Brand Consistency and You

How and Why Consistency Matters to Your Brand

How many times have you come across a commercial and immediately noticed what company this was for, without even getting the name? Apple and its pristine, minimalist aesthetic that usually only shows the well-known logo, the familiar jingle of McDonald’s that doesn’t even say the company name, even Nike’s tagline of “Just Do It,” is so ingrained into our mind, even of those who aren’t Nike’s regular consumer base.

To succeed at this, you need brand consistency. But it is much easier said than done.

Why? Because brand consistency is not an overnight project, it takes time, an immense amount of effort, and (most importantly) authenticity.

Thankfully, some strategies can optimize your journey best!

But before we go into some of our advice, let’s start from the beginning and define what brand consistency is, and why it’s so important.

Chapter One: An Examination of Brand Consistency

Opening up the Dictionary

So what is brand consistency? While it’s easy just to dive in and get technical, let’s return to the basics and look at the term in two parts, starting with: what is a brand?

A brand, according to Merriam-Webster, is “a [distinctive] public image, reputation, or identity conceived of as something to be marketed or promoted.”

We can then say that a brand is a feature of marketing that helps a business stand out from others, and is often meant to be unique.

This also means that branding could be defined as the process of developing those distinctive features for your business.

Now, for consistency: Merriam-Webster defines it as an “agreement or harmony of parts or features to one another or a whole.”

Consistency means that every element in something must be related to each other.

We have “brand” and “consistency”, so if we go back to the term, we can roughly define “brand consistency” as having distinctive features for your company that all fit in with each other. This means every element, from the aesthetic to the core values, must be aligned to the company and the messages it wishes to send to an audience.

Now that we have an idea of what brand consistency is, let’s answer why it’s so important to your company’s success.

Chapter Two: The Case for Brand Consistency

Coca-Cola’s Big Blunder

For the sake of discussion, let’s say there was a marketer against brand consistency: What’s the point? Why would I need it? Consistency can’t be a major factor in a company’s success!

As a rebuttal to our hypothetical Misguided Marketer, I ask them, and you reader, to look back at Coca-Cola’s New Coke disaster. For those unfamiliar, some context:

In the 1980s, Coca-Cola lost some of its market share due to the various competitors that joined the soft drink industry, most notably, Pepsi.

In response, Coca-Cola made a massive gamble and in 1985, New Coke was introduced to the masses, a completely new formula change that did not get positive feedback. Because the Coca-Cola brand was so ingrained into the minds of the everyday consumer, this radical change felt like a betrayal and many consumers of the soft drink began boycotting the New Coke.

To this day, the New Coke story is well-known among marketers as a cautionary tale against tampering with a well-established brand. As one Coca-Cola spokesperson admitted to CBS:

“…we learned that fiercely loyal consumers — not the Company — own Coca-Cola and all of our brands.”

Trust, as we’ve seen with the New Coke case, is only one of the factors that would be a reason for brand consistency, including:

Recognition. The more you consistently showcase your design, vision, and message, the more consumers will recognize you. (If you want to know how color, for example, plays into brand recognition, check out our blog!).

Clarity. Sometimes your audience doesn’t want to be surprised by such a major change. But this is important for yourself; the more you can understand how all the pieces fit in the puzzle, the better you can express it to your audience.

Loyalty. The more you consistently show up with a clear vision, style, mission, and message, the more your audience will grow to see you as a reliable company and will continue returning to you.

But now comes the most challenging part. You may better understand what brand consistency is and why it matters to a company, but how do you, reader, establish your brand consistency?

Now, the strategy comes in.

Chapter Three: Building Blocks to Success

Achieving Brand Consistency

So now you have a better understanding and a clear goal in mind, loyalty from your audience. Every marketer has their own strategy for achieving their version of perfect brand consistency.

For us here at AMP, we’ve gathered a few steps that are important to our own brand consistency, including:

Having one brand voice across all platforms; on all of our channels — Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn — we utilize the same voice to create the same impression for our audience. We suggest starting off with a mission statement since that can help you develop who you are as a business (as it turns out, we also have a blog about that!).

Creating easy-to-understand visual assets, from our logo to the color palette we use, even to the fonts on our infographics, we not only create a definitive style that’s unique to AMP, but can reliably edit any assets for the brand. This helps us stay consistent through visual means that our audience can grasp quickly.

Staying true to our guidelines; perhaps the most important strategy AMP uses to keep brand consistency; our guidelines help make the process of creating new assets easy and quick. If you don’t know where to start with brand consistency, we strongly encourage you to create a document with all of your business’s key aspects.

But like we said at the beginning, it is not an overnight project, nor is it easy.

Looking to get some help with your brand consistency? AMP is here to AMP UP your marketing strategy! Connect with one of our experts today at [email protected].

About AMP

Based in San Diego, California, we are a small marketing agency with a creative team that celebrates 20+ years of experience in traditional and digital marketing. We recognize that marketing is a cornerstone of a brand’s success but that some businesses struggle to meet their marketing goals, so we made it our goal!

AMP provides virtual marketing management to all types of companies without the expense of having a marketing professional on staff, we work as an extension of your team to generate more leads for your business’ growth. Focus on running your business while we focus on running your marketing!

Want to learn more or start working with us? Email one of our experts today at [email protected] or give us a call at (858) 564-0336!

Make sure to follow us on our social media!

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