© Lisa Hickey

There’s a scene in The Wizard of Oz I can’t get out of my head. The flying monkeys have attacked; the Scarecrow has been torn apart. What’s left of the Scarecrow laments: “First they took my legs off and they threw them over there! Then they took my chest out and they threw it over there!”And the Tin Woodsman looks down and replies: “Well, that’s you all over!”

I’ve got to think that’s what it feels like to be a brand these days.

Back in the day, I wrote several “brand guideline” documents for clients. You know the ones that say, “The logo should be no smaller than 3/8” high and always have at least ½” of white space around it.”  The effort was an attempt keep control over the brand – what it looked like, what it felt like, how it should be “presented” to the public. It always seemed a little silly at the time, now it seems downright laughable.

I mean, where does the logo even *go* anymore? Is there a place for branding “guidelines” in Social Media?

So instead of thinking about things from a “let’s standardize the logo” standpoint, perhaps we can think about brand guidelines this way:

First, define your values as a company

Figure out three of them. Five of them. The five most salient things that your company holds near and dear to its heart. Make sure they are relevant to you audience yet differentiating to your competition. Make sure they make sense from a business standpoint. Make sure they are true.

Here are three brand values from Zappos:

1. Deliver WOW Through Service
2. Embrace and Drive Change
3. Create Fun and A Little Weirdness

Those are great, but they are not mine. Mine are different. Mine are:

1. Creativity + thoughtfulness (Make creative jumps to logical conclusions)
2. Be kind and open-minded.
3. Add humor, art and poetry that doesn’t look like any of that to the world.

Make them measurable

Go ahead. You hold your agency accountable for metrics. Make your brand accountable also. Want to call yourself innovative? Check how many innovative new products or ideas you’ve brought to market lately. Are you about to communicate you’re a ‘wow’ in customer service? Look at every customer service interaction and think about whether it’s a ‘wow’ or not.

Deliver on the actual values then communicate them in new and unusual ways

Okay, this is where the fun begins. You’re *delivering* those core values through your actions, and measuring them to make sure they are real and true. Then, and only then, look at HOW you are communicating those values through everything you say or do. Branding is simply a shortcut so that others can understand your core values. There’s a lot of information out there. But you can help define what it is people remember about you. A few examples:

• Is a brand value “innovative?”
• What does innovative *look* like?
• What does it sound like?
• Does the design of everything you create challenge the status quo in some way shape or form?
• Are your page layouts unusual, differentiating?
• Is your content filled with examples of what is new in the world, not just from you, but from others?
• Are you actively asking the world to participate in what they find innovative?
• Are you taking what those people say and constantly adding new insights?

If you are, people will call you innovative. They will “take your arm, and throw it over there”, and it will be a good thing. Say, honesty is a core value. Yes, apply the honesty filter with the same rigor you’d apply to scrubbing the black off a saucepan. But then look at HOW the word might be communicated. Maybe it means speaking simply. Plainly. Short words and sentences. Maybe it means lots of white space visually. Not a lot of layers. Maybe your core value  gets communicated through provocative discussions of what the word “honesty” itself means, in blogs, in forums, in news articles. And what would an honest photo look like? Unretouched, maybe, or not set-up?

I’m constantly challenging myself to look at everything I say or do though my brand filters. “Is what I am putting out to the world creative in some way? Does it help make sense of a crazy world through insight? Is it artistic in some way, or poetic, or have a bit of a sense of humor to it? Am I being kind?”

When you define yourself by core values, people can take you apart, mix you up, add a part of themselves to you, do all sorts of unimaginable things to your brand and you will still come out whole. Take your values. Figure out what they look and feel like. Put yourself all over the place. In bits and pieces and whole big chunks. Let people take parts of your brand, interact with them. Engage with them. Say what they will about you. Tear you apart. Build you up.

And then watch what happens. It will be you all over.