My friend’s organization is working with a branding studio to think about how they appear to people who don’t know them well.

This is sometimes called ‘rebranding.’

What is almost always done in practice is actually better referred to as re-logo-ing.

A brand is not a logo. A brand is a promise, a story and a shorthand. A brand tells us what to expect the next time we engage with you.

Being named Fred is not a brand. Fred is your name, not your promise. If you’re an unreliable, selfish hustler, that’s your brand.

Begin with this: Your name doesn’t have to say what you do. Starbucks, Nike, Western Union, Maya Angelou, The Grateful Dead… these are fine names, but they are not descriptive. They earned a secondary meaning–the brand stands for something, because the work stands for something, and so the name is associated with that.

If your brand isn’t doing everything you hope, it might be because your organization isn’t doing the work that the brand could or should or might promise it does.

Clarity matters: Being specific and consistent and clear in what you do and what you stand for is challenging work, but worth it. It requires less compromise and a willingness to walk away from all the soft edges that the committee might be insisting on.

We know what the Bat Signal means. We know who’s going to show up, what he’s going to be wearing and what will happen next.

Understanding vs. action: Is it possible to be more clear in your name and public statements so that it’s really obvious what you do, so that more people would understand? Of course. We could change Louis Vuitton to “Really expensive bags for socially insecure people,” but I’m not sure it would increase sales.

Given that your project isn’t for everyone, the goal isn’t for everyone to understand it. The goal is for people who might take action to understand it enough that they will take action. Every great brand that I know of has as the unspoken next line in their brief: “This might not be for you.”

What will I tell my friends? It’s not easy for me to talk about the work of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi simply because I didn’t grow up knowing how to say his name. But it’s not simply the spoken logo that matters. When I tell the others about what you do, do I feel smart or stupid? Can you establish the conditions where sharing your core ideas and mission is tempting, generous and affirming for the people you need to have talk about it? If your name or logo get in the way of that, please change it.

Who is this for? What do they believe, what do they wish for and treasure? Ignore the others.

Where is the tension? What will happen if I don’t do something right now? What if I keep quiet? What is imminent, what will I miss? The default is the status quo, the standard response is, “maybe later.” If you don’t create tension, there will be no change.

Are you building a culture? “People like us do things like this.”

No one ever bought anything on an elevator. Your pitch isn’t designed to fully explain what you do or even to make the sale. Your ride on the elevator only exists to make it more likely that someone will follow you out of the elevator asking you questions about what you do.

Knock-knock jokes teach us a lot about all of this. If we say “knock knock” to someone we have permission to share a joke with, they will say “who’s there?” Interactions ensue. On the other hand, if you’re running around insisting on telling jokes to strangers, you’re being annoying. And the best lesson is: If you’ve ever heard one of these jokes, you definitely didn’t hear it from the person who made it up. Ideas that spread, win.

I don’t care about your logo, really. Few of us do. If you don’t believe me, look hard at the logos for Starbucks, Neutrogena and Hermes. It really doesn’t matter. It’s fun to be a pirate (they have a great logo) but it’s better to do work that we care about, work that people honor and share.

Branding agencies serve a useful purpose–they cause the client to pause and answer hard questions. Making it look good doesn’t really matter.