BrandED: Tell Your Story, Build Relationships, and Empower Learning

by Eric C. Sheninger

Brand is about creating a unique identity that relates to a specific audience or stakeholder group.

BrandED is about a genuine personality that can impact school culture, achievement, and resources.

Thus a brand in education has nothing to do with selling, but instead is all about showcasing the work of students, staff, and leaders in an effort to become more transparent.

A change of leadership thinking is in order if we are to face a hyperlinked world of education.

In this new inbound world of digital communication, a world where information arrives at our digital doorstep without being invited, we have to reset leadership thinking.

In the noisy digital world, educational leaders must proudly use stories of their schools to convey a consistent brand message about who they are and what they stand for.

brandED leader, guide your community to three tangible outcomes: improved school culture, expanded school performance, and increased school resourcing.

Goodell claims that brand these days isn't just created, it's cocreated and celebrated by those who align with and promote its purpose and value

An image

promise

r...

know they aren't just about what we see. Clift believes brand to be a contract between a company and consumers (De Swaan Arons, 2011). Every brand on this top 10 list knows about turning an exchange into customer loyalty.

Successful brand building comes from knowing audiences and focusing on what these customers want.

School leaders have the same power to brand without a Madison Avenue marketing budget.

“People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” Ms. Angelou's thinking is a powerful cornerstone of a leader's brandED mindset and well worth cultivating and promoting.

A school brandED Strategic Plan, built under an innovative leadership employing a collaborative effort, will create the essential conditions for making school promotion part of daily school life. Leaders who promote brand without the budget of a marketing executive are sound communicators. They have a sense of the needs, goals, and actions that will attract community interest in supporting the school brand. They get attention that leads to positive relationship building. Word of mouth is necessary to promotion, and the most successful school brand communicators get their communities talking. Using small communities and subgroups of interested stakeholders, schools can gradually develop a capacity to get the word out. To sustain the promotion, the creation of affinity—the good feeling that comes from the brand narrative—must be a leading part of the effort to promote image, promise, and result.

He or she wants to matter.

Keep your eyes open for potential brandED stakeholders who may already be positively defining your school brand under their own initiative.

They join the cause to improve their school, seeing it as a social or moral imperative. First, you create the call to action through developing your own brand. Your model and commitment can be a brand beacon to others. Your effort is powered by technology, and you take advantage of the endless free resources that are available to leaders who

Here's the simple map: You develop a school image through authentic stories told from every corner of the school community, using the engaging content of your daily school narrative. You purposefully promote your educator's promise to create the mix of messages about the mission of the school to create a type of brand harmony, a consistency that feels good, through many messaging channels. You show a tangible, measurable result, promoting your narrative to gain resources that can sustain the school in

Encourage them to see brandED as a way to rise above business as usual, where the tendency is to do the same thing over and over for the same result.

To many of them, brand doesn't mean narcissistic self-absorption. It's simply self-expression. Brand is now present in the minds of many young teachers and students who have developed their personal brand. Time magazine cites that 92% of American children have an online presence before the age of 2, starting with parents' postings of nearly 1,000 images of their children before their fifth birthday (Sales, 2016). When leaders connect their understanding of brand value to classrooms of Millennial teachers who are already living brand-rich lives on social media, they will gain early adopters, potential collaborative team members, and committed brand ambassadors among teachers and students. They will also gain the attention of those who can collaborate to spread the word about school brand. They are experts in doing this for themselves. As your school brand is built and shared, the world opens easily because of these young stakeholders.

seven pillars of servant leadership: Person of character Puts people first Skilled communicator Compassionate collaborator Has foresight Systems thinker Leads with moral authority

Successful school leadership in today's digital world is fueled by connectivity. Aren't educators always building, brokering, and sustaining relationships?

For any school leader, being relational is as important as being knowledgeable.

Mutual trust is a core of brand loyalty in business and in schools. A great workplace is created thorough organizational credibility, respect, fairness, and a foundation of trust

building welcoming access in real time and online so that people feel connected and happy in their work.

calendar isn't just about scheduling the day's appointments but also about making time for a ritual of

building trust. Your purposeful strategic effort to create relationships is vital.

I need to understand this better. I don’t get how this is trust making.

Public relations and communication efforts focused on evidence of growth in this area and in other academic and nonacademic areas can be conveyed through social media.

Utilizing social media to convey staff statistics can build the confidence of any community, which has a positive impact on a school's brand.

Course offerings, curricular decisions, unique programs, and innovative instructional practices play a key role in student engagement while also having a positive impact on student outcomes

“To be successful

you need to see what others don't see”

The right brand makes the position of the school strong enough to mesh with the current array of initiatives and changes that affect the education of children: Trends in education, politics, and economics influence educational excellence.

“The job isn't to catch up with the status quo; the job is to invent the status quo.”

“Every time when you have a new idea write them down and put them into your bucket. Check your Bucket every month.” Adapt this “follow your dream now” attitude as a leader of brand. Keep your own brandED bucket as you journey into brand with ideas that are firing up your creativity and that reflect the edge-dweller mindset of brandED leading.

Before starting on your brandED path and as you move into a brandED leadership mindset, you can spark your journey by asking yourself these questions: What is our school's offer to an audience? What are the defining features of our district or school? Whose attention are we trying to capture, and why? Who are the end users of our brand? Is our audience segmented into smaller communities? Are there subgroups that we serve that have different needs and wants?

In the day-to-day work you do, include the story of your own journey. The community will believe in the brand you've built if you are transparent.

Try out your brand in many ways, both personal and professional. In every meeting, include brand thinking. Ask colleagues about the term; see what they know, and learn how they think being brandED can advance a school community.

Parents can rest easy knowing that their child is in good hands and that learning is at a high level; Mrs. Moore can shed light on all the amazing learning experiences that her students are a part of day in and day out; and students learn that what they are doing has importance beyond the classroom.

blog post so that others could see how technology can transform learning spaces.

gives credit where credit is due:

writing a blog post about this best-practice learning experience, Brad shows readers that the school is doing some remarkable things.

thinking of a brandED leader to illustrate the promise of a school, a promise that is expressed beyond a single sitting during a spring test evaluation and that showcases the authentic learning that your school provides.

using a brandED mindset to promote the academic and nonacademic stories that show a school's worth and value to a community.