Exploring & Establishing Brand Architecture

Early on in the project, there had already been an effort to create an identity and voice for Project Sammaan, with the aim to bring together the different streams of work and thought, while giving a unified face to the project as a whole.

There are two distinct components within the framework of the larger project — one that is internal facing, representative of a collaborative consortium of stakeholders rethinking sanitation systems (i.e. Sammaan), and the second, a user-facing, sanitation system prototype borne out of the collaborative effort of Project Sammaan. The question that loomed large at the beginning of the branding stream was whether there was a need for a second brand for the user-facing sanitation system prototype. To understand this, we examined key features for both across categories of target user group, objectives, drivers/motivators and the intended role of brand identity.

Audience/user:

  • Sammaan: International development agencies, Central, State, City Governments, Other institutional stakeholders in sanitation

  • Sanitation System Prototype: Urban Slum Dweller, Transient Population, Public Area User

Objective:

  • Sammaan: Create a toolkit to enable the replication of improved shared sanitation systems for urban slums

  • Sanitation System Prototype: Encourage adoption of healthy sanitation behavior amongst users

Drivers/Motivators:

  • Sammaan: Desire to build Dignity & Respect for users. Need for a cohesive identity that signifies the importance for interventions at all levels to be simultaneously applied and tied to a single program

  • Sanitation System Prototype: Desire to build better quality of life—Convenience & Well being for user, family & local community.

Role of Brand Identity:

  • Sammaan: Needs to set the context for innovation in the sanitation sector in facility design, communication, business models and O&M, all of which are driven by a human-centered approach

  • Sanitation System Prototype: Public-facing Brand. Needs to connect with the end-user and his life and convey “Better Quality of Life” through adoption/use of sanitation services at the facilities. Branding effort also helps to tie in the efforts needed at various levels beyond just the toilet facility. For example, community messaging outside the toilets, tying in with larger public health programs of government in that particular community, and other promotional activities

There were three models of brand architecture that the two components could be structured under.

  1. UNIFIED BRANDING : A unified identity for Framework for urban sanitation innovation and Sanitation system prototype as Sammaan. While this model optimizes effort & resources to shape and manage successfully one core brand over time, in case of multiple manifestations where the function of communication and target audience is different, the singular approach breaks down.

  2. SUB-BRANDING: Sub-brand developed for Sanitation system prototype is endorsed by Sammaan as the parent brand for framework for urban sanitation innovation. The sub-brand can derive credibility from an established and known parent brand. In the case that the parent brand is not known to user of sub-brand and, parent and sub-brand  address different users and function, it adds cognitive load on the sub-brand audience to decipher the relevance of the parent brand in sub-brand communication.

  3. INDIVIDUAL BRANDING: Independent individual brands for Sanitation system prototype and Framework for urban sanitation innovation (Sammaan). This allows for concerted and focused approaches to be built for each brand, that are relevant to specific contexts, audience and needs.

Taking into account the difference in audience, drivers and role of brand identity for the Sanitation System Prototype and Framework for Urban Sanitation Innovation (Sammaan), INDIVIDUAL BRANDING was recommended.

The branding and subsequent communication for Sanitation System Prototype is one of the key areas of intervention that can drive adoption of the sanitation facilities and lead to awareness and behavior change with regards to sanitation & wellbeing. With Individual Branding, there is an opportunity to model the brand in response to the community, ensuring that it is sensitive, meaningful and familiar to the users.

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