Posted on March 1, 2013 by Terrence Isert

I recently sat-in on webinar on CDFI branding presented by Jeff Stephens at Creating Brand Communications (CBC). CBC has perfected its branding approach from its work with Craft3 (formerly Enterprise Cascadia CDFI in Portland, Oregon) and Simon Sinek’s book “Start with Why?”. The latter in particular hones in on the steps for overcoming the challenges of finding your brand identity. Jeff explained that CDFIs in today’s market face unique challenges that other financial service providers do not face. Reaching more clients in the community and achieving sustainable business growth are impeded without an effective brand. As Jeff described, CDFI are very good at telling “what they do”, “where they do it” and “how they do it”. It’s there bread and butter. Their staff know their products and services very well because they are tangible and real. But CDFIs lose sight sometimes of WHY they do things. This is the heart of effective branding. This is not the regurgitation of the mission or vision statements per se, although the goals and ‘dream statements’, respectively do feed into the “why”. Rather, CDFIs need to discover their “inner sole”. Conducting discussions with staff, partners, clients and community leaders will lead to the discovery of the value that the CDFI brings to each. The results of these discussions are used to craft the brand. For my own satisfaction, I revisited my old business school marketing textbook to look up branding. The book used words like “art”, “cornerstone” “culture”, “differentiation” and “attributes” to define branding. They all fit but my takeaway from the webinar was that branding can be challenging and complex — a simpler approach may be the more direct and easier way. But CDFIs have to begin by asking the right question! If you are interested in reading more, CBC has also distilled their message on this topic into a white paper entitled “The 7 Special Challenges for Branding CDFIs: And What To Do About Them”. It is well worth the read! Thanks to Jeff and his colleagues at CBC for sharing their experience and expertise on branding!