Imagine having your own family brand that you could wear with bride. Do you wonder sometimes how to describe your families story, what you guys stand for and how you roll? Do you have a family brand that helps guide what you do and how you do it?
Social media has shaken up and exposed a range of challenges for people. The convergence of personal and professional brands is a global trend that many are having trouble navigating. Companies invest millions in their brand and how it is communicated and experienced, what it stands for, how it is differentiated from other like brands and competitors. They have sophisticated and comprehensive guidelines in place to interact with the market to ensure they are consistent and perceived by their customers in the correct light.
Families are more exposed to the outside world as the parents and the growing children go online through the social channels, personal and professional. How do you want your family to be perceived? As your family posts and comments, how should they behave and convey their thoughts and ideas and what images are appropriate?
Going through a Family Brand Workshop is something you may want to consider. What is that? It’s where you and the family get together and through a range of structured exercises and you can undercover the brand pillars. These pillars will be a foundation for the family to refer to on an ongoing basis and provide a framework that will inform how they behave, speak and move through their worlds, especially online. Doing this process will align all in the family to provide the necessary guidelines that will reduce stupid or inappropriate moments on social media and in general interactions with the outside world.
Parents have to take responsibility and lead by example. Learning what is involved more than ever in this area is critical, because social channels were not around back in the day parents will find it a challenge. The young ones coming through don’t have the experiences of life to guide them with displaying themselves online, however they are tech natives. If you don’t at least know the online realm to some level they will run circles and possibly get themselves into strife. I have met parents who have thrown their hands up in the air, saying, “It’s all moving too fast for me, I can’t keep up.” while they let their children online and are not even monitoring or setting rules on engagement, this is outright dumb and asking for trouble. For example, letting your children online, with the condition, only if they ‘Friend’ you will at least make them think to some level about what they post. We get it, we know they find work arounds and we also know they get caught out and balance is restored. The highs and lows of this learning process can be reduced, dramatically with brand guidelines in place. Recently our daughter went into high school and studies have shown that teenage girls are better off not having a device at all due to the high level of cyber bullying that is now going on. Walking the streets without a device is safer, who would have thought.
By setting the Family Brand Guides, FBG, you install and can refer to how the family presents itself publicly. Going through ways to take images with the appropriate backgrounds to avoid too much detail being offered are important ways to manage your families digital footprint and maintaining your family brand. The language and tone of voice used in posts is also an equally important part of the process.
DMH is currently developing brand workshops for families. We can conduct workshops with your family which will uncover the pillars that set your foundations and from here you can even develop a logo. That’s fight a family logo that you can wear with pride. These workshops are based on years of experience dealing with large companies and large teams, bringing them together and aligning the business for the next phase, usually 5-7 years.
The workshops are fun and incredibly insightful. We did it recently and everyone contributed and some of the inputs from the children were amazing, way beyond their years. My wife and I were moved by some of the wonderful things they brought up about how they viewed the family and how we support and love each other. We are looking forward to the next phase and having a designer friend come up with our logo. The kids can’t wait for the family caps and T-shirts.
If you have enquiries on the Family Brand workshops, drop us a line.
Stuart Keith
Dad's My Hero 