Over the years as technology has become more of a prevalent feature of our society, many tasks relating to companies have become much more complex than they used to be. One such element is Branding. In days gone by, maintaining a strong consistent brand was much easier than it is today. Companies had a greater control over when and how they targeted consumers, with the whole process being relatively one-way and more often than not, handled completely in-house.
In the last few years specifically, there has been a phenomenal rise in the use of social media which has been a revolution in the way a brand would communicate and interact with their consumers. The different ways to do this are mind-blowing when you really think about it. With websites, emails, Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Youtube, and Iphone apps there is a lot to think about, and a lot to get right. A brand can seriously suffer if they fail to meet even one of these efficiently.
Maintaining your consistent brand therefore requires constant monitoring, as well as regular generation of content and interacting with individual members of your target audience. As you would expect, this takes a lot of work. In fact many companies will outsource this responsibility to external PR agencies.
Consumers can also instantly share their opinions and reviews of a particular brand instantly, twenty-four hours a day. This means that if you can successfully manage your brand and react to your consumers, you can see benefits that were previously unable without the internet. On the other-hand, if you can’t maintain your brand effectively, it could be damaged beyond recovery more quickly than ever.
So what is Consistent Branding?
If a company was a person, it’s brand would be its personality. Every time a person has a conversation with an individual they try to express and maintain their personality. It works the same way for a company’s brand: whenever a company converses with their consumers they are expressing their personality or brand, while also making sure it is properly maintained. When dealing with consistent branding you have to stay true to the original idea of your brand. This includes basic elements such as logos, colours, typefaces and general look, which need to stay consistent in any form they are used, across various campaigns and communication outlets.
A simple example is a company’s Twitter. A company’s Twitter background should always match their brand colors. A less simple thing a company should do is focus on the way their tweets read. The copy should always be unique yet recognizable as part of your brand.
How can we achieve consistent branding?
There are a few things a company can do to help themselves maintain a consistent brand image, such as gaining complete control of your branding, so that each person involved is coming from the same page. This should be both internally and externally. Digital Brand Asset Management software has been found by many companies to be a very efficient way of doing this.
Brand Asset management software offers users the ability to access images, typefaces, guidelines, or anything else related to the brand from one central hub in the same way as cloud storage systems. It allows users to download assets in various formats depending on what is needed.
This is incredibly useful for organisations, especially those that have teams both internally and externally that require access to branding assets. BAM Software often provides features such as approval services for any artwork submitted and ‘Best Practice Services’ which allows users to share new ideas and suggestions that can be checked for consistency before being given the green light as a full blown project.
A good case study to examine would be that of Eurostar. Earlier this year Eurostart launched a re-brand, which has so far been very successful. Eurostar have hundreds, if not thousands of internal staff and an equally large amount of travel agents and websites using their branding every day. By implementing Brand Asset Management software, the entirety of Eurostar’s Brand profile was pulled together into one concise place which means they can easily manage, distribute, or update all of their assets online. This has affected their marketing staff by freeing up their time, and more importantly, providing them with much better brand consistency. External parties, can now use elements of their brand and Eurostar can be safe in the knowledge it is being used exactly how they would like it to.
What happens if I don’t use consistent branding?
It’s actually quite simple: Being consistent with branding is imperative to your company’s recognition and ultimately you brand either succeeds or dies.
Lacklustre branding will actually be more detrimental than no branding at all and will most likely cause consumers to lose trust in you and what your company stand for. Imagine if you will, that you’re buying a brand new car. First, you see an advert on the television, next you look on the website, but for some reason, it looks different from the advert you’ve seen. What’s happening here? You ask yourself. You then go to see the car dealer and again the branding looks different.
All of a sudden you’re the product itself. Is it good quality? Is it at all what it seems? Can I trust the car dealer? The next thing you know, you’re not buying the car.
Overall, maintaining a high level of consistency with your brand in the digital doesn’t have to be as difficult as it may seem, with the aid of Brand Asset Management software. Couple this up with the fact that research has shown that well managed brands are worth up to at least 20% more than those that are not, you would be doing yourself and your company a huge disservice, by not optimising your brand.
