Brand consistency is key for successful brand development
It is safe to say that no marketing team has dodged all bullets when it comes to brand deviations, but that doesn’t mean that it is okay and that we should give up. Brand consistency is crucial for the success of your brand development. If you ask our clients like BMW, Helly Hansen or Elon they’ll tell you the same thing. Being strong brand names operating in several markets, they are all reliant on remaining on brand at all costs. But as we mentioned, deviations happen, and the important thing is to not accept it, but to take control of your brand management and implement a system that eliminates inconsistencies.
The impact of inconsistent branding
Why does brand inconsistency happen? You have created beautiful brand guidelines and shared it with everyone. Yet, old and outdated assets are being used and some colleagues are even creating their own. What are you doing wrong?
49% report that their guidelines either exist as print or PDF. If you belong to that group, ask yourself this: How did you distribute your brand guidelines? Are they available and accessible for everyone? How do you communicate the latest guide updates? And how available are the assets they need? Brand guidelines alone are simply not enough. Availability and usability of your brand is just as important. And when it comes to print and PDF’s, these are formats that are quickly outdated, and it is difficult applying theory to practice. Just because your colleagues have a PDF somewhere in their inbox doesn’t mean they can easily access everything they need to represent your brand in a correct and efficient way.
In the mentioned report it’s stated that brand inconsistency causes market confusion and damages company reputation and credibility. It even embarrasses employees and lowers morale. We can’t repeat this enough: If you want to succeed with your branding, you need to ensure brand consistency.
Also read: Create branding guidelines with a brand management platform
Secure brand consistency with digital brand templates
Being brand police is not an easy task and keeping your eye on the ball 24/7 is not realistic. Instead, you have to create a system and a structure for your branding processes and establish seamless workflows to make sure this works for you and your brand. Not only are you doing yourself a favor by freeing up your time for strategic work, but you are also providing flexibility and efficiency to those in need of brand collateral.
If you make brand templates part of your system, brand inconsistency will be a ghost of the past.
Also read: How to ensure brand consistency with digital design templates
- By making your assets available through digital templates anyone can be a designer without breaking your brand guidelines. This allows everyone in your company to locate and adapt necessary assets in an instant.
- “In an instant” is key in the digital world. Brand templates eliminates bottlenecks that usually occur when graphics need to be adjusted to local needs. By allowing everyone to create their own, there are no delays, and you won’t risk local creativity.
- The template tool secures your brand identity. By deciding in advance what can and can’t be changed, you “lock” your brand identity. Logo and colors remain according to rules, while content such as images or text can be adapted to local needs if necessary.
- Formats and filetypes is a common change request. With brand templates this too is eliminated. Flexible template technology allows users to define the asset size and create the file type they need without any help from you.
The power of digital brand templates is amazing, and the possibilities of controlling your brand output without micromanaging (which is impossible anyway) is pure magic. It’s a marketers dream when colleagues can create their own brand collateral and you can rest assured that your brand will remain consistent, in every platform and channel.
This is how it works:
- Create your assets
- Transform them into digital brand templates through BrandMaster’s Template Studio
- Define what can be altered
- Give your colleagues access to self-serviced brand templates
Also read: Just like that you’ll increase efficiency with template technology
Why do you need digital brand templates?
If you’re still not convinced that this is the way to go, let’s line up some additional benefits. With design templates, you can:
- Protect and strengthen your brand identity: Your brand identity is what separates you from your competitors and it is crucial that you build a brand that stands out from the crowd. With templates, you’re making it easy to enforce a consistent brand policy.
- Increase marketing efficiency: By providing your colleagues with self-serviced digital templates, you no longer need to spend time on adapting and changing assets for those in need. They can help themselves and you can work in peace executing your marketing activities in a timely manner.
- Secure brand strategy success: Nothing is better than when you can spend your time on strategic and value-added tasks. Increased efficiency also means time to work on your strategies.
- Decrease time-to-market: In a digital world, deadlines are short. With brand templates, you’ll have real-time asset creation and deadlines are always met.
- Deliver on demand: A major pain point for companies is the inconsistency that occur when colleagues don’t have the patience and time to wait for the marketing department to deliver on demand. When you have self-service, this is no longer an issue. Everyone can create the assets they need with a few simple steps.
- Reduce costs: Digital brand templates is a real cost saver. Asset creation is done smoothly and on time, leaving time costs at a minimum. Design agencies does not have to be involved in every little change, and the marketing team does not have to spend their valuable time either. Templates simply reduces costs.
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