Brand consistency is an art in marketing and positioning warfare these days. From mailers to websites to tv commercials, it is essential for brands to show themselves to the consumer in a consistent manner or else they face fading into the clutter of today’s marketing.
Invest, Don’t Just Spend.
It’s more than a logo or word, it’s your companies vision. This is how you want people to perceive your company. Your brand. By changing your public image around or not keeping it consistent, you’re telling your consumers that you’re not sure what it is that you do. Or what you want to be.
The mindset that a lot of companies have is that it’s more money to spend to keep all of their branding consistent. It’s not spending…it’s investing. If I see a logo or word in a very specific way and know what it represents, you’re on your way. If a company has 5 logos for the same company and same services, and they all seem to broadcast a different message, they’re teaching consumers to ignore their clutter or not to trust them.
You’re investing in a consumer’s emotion or mental association. You want them to think of you when they think “music”? Then keep that message consistent in your branding going forward. The logo helps to aid in this process. Changing it around constantly or not using it consistently kills the effect you’re looking to have. It just confuses people. You lose that emotional connection created between the brand and the consumer and it becomes less meaningful.
Creating a brand image your company can be recognized by is a sweet spot in marketing. It’ll help create unaided awareness of your brand, as well as keep what you stand for clear.
Is This Good For The Company?
Laugh as you may at the Office Space reference, it’s true in branding a company. If everyone isn’t buying in on the branding inside the company, how can you expect people outside the company to accept it? Here’s a small list of things companies lose sight of when branding their company:
- Touch: Every mailer, bill, ad, etc. that comes out of the company should have the same look and feel. If you’re going for the image of “trust,” make me believe it when I see your name!
- Sight: When I see your name in an official capacity, it better look the same. Countless times companies re-brand and leave the old branding on everything they had before. DON’T DO THIS! It confuses the message and no one will buy in on what you want them to envision when they see your name.
- Intuition: If I think iPod, I better be able to go to my browser and type in http://www.ipod.com and get there. Companies with branded services and products often forget the simple things. If someone can’t get to you easily, they may not find you. If your online presence is named differently from your real world product, make sure both addresses point to where the user needs to get to.
Where Do You See Yourself In 5 Years
The moral of the story is that if you don’t envision yourself big, you won’t be big. If you think the branding is the least important thing in your laundry list of tasks to get done, don’t worry, you’ll have time to work on it when you re-brand again because no one has a mental connection to your brand.
Just realize, Yahoo! may not be the greatest search engine in the world, but when you see their logo, you think “search.” Windows or Mac may not be the greatest operating systems in the world, but when you see their logos, you know what they do. If you don’t work on developing a consistent message with your brand to your consumers, they won’t think anything, and that’s the worst thing you can hope for.












