You’re listening to the Marketing Attractions podcast. Conversations on how nonprofit attractions
are increasing attendance and sharing their missions through marketing. Your hosts are
Ryan Dick and Jenny Williams of Attend Media.
Jenny, today’s topic is four steps for rebranding a nonprofit attraction. And we’re going
to bring in a guest on this one. Nancy McDonnell Ruder. She is the CEO and founder of
Noetic Consultants. They’re based out of DC and they’ve been in the game for the last
22 years.
Yeah, excited to talk to Nancy and they just recently went through a kind of brand refresh
with a large zoo. So we’re going to talk to her about that process that she took the
zoo through. And you know, I think some of the interesting things that you know, speaking
from someone on more of the executions side, right? So after this brand refresh has been
done is like, now what? How do we get it in market? We’re often given kind of some basic
information. You know, every client is going to provide us a budget. They’re going to
provide us a target audience. They’re going to provide us to be some, you know, some research
that’s been done, uh, fighting information, right? Like basic stuff that you get in a
brief. But I think what we miss a lot is who are you as a brand? What do you know? What
do you trying to represent? How do we bring this into our media mix? Because it does
actually impact our channel selection. It impacts what we’re trying to line with. How are
we trying to be really effective with our audience? Not just efficient. So I think those
are some of the things we’ll talk about, right? How to, how to best download all of your
partners and how to ensure you don’t have everybody just going off in their own way, right?
Creative is not going off on one, one, one route media is not going off on one route. You
know, other partners aren’t going off on their own. Um, so that you’ve got strategy that’s
really kind of crossing all channels, all partners. Um, I think it kind of a good example
that comes in mind here is, uh, in the media world, we get really frustrated when budgets
are small, but all of a sudden we have a TV spot that’s been created. So how do we avoid
getting to that point when you’ve done all of this work on this brain refresh and now
you’re in the execution phase, um, and ensuring that all your partners are, are downloaded
properly. All right, let’s get into it. All right, Nancie, welcome to the show. Thank
you. So delighted to be here. All right. So once you tell everybody a little bit about
what you guys do for nonprofit attractions. Yes, happy to. Uh, so we’re a marketing consultancy,
our primary services are around market research, branding, training and coaching. Uh, we are
not totally industry specific, but attractions are very much an area of passion and expertise
for us. And, um, one of the things I do want to mention to your listeners is that if people
are thinking about their brand, their, their brand is an attraction, um, we have a very
useful tool to help you really look at and diagnose the strength of your brand. Um, it’s called
the brand health diagnostic. It’s available on our website, know@consultants.com. I know you’ll
put it in the show notes as well. It only takes a few minutes to go through it. Um, but
it often does provide some really good insight if you’re an attraction that’s thinking about
the strength of your brand and how you’re showing up in the market. Uh, very cool. Thanks
for sharing that. Um, now I know you guys recently’ve done some work with a fairly large zoo.
Um, I was kind of hoping we can have this conversation with that, that lens in mind. Walk us through
like why a zoo, a garden, a museum, an aquarium would engage with somebody like you guys,
like when does an attraction know that we might need a refresh or even like a total rebrand?
Yeah. Yeah. It’s a great, it’s a great question like how, how do you know? How do you know
when it’s, when it’s needed? If you were even just thinking, you know, writ large like attractions
and every other company out there, um, there are just times when you really need to refresh
who you are. Um, and there’s times you need to transform who you are. But particular
to the attraction space and knowing that we’re talking about like very place based at the
end of the day, it’s really about an experience. So some of the things that you may see as, um,
being problematic and would help you know that your brand needs work. Um, first and foremost,
how are what will call your brand assets? So how consistent is the look and feel of your
logo, your signage, your website, your social, all the different ways you promote yourselves?
Has it sprawled into a bunch of different kinds of looks and feels, um, which can happen
when brand hasn’t had attention in a while? So that can be a very strong indicator. The
particular, um, large zoo that you were referring to, that was one of their big pain points
when we went into the brand work with them. Um, you also may have acquired some other
entities and you may lack cohesion. That was also an issue for the zoo that you were speaking
of on your audience may have changed, you know, maybe they’re aging up or aging down. Their
preferences have changed. What they expect. Maybe you lack modernization like you just look
a little older and you really need a shot of modernizing in there. Um, and you may see signs
like your membership is struggling, um, competition may have grown up around you. And I do
want to mention on the point of competition that competition really is anything where
people are spending their leisure time, right? Or their travel time if they’re coming into
your, your city. So if competition has changed, that may also be a trigger. So it may be any
combination of those things or it may just be one of those things that helps you know that
your brand needs some TLC. Yeah. I like what you said there. Uh, we had a guest on gosh,
one of our first early episodes and he said, people can do literally anything else besides
comb to your attraction. Yeah. And if you got to look at that lens like yeah, your competition
is the movies, it’s Netflix, it’s going to the park, it’s doing anything besides spending
money to walk through your gates. That’s exactly right. That’s exactly right. And whether
they’re coming to your city or they’re in your city, that’s true. So okay, we’re going to
go through this process with you guys over at, over at no edit consultants and I’m thinking
this is going to take like two hours, right? Yeah. That’s funny. No, it’s a little bit longer
than that. Right. And it will depend how long it takes, you know, I would speak to that
in terms of ranges. It depends on whether or not you’re doing like refinement, like a
refresh or you’re really needing to transform. So if you’re doing something that’s more around
refinement, you know, there are steps that you still need to take to do it well and do it
right. So I would say like three to six months is what you’re looking at. If it’s something
more dramatic than that, you’re looking at six months plus. You may be looking at a year.
It was about a year with the large zoo that we worked with recently and that was a pretty
significant lift for the brand. And I know we’re going to kind of break down your process
in just a minute, but you know, kind of just thinking about that beginning, who should
be in that room? Who should have a voice in this type of conversation? Is it everybody?
Is it just two people? What does that look like? Yeah, I really appreciate that question.
I think this is an area that doesn’t necessarily get thought through from the get go. Oftentimes
the marketing folks are the ones who are spearheading and you know, the thought is okay, we just
need a work in team here. The truth is, is that brand needs to be a team sport, meaning ultimately
what you do to reimagine or refresh that brand needs to live and breathe inside the bodies
of all the people that are part of your organization. If you think about a fantastic experience
that you’ve ever had, perhaps, you know, with a really strong brand, perhaps it was going to
a Ritz Carlton or perhaps it was going to an Apple store, you know, where you really felt
like a part of things. That is because there’s so much effort going into helping everybody
embody who the brand is. So at a practical level, you do need a working team. We strongly
encourage that to be cross functional so that you’re getting alignment and buy in and
good fodder from key stakeholders. You need to be super thoughtful about how you’re involving
your board. You need to involve your donors. You need to involve your members. So you really
need to take it broad and then ultimately when you’re taking it down to what is that expression
going to be, that’s what you’re going to take back to that working team.
Okay, so Nancy, I’m, you know, in the leadership team at a large zoo, I’m like, we need a total
brand refresh here. We’re in the transformation phase, right? We know we’ve got that six to
12 month timeline to really kind of redo everything. We’re a little all dated, whatever
it is, right? So you’ve really got this four step process that you take brands through.
Why don’t you walk us through each one of those? Let’s start with your first step, really
what you’re calling this kind of North Star element. Yes, sure. So we refer to this as a brand
building framework. So for your listeners, picture a wheel that starts in a space that we
call defining the North Star. So the defining the North Star is really looking at the organizational
elements that really make the organization tick. So things like your core values, your strategic
plan, your purpose, your vision, your mission, these are aspects that really need to be squared
away before you embark on making any kind of changes to the brand because they are your
foundation. And oftentimes the work needs to start there if those aspects again are out
of date or non-existent or there are words on a page, but they’re not being really lived.
And so that’s the first stage. The second stage is with that squared way, you really do need
to get into the aspects of defining or redefining the brand. And a really key part of this is doing
research. And I say that knowing full well that, you know, there’s an awful lot of attractions
out there that do not have a lot of dollars to invest in research, but there are many
scrappy ways you can do research that don’t require a lot of hard cost, but require just,
you know, people’s time, investment. And I strongly encourage listeners to not skip that
step. So this is where you are gaining information via research about how do people regard
you today? What do they value about you? What do they wish about you so that you’re not
creating or recreating how you’re speaking about yourself as brand without having that as
your basis? You’re not making it up. But instead, you’re basing it off of research. And ideally,
that would be a combination of qualitative and quantitative research. So, you know, small
sample qualitative where you’re more high touch, quantitative where you’re serving. But
again, if you’re in that more like DIY space, you know, you have to be scrappy about how
you’re getting it done, but there are some very clever ways you can get it done without
spending a lot of money. And then that becomes the aspect that helps you in this second stage,
which we call define the brand. So you’re going to be defining some people use the term brand
positioning or unique value propositions are really getting to that. What I’ll just call
the core promise of who you are for and what you will deliver and the reasons that people
can believe it to be true. So I’m using, you know, brand positioning, brand promise interchangeably
there. That then brings us to the third component, which is personally my favorite, which we
call bringing it to life. And the reason that it’s my favorite is because this is the really
juicy place where you take those really good words and that really good learning that
you’ve codified and you get it mobilized internal to the organization and external to the organization.
Now at Noetic, we help with the internal work. So we’re helping activate throughout the
organization. And we have various mechanisms to do that so that you can have that experience
like you would when you walk into that Ritz Carlton or like when you walk into that Apple
store where everyone is knowing it and embodying it so that the people who are experiencing
you can feel it. But then there is this whole world of the external expression. And this
is where we would have all the different promotional elements, the refresh of the brand assets,
the media and channel selection. And I think, you know, the two of you know this space very
well because this is more the space that you’re in. So that’s the third stage.
Yeah, I think that’s a really good thing to call out, right? So on our end, especially on
the paid media side, you know, it tends to be, hey, here’s your brief. It’s a target audience.
It’s some flight dates and a budget, right? We always get that basic information. But if
you’ve just gone through this huge, you know, year-long process or you know, this is a stage
within that year-long process, right? We want to know is that media partner, a Phil
jealous at the creative partners always get this information, but we don’t always get it
on the media side of, you know, what is this entire process that you just went through
for this rebrand or refresh, right? So understanding who you are as a brand who you’re trying
to be helps us with this media placements because it’s not just spots and dots, right?
It’s about ensuring that we have the right contextual alignments that are going to, you
know, resonate with an audience, not just what’s the cheapest place that we can run media.
It’s absolutely effective and efficient, right?
Absolutely. And that’s why the bringing into life is such a juicy part of the process because
you really do need to align that internal and external. And I, you know, I grew up in
advertising and I was always taught that like the creative and the media have to come together
in the best mix to get your customers of whatever kind in the right spaces and at the right
times. And so in order for that to really come together, that channel selection needs to
be as thoughtful as the creative itself and as the brand words and meaning that are going
into that. So all of those things have to come together.
Yeah. And they’re, I think when we think of that creative and media, they’re oftentimes
working in tandem of each other, but they have to ensure that they’re not working in silos,
right? So how’s that strategy coming together to ensure that someone’s not just going
off and creating this beautiful TV spot when the media plan is going to say, you know, the
media strategy is going to say, that’s just not an effective way to reach this audience,
right? Maybe instead of a full 30 second, we need a series of short form video that can
tell the same story, but we cannot execute all of this in a social channel or a digital
channel, right? So, yeah, it’s something that we’re big on. We want to make sure that everyone’s
working together to deliver the not only the best creative, but the best plan to support
this brand mission, really, that’s been developed, not just a, you know, a beautiful spot, right?
Which is so great, but it’s got to tell more than that. Yeah. And, you know, that, that idea
of the partners coming together, they’re again, this is why stage three is so juicy because
that doesn’t just happen by happenstance. I mean, if you think about it, you probably have
various partners helping you with your own attraction. And, and you as, you know, that head of marketing
within the attraction itself are probably that coordinator and that traffic, traffic
cop across. And really, the best thing you can do is ensure that all those partners are
going to play really nicely and really closely together. The more you can integrate the
partners themselves and that may sound awkward, but just do it because it’s going to serve
the brand the best. And any partner who is worthwhile is going to understand that and
value that and play really nicely with everyone else because you need such a thoughtful hand
off in that space. I have seen client struggle with the hand off when they have had partners
that are working in a more disparate way. So the people coming together across the entities
is really critical as well. And how are you helping clients do this part, right? Is there
maybe situations where you’re involved in this hand off and working with all the partners
and other situations where maybe you’re a little bit more hands off and just set the
client up to do this? Where, how does that process differ for you? Yeah. We try to stay alongside
and as close as clients will be open to our doing. And so we start talking about these aspects
way at the beginning so that we’re asking those questions and really getting clients to
think about it. I think the gravitational pull for marketers inside organizations and
attractions perhaps especially is to think more about like I have to stand up this brand,
but not spending as much time thinking about like what do I do with it once I get it stood
up. And so we ask these questions really early on like how are you thinking about the actuation
side of things? Do you have partners already? How much of that do you envision handling yourselves?
How much of that do you think you’re going to do you need help finding partners? So we ask
those questions right up front. And I do want to mention I can never like leave a loop untied
that I didn’t touch on the fourth aspect of the brand building process which is optimizing
and measuring over time. And so as you’re doing that bring to life you also need to be thinking
through like how are we going to make sure that we are making the impact that we are seeking.
And there again it is the internal and the external. So you need to have measurement that
is going to really look at how is this whole thing coming together. So not just measuring
for example campaign effectiveness but also measuring employee engagement, employee understanding
and buy into the brand and its meaning. So having really thoughtful metrics so you know what
you need to be pressing into because it’s never set it in forget it. Organizations that
stand up the brand or refresh the brand shouldn’t look at it as a project it’s something that
always needs care which is why we show it in a wheel because it like spins back around
and you know you always need to be caring for the various aspects.
You’re listening to the Marketing Attractions podcast conversations on how nonprofit attractions
are increasing attendance and sharing their mission through marketing. Your hosts are
Ryan Dick and Jenny Williams of attend media. Attend media is a media planning and buying
agency specializing in zoos, aquariums, gardens and museums. For more information please
visit attend.media. Now back to Ryan and Jenny.
Alright Nancy so you just walk through those four steps of rebranding or refreshing an
attraction. Let me just recap those. So number one is finding that North Star right defining
or redefining that mission that vision that purpose. Number two what you’re calling brand
distinction and you’re saying that really begins with research whether that’s done just
internally with the institution or they’re tapping the services of somebody like like
y’all. Number three bringing that all to life and then number four measurement right
we love measurement. Let’s go back to that number two that brand distinction. You know this
is looking at guest surveys, community surveys, maybe doing internal work with CEO stakeholders
board members is that right? Yes yes. So we do recommend again don’t skip it. So whether
you’re hiring someone outside to help you or not we typically like to look at it as internal
into external meaning we would start with stakeholder interviews so stakeholder interviews
would be one-on-one discussions that you would have with people across functions who are
in a fairly senior position with a questionnaire and you might have board members in that you’re
likely to have some donors in that you’re going to have some people sitting in you know
senior levels in functions then you’re going to work your way into the external and that’s
where you would get into things like member surveying donor surveying you may choose to
do something that you stand up in social or you may decide to do it you can even intercept
people at your attraction and do short surveying on the fly in in that way. I’ll give you a
tangible example from this zoo that we have just concluded this work with so we started
with internal stakeholder interviews there worked our way into the guest surveying and
we also did a good deal of what I’ll just call desktop research so getting online and really
understanding the competitive landscape and how people were spending their time and what
options were available to them and and then we visually mapped that and the combination
of all of that of talking to people internally externally and then doing this desktop research
was really what enabled us to bubble up their positioning and I’ll just share briefly
that it really comes down to what people value so much about them is this very thoughtful
combination of it being an educational place and being an entertaining place so what we
could call edutainment is a way of like pulling that together and that became the basis for
the positioning itself and became really key to all the focus of all the ways in which that
external promotion is now happening in in the refresh of the brand and also how they are
approaching everything that one experiences with the attraction and that’s why I say don’t
skip it because the research is really what helps you uncover what is the gem that you are
it’s not about recreating something new that you’re not and wish you would be but it’s really
through the eyes of the people who know you inside and outside.
So kind of taking some of that research a step further so you’ve got kind of step to
with your researches and step to but then you’ve got research obviously coming back in
or you know surveying ongoing survey coming in in your measurement piece and I think you
know when you say the words scrappy my mind goes to what most cultural attractions are doing
when it comes to research which is guest surveys right but talk to us about how maybe that
guest survey might differ from that upfront kind of face to research versus like an ongoing
survey like what am I asking them like just say would you think about your visit what kind
of questions might be different between that. Yeah I’m thinking survey was like oh were
the trash cans clean and how long did you wait and why right what is a deeper level that
you guys are going. Right right I think you can think about it one way to think about
it is caring for the here and now in most recent visit and then caring for the longer term
and how I feel about the organization overall and so the best surveys to your question Jenny
are caring for both and then you would pulse that over time to see where are the changes.
So having questions about you know when was your most recent visit what did you appreciate
most was there anything you’d want to change and if so what right all of that is absolutely
well worth the learning but then also adding in things like perhaps on a scale you know
how how warmly do you regard this fill in the blank you know this zoo. How do you feel about
recommending it as a place to visit to others. If you had a choice between this and other
places you could spend your time where would this fall in your list of priorities right these
are more what I would call brand questions they get it things like affinity and loyalty
and when you look at things like that those things aren’t going to change quickly those things
are going to change more over time and so you want to keep those questions in the mix so
you can look over time to see are we going up are we going down are we staying the same
I’ll give you a quick just one of the most fascinating examples in my career honestly back
in time when Samsung was able to compete really for the first time with Apple in mobile
phone devices their brand metrics showed that people had very high awareness of them but
very low affinity in other words everybody knew Samsung but nobody really cared for it so
that was key to their figuring out okay how is a brand do we make ourselves relevant and
meaningful to the people that we are seeking to do so with so there are more long term measures
and having those questions in the mix anytime you’re surveying and you can do the both in
one survey it doesn’t have to be separate.
Alright Nancy so I’m a zoo I’m a garden I’m thinking about going through this process it’s
been a few years my assets my creative assets are all over the place I’m going to engage
you’re a mess you just I’m a big old mess how did you know I’m going to engage within
some outside help to walk me through help walk the organization through this brand refresh
this total rebrand wherever we land on with this what should I do and I’m I’m thinking
if it’s a nonprofit attraction there’s going to be an RFP.
Yes and in fact most attractions have to RFP so you know let’s just assume that’s the
world so I I have some very strong opinions in this space that I hope will actually
help make the process easier for the people who who need to do this because the RFP process
it’s just a bear it’s a lot to manage and ultimately doing it in a certain kind of way
can help you get to a great partner but when it becomes too complex it can help you actually
partner with someone that you barely know so that’s what we want to avoid so my first
bit of guidance is really keep those potential partners close don’t invite so many I would
say three is ideal five is max don’t invite so many that you can’t actually really get
to know them so that’s first and foremost because the more you have the more you’re going
to worry about leveling the playing field the more you’re going to have them in a distance
won’t serve you well in terms of picking a partner secondly in the in the written RFP
request try to keep it simple ideally don’t have it go on for pages and pages and hand
it off to at least one if not a handful of people and have them read it and tell you what
they think it says it’s really hard to write a clear RFP and the best way to know how clear
it is is to hand it to somebody who doesn’t know you yet and ask this person what do you
think this says and then hone it from there also within the RFP I highly recommend that
you don’t prescribe the path so like if you think that you need to start with those organizational
elements like say what you need but don’t tell the potential partner how to do it why
do I say that because different potential partners are going to have different approaches
and by seeing their approach in what they submit to you you’re going to see their way of thinking
and you’re going to see how much do they how closely do they partner how much do they
work on alignment how do they involve the board or do they how do they do the research
and so let them be themselves so that you can find the best match for you. Lastly I think
that it’s really important to have a way of bringing in objectivity so we highly recommend
that you have a rubric it doesn’t have to be anything fancy but just have a set of criteria
that you’re going to grade against while also giving people an opportunity to make their
color commentary but having that criteria agreed can help you get away from just that purely
subjective like well I just really liked those people like they were just really nice to talk
to right you need to be looking that is an important aspect but you also need to be looking
at things like you know did they listen well did they hit all the different aspects where
they within our budget range etc.
Yeah is that because there’s like multiple people making the decision right yes yes it’s
both it’s because there’s going to be multiple people weighing in inevitably you may have people
also who have brought in a partner that they worked with in past so people are going to
have their their biases but then also it’s helping you just care for that objectivity
around what do we really need in a partner what are those key aspects so have that conversation
and set the rubric before you’re looking at submissions.
Yeah I love what you said don’t invite so many that you can’t get to know them I mean that’s
so important and sometimes to a client it might come and feel like there’s so many involved
I might I as the respondent might not want to be involved in this it could come across
almost like you know well if my my chances aren’t high then I’m not going to even participate
but what it really is is as the respondent you want to get to know the client the client
needs to get to know everyone who’s responding to this RFP right so that’s I love how you
put it there that’s that’s just so important for for both parties to be able to get to know
each other.
You’re actually making me think of one other tip which is you put an RFP out and you’re
finding that those that you invited are not accepting the invitation or if you just
you know put it out in a public way and you’re getting very few you know response back
and hand raising that people want to participate there’s probably something wrong with that
RFP maybe you’re asking for the moon and you only have five dollars maybe your RFP was
20 pages long I mean I’m being dramatic right but organizations worth their weight are
being discerning about where they spend the time it’s a lot of time and resources to bid
and so if there’s something about it that just doesn’t add up they may respectfully decline
if that happens to you if you’re not getting the response you think reach out to those
partners who have respectfully declined and ask them why they’ll tell you and then you
can fix it.
Okay Nancy so I’ve gone to the RFP process I’ve selected somebody like you or me I’ve
gone through this three six twelve month long process like tell me
you know you guys are running off into the sunset you know what do I get and how do I like
maximize the time effort and financial investment that my institution is made in a part of
like yours like what is the end game look like.
Yeah and this is where standing up the measurement is so important because it’s so foundational
to so many different aspects of the organization so what you should be getting is the ability
for people to consider you the people that you are trying to attract are actually attracted
and that when they come they are delighted and want to come again so you should see all
the boats rise you should be seeing people coming and having you should see in those surveys
and uptick in so many of your measures and it should be both in those longer term measures
that we talked about a few minutes ago as well as in my most recent visit because you have
that refresh sense and there is an excitement around that and that’s being delivered by the
people who are delivering the actual experience so it should be striking positive impact in
every aspect of the organization.
I know that sounds really big but it is not big.
Nancy thank you so much for your time was a great to have you here how can people get in touch
with you.
Yeah I would love to hear from your listeners so LinkedIn is great place to get me Nancy
McDonald router or you can go to our page which is know at a consultants our site is know
at a consultants.com and that brand health diagnostic assessment that I mentioned that can help
you know you know whether or not your brand does need strengthening is on the site
and I know you’ll also put that in the show notes that can be a great place to start if you
think that you might have some challenges that you want to strengthen around your brand
it just really makes you have a think about what are those aspects that that may be a question
and I’d love to hear from your folks.
Nancy awesome thanks again.
Thanks so much.
Thank you for listening to the Marketing Attractions podcast.
If you have a suggestion for a topic or would like to be a guest on the show please visit our
website at MarketingAttractionsPodcast.com.
