Interviewed, edited and titled by Tom Hashemi.

Our sector doesn’t really care about branding. We think that because what we do is good, that’s enough. It isn’t.

For example, if we’re going to create employment for disabled people, businesses need to be on board. You can’t always talk to a local business about the human right to employment. They care, but it’s not their responsibility.

the coBut if they’re struggling to find staff—and staff shortages are a major issue across Europe—then working with support organisations to recruit people who happen to be disabled could really help them. You have to speak to the business community in a way that they will care about, not about what they should do or ethical reasons alone. If you do that it creates distance.

That’s what a brand can do: open the door to people who think they don’t have an interest in something, but they actually do. And so their first reaction isn’t ‘what is this?’ but ‘this is interesting, what could I do?’

Policy people think they’re right and that they know what’s best. So they write and communicate in a way that convinces themselves. 

No one teaches you otherwise. At university it’s the opposite: give your opinion and defend it. No one teaches you to write an essay to convince someone who has a different starting point.

I read a criticism by a commentator that NGOs have too many lawyers, and not enough communicators. Then a lawyer in the disability community responded: rights are rights—it shouldn’t be about how you communicate them, it’s about what you’re owed as a society.

But in doing so he proved exactly the point. He sees it that way—and I understand the position and you need people like him—but not everyone does. That’s not the way you’re going to convince people. You need lawyers, but you also need people who can communicate the message and get public support behind that message.

I often say: ‘Don’t write to convince yourself: think about who you’re speaking to, and how best to convince them.’ The response I tend to get is: ‘By doing that, you’re working with the system, and being co-opted by it.’ 

Some feel their role is to express a policy message, full stop. I think that’s a poor choice. It’s not ambitious enough. You can be both true to yourself and focus on the needs of the people you are trying to convince. It’s through impact on policy that you honour your own values. If not, why are you doing the job? It’s borderline occupational therapy.

Sometimes policymakers want that: it’s easier for them if an organisation just recites the Communist Manifesto—I’m exaggerating, slightly—and much harder to deal with an organisation that says: ‘here are the consequences of this decision for the people we support, and understanding the context you work within, here’s what I’d suggest you do differently.’

I just had a feeling that our brand identity was not as good as who we were as an organisation. We did really good policy papers and projects, we were taken seriously, but none of that came from a structured brand. It was by chance, not by purpose. Changing the brand was a way to honour the organisation.

Look at Inclusion Europe. Take their name off anything they write, and I still know immediately who it is, because every sentence is purposeful. When I was convincing my colleagues why we needed to do this, I showed them our own texts, all written as if by different organisations, then three pieces by Inclusion Europe. Everyone knew who it was.

Or the Red Cross. Their principles give them legitimacy, but staff are trained on them too: this is what it means to work here. One of their principles—neutrality—isn’t always easy when you’re dealing with people who kill people, but it is precisely that principle that allows them to reach people in places no-one else can go. That’s the brand reinforcing the mission from the inside.

We did a new logo five or six years ago. Did we look better? Yes. Did we have more impact? I don’t think so. It didn’t solve our core problems: memorability—especially for new audiences—and coherence. People liked us and knew we did good work, but I’m not sure they knew what we stood for and what our priorities were.

New people just thought: what is this? And it took ten minutes for them to start to understand, ten minutes that could have been better spent.

At the start of the brand strategy we did with you—Cast from Clay—I asked our managers what our mission was. I got six answers, including mine. That’s not anyone’s fault, it’s a system failure. If brand is how people talk about you when you’re not in the room, they’d think we were six different organisations.

What works about our brand now is its clarity and purposefulness. It’s genuine. It really is who we are. Our tagline, ‘Everyday, built for everyone’, says in four words what we’re trying to achieve, not just us but all our members together. I haven’t met anyone who doesn’t recognise themselves in it.

That includes policymakers. In her opening remarks at the brand launch a couple of weeks ago, the European Commissioner for Equality, Hadja Lahbib, directly used the language from our mission—‘building the architecture of inclusion’—which clearly shows that it’s memorable for people like her as well.

→ If you have that feeling that Thomas described earlier, that your brand is not as good as who you are as an organisation, this is what we are like to work with.

Yes, we’re a policy organisation working on the architecture of inclusion. But for people to understand what that means, they need to see what our members do every day to support people.

So the best way to launch our brand was to take people out to see the work on the ground and make that tagline tangible. Our brand is a door that opens up that conversation of ‘everyday, built for everyone’.

Thank you to the 150 of you who have referred colleagues to this newsletter. The views expressed in Policy Unstuck interviews are those of the interviewee, and do not necessarily represent Cast from Clay’s view. You can read our editorial guidelines for more information on the goals, process, and formatting of this series.