What’s the Big Deal about Brand Standards?
| Diane Vautier October 1, 2009 | Tweet This Article! |
Is your company signaling a big red flag to customers or are you proudly flying a strong brand banner?
Some companies never get to the point where they’re able to define who they really are. That’s a red flag. Lack of clarity about their own identity and what they represent almost always translates into jumbled messages and incoherent impressions to their customers.
Unfortunately, inconsistency and chaos does not breed trust, stability, and customer loyalty. In fact, it quite often has the reverse effect. Customers prefer stability, clarity and transparency. Luckily that’s where Brand Standards come in. It much more beneficial to proudly fly a brand banner than to be a red flag.
A brand guideline, or brand standard as some folks call it, is a big deal. It’s the design, fabric and stitching of your company. It is the definitive resource that outlines how your brand will be repeatedly represented throughout all communications. It is the reference document that contains the rules for visually presenting the position of the company in the market. Use of the guideline creates awareness of the brand and differentiates your company from competitors.
A brand is an animate entity. It moves and grows with your company. The breadth and depth of a guide can vary depending on a number of factors such as the age of the company, the size of a product line, the level of marketing awareness, or the use of one or a family of brands under one umbrella (brand architecture).
Think of a brand guideline as an expanding binder to which pages can be added, edited, or clarified. Start with the basic components and expand as your brand grows.
Here is a short list of the elements that should be considered when creating and sticking to a brand guide.
- Logo
- Graphic elements and treatment
- Color Palette
- Fonts and Typography
- Photographic and/or Illustrative Style
Each individual company may find even more specific instances where they may want to define their brand in more detail including elements like copy style, sound, music or messaging.
Building a company’s brand identity means many different things to many different people, but one point that most every marketer agrees on is that a brand, once defined, must be consistently reinforced.
Brands are a bid deal because without them companies are more apt to confuse their customers, rather than provide a clear, stable, and safe place to do business. So figure out who you are and then fly your brand flag proudly.
Tags: Brand Guideline, Brand standards, branding, Marketing
social media | Diane Vautier | 
4:59 pm
