5 Crucial Tips for Maintaining Brand Consistency

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5 Crucial Tips for Maintaining Brand Consistency

1. Don't Get Fooled into Thinking Consistency is Boring
Do you find Coke, or Apple, or Virgin Records boring? All these brands and most of the rest at the top, middle and bottom of the heap all regard consistency as one of their top three secrets to success and longevity.

2. Your Entire Team Needs to be on Board with Striving for Brand Consistency
The easiest way to keep team members on the same page is to ask them what companies they admire/love most and why. Do this regularly at team meetings and you'll find all kinds of examples of consistency shaping your employees' overall perceptions of the brands they mention.

Regardless of who in the company is involved with the early stages of brand building, everyone needs to understand what's considered proper use of company taglines, social profiles, forum accounts, logos and other graphics, and anything else that directly affects brand consistency.

3. Make a "Branding Style Guide"
There's no hard-and-fast as to what should be included in a branding style guide. They will vary a lot from one company to the next. This guide will basically be a go-to bible for people in the company when it comes to what's deemed "fair and acceptable" use of your brand and branding materials.
Here is the basic information you want to include:
Company Name.
Mission Statement.
Company Slogan.
Logo Design(s) and what/when/where each rendition is used.
Color Schemes you use — Include as much detail about color usage as it relates to your brand.
Typography — What fonts and overall writing style you use in your blog content, press releases, emails, sales copy, sales agreements, etc.
Imagery and Photo Styles — How should these look to the market? Under what circumstances are different styles used (ie., warm/cool, saturation levels, feelings they should evoke, etc.
Copy Guidelines — The more details the better about capitalization of letters in the brand name/brand material, and specific circumstances and locations in certain content to put trademarks, affiliations, slogans, disclaimers, etc.
Potential and known examples of what the company considers poor use of the brand — such as employees using inappropriate language while signed into company social and other online profiles.
All employees must get a paper copy and have cloud access to the guide as needed.

4. Everyone on the Team who Distributes Branding Material Needs Full File Access to all Logos, Graphics and other Branding Materials
The last thing you need is a branding faux-pas because someone had to tinker out their own rendition of a critical branding graphic such as the company logo. Regardless how big or small the company is, your team must to have all the tools they need to maintain brand consistency in every task they do.

5. Designate an In-House "Branding Police Squad"
You can't do it all. Few SME owners have the time and resources they need to monitor how your brand name and branding materials are distributed and used. And you shouldn't have to. It's likely you have everyone you need already to form your own little in-house brand police squad.
Find the needle-in-the-haystack types who work for you and encourage them to call people out when they see something that goes against your official branding style guide. Also, encourage them to touch base with you to add and/or change rules found in the guide as you continually strive to build and maintain the brand.

Source: https://smallbiztrends.com/2017/03/brand-consistency.html