Brand Heart: How did we get here?
Author: Kristen Brown, Owner + Chief Creative Officer
In 2021, a long standing employee told me they didn’t fully understand where we were headed as they were reflecting on our agency's purpose. I was shocked that someone who had worked here for multiple years didn’t understand our greater purpose – our why.
This was a lightbulb moment for me. As the owner of Hoot, I understand these things about the company on an intrinsic level as they come from inside of me. I realized that just because our “why” seemed obvious to me, it didn't mean that it was.
This often happens with a business – an owner thinks the vision is clear because they are the business. It’s the identity they’ve grown – a voice with their own personality and visuals of their own taste. But without rules and guidelines, they can’t bring anyone else in to help them create and thus scale their business. They can’t create a plan for succession or selling because the brand cannot be separated from them.
Hoot has had an identity manual since 2015 when we hired our first employees. But I was concerned with this recent news that the team I was leading wasn’t sure what we stood for. It became obvious to me how vital clarifying our Brand Heart would become.
As we navigate our hardest year yet, one thing our team needs to be aligned on is what this is all for. Why we should be excited about Mondays and what it looks like to be successful here. It feels good to say that we’ve rediscovered our why and found a way for our clients to do the same.
Meet: Brand Heart
We’ve talked internally for a while about this kind of offering. How hard it is to manage brand positioning, visuals, and voice before you map out who you are. Before you get into why anyone else should care, you have to be aligned on why you care.
This is even more challenging when there are multiple owners, a large leadership group, or marital/family relations. It’s so challenging that we bring in an organizational psychologist – the same person who helped me discover my own Purpose, Vision, and Values for Hoot. Together we did the hard work to iron out our Brand Heart until it became what we share today.
So, here is our Brand Heart. I want to share it so you can see how critical it is, but also to hold me accountable when the going gets tough.
Hoot’s Brand Heart
The Brand Heart Model has four components: product, purpose, values, and vision.
Product
Purpose
Values
Vision
Product
A bite-size synopsis of what we do.
Hoot Design* Company is a creative branding agency.
*Design: A human-centered approach to creative problem solving.
Purpose
Why we do what we do, the reason we come to work every day.
Create Change.
Hoot Design Company exists to create change. Our purpose is to move culture forward through the power of brand.
The work we do is directly tied to creating an emotional response between the consumer of the brand, the employees of the brand and the company itself, thus calling them to action.
This is nothing short of magic.
This is our greatest impact on the world, when we call people to action, internally
or externally, we create change, and we move culture forward.
There are two ways we serve our purpose through the work we do.
We call consumers to action.
This work supports financially viable companies that employ people.We call employees to action.
This work supports companies that inspire and develop people to become their best selves through work.
Values
How we work. Every employee should embody these values, and every customer should feel them.
Joy / Candor / Collaboration
Joy
When we call people to action, internally or externally, we create change, and we move culture forward.
This type of magic requires emotional investment, emotional investment requires emotional literacy and emotional literacy leads to emotional maturity. When we know our emotional selves, and we are living our purpose, we tap into a soulful joy only accessible through this personal work.
Joy is different from happiness, happiness is a state of being, typically momentary, joy is a full body/full spirit response to living our purpose. When we live in joy, not every moment will be happy, but those moments define us and bring us closer to our true selves.
“When we experience joy, we don’t lose ourselves, we become more ourselves.” – Matthew Kuan Johnson
Candor
Candor is the commitment to revealing ourselves to draw us closer to those around us.
Candor is caring enough about the people and the place in which we live to lean into the discomfort of revealing ourselves.
Candor is being clear. Clear is kind.
Candor is being someone others can be candid with, and being connected enough to your own emotion to manage that feedback cycle.
Candor is personal. It’s being brave enough to turn inward and mine for truth.
“You can't give a damn about others if you don't give a damn about yourself.” – Kim Scott
Collaboration
Collaboration is easy to say and hard to do. Collaboration is the philosophy that we are stronger together than we ever could be apart. That’s true for our work-team and our client-partners.
Collaboration means we embrace curiosity, and we challenge our internal biases and preconceived notions. We are committed to listening, circling back and having hard conversations.
Collaboration means we respect the work, and we prioritize the product over the process. This often looks like stepping into the unknown together so we can experience the magic of change.
“Collaboration requires daring leadership from everyone on the team. It means having tough conversations, staying curious, and learning how to listen.” – Brené Brown
Vision
What we’re working towards. Our ultimate goal, the future that all of our work is helping to create.
To design a world in which people become their best selves through work.
Our Brand Heart is just that – ours. Every company has a reason they started and a reason they keep going. But when business gets busy, it’s easy to forget your why. Our team stands behind our Brand Heart model and how it can transform businesses and culture from the C-suite to the intern.
If you’re interested in discovering or re-discovering your why, learn more about our capabilities.
