When a Brand’s Voice Has Multiple Owners

One common problem that many large brands, especially in the public sector have, are multiple owners or protagonists for the brand. One example is franchisee owners that will open digital & social media properties and loosely interpret brand guidelines. In my case, at the time of this writing, I work as Director of Social Media for Florida International University (FIU). FIU is the fourth-largest public university in the country by enrollment. For this reason, FIU has an extensive media and marketing footprint, with many digital and social channels owned by different parties.

The Risk Of Brand Dilution

Each college has its own social media channel, website, and sometimes paid media campaigns at FIU. So, for example, someone might see an ad for an MBA program followed by an International Relations graduate degree. Internally, we know the differences, but consumers only see FIU. They do not see the College of Business or Steven J. Green School of International & Public Affairs. The situation can deepen when we find a different tone & voice from the individual departments (below colleges); we even recently had a problem where each housing building opened its own Instagram account. Colleagues at other universities face similar issues, all leading to brand dilution. When a brand is diluted, we can’t drive our vision for brand identity; thus, the audience is less likely to develop a favorable brand image. All these factors detract from building positive brand equity.

It’s okay for subbrands to have some liberties regarding messaging and tone, but it should never stray too far away from the brand positioning statement. The goal should be to complement and add to the brand, not deviate or take away from it.

Ways To Handle

You can implement several action items to wrangle all the brand owners and try to unify them as much as possible.

Implement – Policies go hand in hand with guidelines. Ensure your brand has a policy and guidelines delineating the procedures and who is authorized to speak for the brand.
Educate – Anyone speaking for the brand should clearly understand the brand guidelines, tone and voice. Offer a seminar, either live or recorded, and explain it. Make this training mandatory for anyone speaking on behalf of the brand.
Audit – Visit digital channels for your subbrands and ensure that guidelines are followed. Request corrective action when not.
Consolidate – Less is more. Consolidating efforts can boost the audience and reach of smaller players. For example, at FIU, several wellness programs had different Instagram profiles. They’ve all been merged into FIUSHW, which serves as the place for all things wellness

As much as we would like to have a perfect adoption of brand guidelines, the truth is that it is tough to execute if there is little to no oversight and no apparent consequences for misuse. Adopt an education-based approach and keep a registry of stakeholders who speak on behalf of the brand. Organization and education will go a long way to have all parties as aligned as possible. Tell me in the comments what challenges your organization faces when your brand’s voice has multiple owners.