What you’ve described is a variation of a problem I’ve seen and experienced repeatedly from the perspective of an in-house CD and as an outside consultant/designer viewing it from a distance. I could go on for hours over a series of beers about personal anecdotes, observations, successes, failures, and what I’ve learned and not learned while stumbling my way through different variations of the same organizational problems.
@Sprout and I often see things in much the same way, so I’ll try not to repeat what he’s already said. Instead, I’ll approach it from a slightly different angle.
Almost every CEO, director, owner, president, whatever, knows they need a visual identity. Most seem to think it means getting a logo they like. The slightly more enlightened see their brand identity as a broader problem to address. A very few see their brand identity as a core foundational value of the organization.
When seen from a distance working for a client at an ad or design agency, it’s easy to shake one’s head, complete the project for the client, then move on to the next client’s project. From the perspective of an in-house CD who wants to fix the problem, it can be maddening unless the person at the top fully understands the problem and supports the efforts as a partner in solving it. Without that support from the top, all the band-aids, workarounds, and incremental successes will ultimately fail.
Unfortunately, most people at the top of organizations see brand design and management as one-off projects to tackle, complete, and write up in the company’s annual report as completed objectives. They budget money, hire an outside agency to create the brand, show examples of its implementation, and write a brand manual. Once the money is spent and the project is completed, they engage in a bit of naive magical thinking about the project being finished. I liken this to them hiring an architectural firm to design a building that meets the company’s needs. But after the blueprints are delivered, they fail to realize that all they have are the plans for the building that’s yet to be built, lived in, and maintained.
As a company CD or designer working with a set of partially-implemented blueprints and with an organization’s leadership that fails to see the problem, this is a recipe for continual frustration. Designers who see their jobs as working on a series of one-off projects get by just fine in this situation. For others who see each project as a piece of a larger integrated problem, it’s a never-ending nightmare. For these designers, the temptation is to figure out ways around the core problem, but it never really works. If the person at the top isn’t fully onboard, any successes are incremental and temporary.
Ideally, in a mid- to larger-sized company, the CD is the equivalent of a vice president. This person reports directly to the CEO and has the backing of the CEO to manage the company’s brand. However, in most organizations, the whole brand management thing is relegated to a frustrated AD or graphic designer who reports to something like a Communications/Outreach Manager, who reports to a Marketing Director, who reports to a Vice President with a million things on her plate and no appreciation or time for the situation several levels below in the company’s art service support team whose job, as far as she’s concerned, is to concentrate on whatever projects other people in the company dump in their laps.
I’ve painted a bleak portrait of what I know from experience is a very common situation. Every company is different, but the problems you’ve described in your company typically flow from the top and resonate throughout the organization’s internal culture. In a large, spread-out, bureaucratic organization, the cultural problem generally is so deeply rooted and entrenched that even an enlightened CEO can’t change it.
On a positive note, you’ve mentioned that the people at the top of your organization realize a problem exists, and they’ve asked you to solve it. It sounds like you have an opening to create a dialogue with them about solving the core problem instead of simply applying band-aids to cover it up. If I can suggest one thing, it’s to take advantage of that opening and figure out how to use it.