Drive demand with a brand
So, you want to create or grow a data culture within your organisation.
Why?
Data culture is relatively vague industry term. Everyone is told they need it. Everyone wants to have it. Not many know how to get it.
Data culture isn’t something that a Chief Data Officer can make magically appear.
You can’t buy it from a vendor.
It is something that has to be actively pursued. It has to be nurtured. It has to be wanted.
It comes from like minded data individuals all contributing to build something which gradually increases the overall organisation’s understanding of how to use data effectively.
This leads to informed decisions being made and better outcomes and value across an organisation.
Building a community is hard work. It can take years to get off the ground. A combination of the right people, the right ideas and the right amount of resource spent curating it.
You need to invest time and energy for it to reach a point of self perpetuation. Where others outside of the core team (running the programme) support the initiatives which drive the philosophy forward.
It can feel lonely at times. Organising activities, projects, presentations and events only for a handful of people to participate.
Where do you draw the line at time invested and the return?
This post is about how building a brand or identity for your projects can help boost the engagement and create enthusiasm, awareness and recognition for your data culture programme.
Building a brand
I can’t make a claim that I’m a brand or marketing expert — but the power that comes along that a brand name and logo holds is everything to the customer.
It tells them the identity of the company or service. What you do and what you stand for.
When I launched our internal Tableau centre of excellence and training programme, the first action I did was to give it an identity.
Something to grab the attention of the people who were participating.
Making them feel special and that they were part of an exclusive group.
I wanted to do this for the following reasons.
- Create awareness — A name which linked Tableau and data. An identity which meant that if the word “DataChef” was mentioned in a meeting, everyone would know exactly what it was and what it meant.
- Community — Everyone who went through the training and became a “DataChef” was now part of the community. That by being selected for the training they then had a duty to help the community after they have completed the course.
- Identity — By providing certificates, laptop stickers and branded notepads all with the logo on it gave the participants a physical reminder of their achievement. They were proud of what they had completed. The stickers and notepads caught people’s attention in meetings and word of mouth spreads.
- Promotion — Any programme needs to be promoted in order to get maximum awareness. Using the company intranet to explain what it is and all about reinforced the message I was giving to the individuals and their line managers. It also gave me a chance to show recognition to the previous participants to help boost their confidence and engagement with their roles.
I’m not saying you need to go for a full “merchandise range” but there are some easy things mentioned above which go along way.
Start small
The logo is at the core of all branding activity. This is what grabs people’s attention and brings them closer to want to know more.
Simple steps would be using the logo on all documents. Slide decks, word documents, training material, newsletters etc. I used my Just-Data logo (below) for all documentation and presentations for our ThoughtSpot programme.
This gives all your communications a professional appeal. It catches peoples attention and are interested in “what is this fancy little picture all about”.
The team at ThoughtSpot and especially Cindi Howson have lots to say on data culture. Check out The Data Chief podcast to hear more from Cindi and other data leaders on these topics.
I’d strongly recommend reaching out to someone in your brand team. To make sure they are happy for you to create your own internal logo.
In most cases they are cool with this and will help with feedback and advice. It’s also just nice to explain what you are trying to do and why.
Make sure you follow any design guides and use the right brand colours and hex codes as well as fonts.
No need for any fancy Adobe software here. You can create a nice little logo simply using Powerpoint which works really well.
All of our visualisations will have our own team identity logo included on it. It signifies that the central team of experts have created this. It’s like our own version of the Twitter blue verification tick.
You can go that step further and get a bunch of stickers produced for fairly affordable rates. These can go along way.
I issue stickers for people’s laptops once they have completed the 6 week DataChef training course.
The good thing is that stickers (good quality ones) can be used on other swag. I also like to “brand up” items which can be given to your community in which they will promote subconsciously in meetings and in the office.
I don’t have a budget which allows me to buy a whole bunch of cool stuff, so I got creative.
I wanted people to be recognised as having participated in the DataChef programme, therefore linking them in our data culture philosophy.
Putting a branded sticker on notepads and water bottles works amazingly well. People will use notepads and bring water bottles into meetings or just have sat on their desks for people to see when walking past.
I want to make it clear that simply creating a fancy logo is NOT the answer to data culture.
However, if you are having trouble with people getting involved. Difficulty with people embracing your ideas and projects which are supporting your data culture programme, then maybe turning to a bit of old fashioned branding might start getting the attention you want.
There are so many others out in the data community who are doing fantastic things around data culture, I personally always look forward to their latest ideas that they share.
If you want to see and learn from a company doing data culture well, then it's worth reading up on what the JLL team are doing.
From training programmes to badges and gamification there is lots to learn from this group of leaders. Fi Gordon has lots to say on this topic and the team worked on producing this badge for all their internal teams for the recent virtual Tableau conference.
Simon Beaumont, Global BI Director at JLL shares some great tips in his blog post about being positive.
I for one always try to keep up with the latest data culture ideas that Paul Chapman and his team are pushing. You can read more here in this article about how the world’s leading companies are cultivating a new business culture and why you should consider it, published in The Economist from JLL and Tableau.
Tableau Blueprints is another great way to get a bit more steer in some parts of creating a data culture from scratch.
Pushing data culture in your organisation can be hard. But take a step back, look to the data community for ideas and support. No matter what software you have, there is a data culture that exists outside of your organisation which can help you grow your own data culture within.
Good luck!
PS. I did go for the full merchandise range and for a previous internal conference I produced t-shirts for my team. You can read more in this post.
And yes, I love making up logo’s for my team and job!
