Drive demand with a brand
By: Kris Curtis
Tags: Branding, Data Culture, Leadership, Data Strategy, Data

Building a community is hard work. It can take years to get off the ground. A combination of the right people, the right ideas and the right amount of resource spent curating it.

You need to invest time and energy for it to reach a point of self perpetuation. Where others outside of the core team (running the programme) support the initiatives which drive the philosophy forward.

It can feel lonely at times. Organising activities, projects, presentations and events only for a handful of people to participate.

Where do you draw the line at time invested and the return?

This post is about how building a brand or identity for your projects can help boost the engagement and create enthusiasm, awareness and recognition for your data culture programme.

Building a brand

I can’t make a claim that I’m a brand or marketing expert — but the power that comes along that a brand name and logo holds is everything to the customer.

It tells them the identity of the company or service. What you do and what you stand for.

DataChef logo for Tableau internal centre of excellence.

When I launched our internal Tableau centre of excellence and training programme, the first action I did was to give it an identity.

Something to grab the attention of the people who were participating.

Making them feel special and that they were part of an exclusive group.

I wanted to do this for the following reasons.

Create awareness — A name which linked Tableau and data. An identity which meant that if the word “DataChef” was mentioned in a meeting, everyone would know exactly what it was and what it meant. Community — Everyone who went through the training and became a “DataChef” was now part of the community. That by being selected for the training they then had a duty to help the community after they have completed the course. Identity — By providing certificates, laptop stickers and branded notepads all with the logo on it gave the participants a physical reminder of their achievement. They were proud of what they had completed. The stickers and notepads caught people’s attention in meetings and word of mouth spreads. Promotion — Any programme needs to be promoted in order to get maximum awareness. Using the company intranet to explain what it is and all about reinforced the message I was giving to the individuals and their line managers. It also gave me a chance to show recognition to the previous participants to help boost their confidence and engagement with their roles.

Company intranet post to over 4000 employees.

I’m not saying you need to go for a full “merchandise range” but there are some easy things mentioned above which go along way.

Start small

The logo is at the core of all branding activity. This is what grabs people’s attention and brings them closer to want to know more.

Simple steps would be using the logo on all documents. Slide decks, word documents, training material, newsletters etc. I used my Just-Data logo (below) for all documentation and presentations for our ThoughtSpot programme.

Example of using project brand logo on supporting documentation.

This gives all your communications a professional appeal. It catches peoples attention and are interested in “what is this fancy little picture all about”.

The team at ThoughtSpot and especially Cindi Howson have lots to say on data culture. Check out The Data Chief podcast to hear more from Cindi and other data leaders on these topics.