The foundation of brand management is brand consistency. It’s your strategy to grow and maintain your brand awareness, brand recognition and brand loyalty, which in turn allows you to sell more, charge more or both, while increasing the actual saleable value of your brand. It’s how you share and develop a consistent message that strengthens your brand.
...no matter what stage your business is at, getting your brand consistency right is a crucial part of your future success
What are brand assets? Brand assets are the tangible elements of your brand, such as your name and logo, colour palette, typography, graphics and digital channels. Actively managing your brand assets helps maintain the brand consistency that will really connect with your audience, as your brand assets are predominantly the elements of your brand that are seen by the people beyond your organisation.
To successfully manage your brand assets, you’ll need to: Keep them organised and accessible through audit and storage. You and your team should know where to find each asset and how to download, use or implement it. Ensure everyone in your organisations knows how, when and where your brand assets should be used. Carry out regular checks to make sure your brand assets are being used consistently, and have a process in place to correct any inconsistencies as quickly as possible.
As your organisation grows and your volume of brand assets increases, it can become really difficult to maintain the level of control that real brand consistency requires. It’s important to get great processes in place as early as possible - but no matter what stage your business is at, getting your brand consistency right is a crucial part of your future success. Here’s a few ways to help manage your brand assets and maintain consistency.
Creating a style guide, also known as brand guidelines, will help anyone who wants to create any content in any form to stay true to your brand, both visually and in tone. Style guides typically outline the usage of your brand assets such as your logo (colour variations depending on the background, or how much free space should be left around it), your colour palette for digital and print, your typography for titles, subtitles and body text, your photography style and examples of your brand voice.
Brand management software If you’ve got a lot of branding material, brand management software can help you store and organise your brand assets, and share them with the right people. They not only provide an easy storage method for your library of brand materials but also create a searchable database, which makes it even easier for your team to find the right assets to use to deliver the level of consistency you’re trying to achieve.
Brand management companies For larger organisations, brand management is no mean feat. When there are multiple teams and departments putting out brand materials on several channels, keeping your visuals, tone and messaging consistent can quickly become complicated and time consuming. Using an external company to handle your brand management can help your business maintain a high level of brand consistency without the headache and time input from you to meet these standards.
If you want to talk to us about our brand management services, you can contact us here.
