Building the brand of your company, product or service is critical for success. There are numerous ways that you can build your brand, but often overlooked in the process is protecting the identity of the brand – its visual representation. This identity includes your logo, color palette, fonts and tagline.
Consistency is critical to establishing a recognizable identity that connects to the other components of your brand – product quality and customer service, for example. Create and enforce guidelines for the proper use of your logo and its complimentary elements, specifying how and where your logo may be placed, the minimum space that surrounds your logo, or your official color definitions, among others. (Red Pixel Studios can develop guidelines for you, but that is not the point of this post.)
It takes time for your brand to become familiar enough to gain traction, so consistent use is critical.
All too often we see organizations change the presentation of their identity, perhaps because they are bored with the appearance of their materials or they want to express their own creativity. They become focused on standing out and take the notion that each piece has to look fresh. They mistakenly believe they are attracting more attention by making their marketing look different, when in reality they are sacrificing their brand and making it less recognizable.
It takes a significant amount of time and repetition for a visual identity to take hold, and when you’ve built equity in your appearance you don’t want to throw it away. Just because you are familiar with (or tired of) the way your materials look does not mean that consumers share your perspective. As much as you hope your message and identity will resonate and make deep, lasting impressions, the likely reality is that you’ve barely made a dent.
The strongest brands drive their marketing with consistency – you can learn from their efforts and take the same approach.
Build your brand with consistency
