12 Reasons Why You Should Care About Brand Clarity 

Clarity. Ah, that overused buzzword. You’ve probably seen it on every consulting website you’ve ever perused. But, we haven’t given up on the word. We hold onto it because we have clarity about why clarity matters and how greatly it can help you best reach the people you’re called to serve. 

At Resonate, we care deeply about clarity because … 

1. Clarity represents the strongest possible starting point by which to build, steward and grow your organization.

It’s never too late to go to the next level in how you think about clarity—whether you are a church-planter just starting your journey, or have been successfully leading a ministry, non-profit or purpose driven business for decades. Knowing who your brand is and who you are reaching will save years of spinning your wheels and help you build your organization on the strongest possible foundations for stability and longevity.

2. Clarity opens eyes, ears and minds.

Clarity is defined as, “the quality of being coherent and intelligible, certain or definite.” Intentional clarity habits make everything more clear and more coherent. As you develop these habits, they help your audience see what they would otherwise not see, hear what they would otherwise not hear, and understand what they would otherwise not understand. It’s all about intentional clarity habits. For example: brand clarity habits start with calling out assumptions and ambiguities discovered through asking a lot of great questions. These questions can become a nuisance to your colleagues, but a wonderful nuisance when given the respect they deserve.

As a ministry branding agency, we've seen this play out in various client contexts when organizational founders, owners and leadership teams lean into clarity. It challenges them to think more deeply about their identity—including things like why they do what they do, their DNA, their uniqueness. The harder they lean into clarity, the more articulate they become about why their organization matters and what differentiates them.   

Have you seen clarity open the eyes, ears and minds of those around you?

3. Clarity helps restore and guard your ability to make clear and coherent decisions.

Why does this matter? Various studies have undertaken to estimate how many thoughts per day the average person has. 6,200 thoughts per day is on the low end of the estimations! Between the intrinsic information we are processing, and all the notifications and ads vying for our attention, making wise decisions amidst all that our brains are processings necessitates clear and coherent thinking.

Clarity about your brand—who your organization is and who you are called to serve—is a critical first step to making leadership decisions because it helps you cut through the haze so you can identify patterns and priorities.

Can you think of a time when clarity helped you make decisions more clearly and more coherently?

4. Clarity represents a strong anchor against the fragmentation and subsequent disintegration of good thinking habits.

Similar to point #2, we have a lot of factors tugging at our minds. We want to cultivate not only good decision making, but also all around healthy thinking habits.

At Resonate, we think clarity as a practice can be a practical way to apply Philippians 4:8 …

“ … whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”

When we sense our minds becoming fragmented and fatigued—whether in work, with your family, or anywhere—reminding ourselves of what God says to be true in that moment, what are we working towards, what is our purpose here—these things keep us anchored.

5. Clarity represents high value diamonds for your organization.

Gemologists use a grading system called the GIA Diamond Clarity Scale to analyze diamonds and to judge their clarity. Every diamond has inclusions or flaws. The more inclusions there are, the less valuable the diamond.

Similarly, the more distortive “inclusions” there are in your organization, the more difficult it will be for you to cut through the noise both internally and externally.

Do you see a direct connection between how internal and external ambiguities hinder organizations in their effectiveness and impact?

6. Brand clarity is foundational to everything in your organization.

Yes, that is a big statement! But think about it—where there is an absence of clarity, there is an equal absence of effectiveness and impact. Without clarity, you’ll see your organization struggling with vision drift, mission hijack, wasted resources on wrong priorities, and lack of team alignment which can erode productivity and culture.

From your top executive leadership to operations, from sales or donor cultivation to marketing, from client services or volunteer management to administrative support—your organizational structure, culture, solutions and offerings can’t possibly deliver when there is an absence of brand clarity.

7. Clarity enables organizations to be lucid about who they are trying to reach, what differentiates them and what they uniquely offer.

Part of creating a brand that resonates is understanding why your brand is unique. As Christian marketing professionals, we are really passionate about using your brand not to try to reach everyone, but to help you resonate with the people you can best serve. This is a big part of how we can use our ministries or businesses to actually help people, not just add to the noise. When your brand is clear about who you are and how you help, the people that need you will find you … and the people that aren’t an ideal fit can keep looking for who is. And that’s a good thing!

Are you willing to challenge your brand to be so clear about who you are reaching that you would be willing to send someone away who would be better served by someone else?

8. Clarity enables you to activate your best brand DNA attributes and characteristics.

The better you understand your brand DNA, the better you are able to bring your organization into alignment with your most sacred values, while simultaneously pressing into your most important differentiators. This clarity fuels team alignment, fosters healthy culture, and minimizes vision hijack and mission drift. From this place, organization growth becomes a tenable goal with a clear target, rather than just a fleeting dream.

9. Clarity empowers your brand’s vision, mission and values to become real over time.

Why? Clarity can act like guardrails for your organization. It’s easy over the years to try and pivot to chase every new thing and idea. And don’t get me wrong, there is a time and place for seeking new channels of growth. But, it’s equally important to stay rooted in who you are, who your team is, why you are here, who you are reaching.

Staying rooted in those things will help you more skillfully decide if some degree of a pivot will maximize your impact, or if staying with your original plan is the wiser choice. Thinking with those categories will help your organization to yield a lasting impact and enduring legacy. 

10. Clarity allows organizations to concentrate their product / service offerings into their most distilled and most potent form.

There’s enough confusion in the world. We don’t need to be confused about your brand, too! Clarity will help you figure out how to express and enact what you do in the most potent—and helpful—way possible. This is good for the people you are called to serve, good for your team, and good for your organizational growth.

11. Clarity leads to less ambiguity about the present reality and greater coherency about the future.

Do you ever feel like you’re drowning in decisions and tasks? Les McKeown has some really helpful content about how to look for patterns to make your decision making process both more efficient and more effective. Learning to look for patterns around you as a leader is challenging—but starting from a place of clarity is our first suggestion for cutting through a lot of the background noise and discerning what patterns really matter.

For example, when your trusted team is questioning a suggestion you are making, which can lead to a pause because you realize the decision needs further evaluation—perhaps start by evaluating how what they are saying connects to your brand’s larger objectives. Try not to get bogged down in the interpersonal dynamics at play and the general overwhelm of all that’s going on, and instead seek to understand if what they are saying may be a pattern emerging, or if it may be a reminder to stay focused on the original objective, the goal you’re all working toward.

12. Brand clarity gives leaders permission to say no to efforts that drain valuable resources.

This is true in every organization, but it’s especially important at a small or mid-sized ministry or business. Clarity helps you concentrate on the things that matter most and ignore the things that don’t. This level of focus also happens to be so helpful for healthy organizational culture and team alignment—you want your team to feel encouraged and energized knowing that their work is contributing to the bigger picture mission.

We hope reading this gives you a new appreciation for clarity in your organization. If reading this made you sense a lack of clarity in your own organization, we have an innovative, new tool for you. Check out our Core Identity Experience which acts as your 100% digital consultant to challenge and distill your best thinking into actionable clarity that can align every aspect of your organization.