not only the visual style but also the why. While the style guide often feels like constrictive rules, the brand book creates common understanding.

The NASCIO brand book does include the usual suspects of colors, typography, and preferred imagery, as well as voice, tone, and editorial guidance. The main shift is incorporating the thought process behind the guidelines, focusing on the experience we want to create, and writing the guidelines in the same voice of the association.

Benefits of the Brand Book

The brand book gets the whole team on the same page. Since it doesn’t just focus on visuals, those outside the marketing department can more easily see how their work reinforces the brand.

One of my favorite stories about a brand-informed decision at NASCIO is one that has nothing to do with visual identity. In moving to self-service check-in kiosks at our conferences, we worried the experience would feel “big box” and impersonal. With the knowledge of our brand and the personalized experience we wanted to create, we made the simple but strategic decision to turn the badge printers around. Attendees can utilize the kiosk for the ease of check-in, but our staff is behind the counter, so they see the name badge as it prints, tear it off, and welcome the guest by name.

The basic style guide we were using before would not have empowered the team to make that decision. The brand book has shifted our mindset and refocused our attention on the brand, not just the logo.