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As marketing communications professionals, we've often been accused by colleagues as being anal and OCD --
-- always so obsessed with proper standards, spelling, formatting, etc. In larger organizations, those communications standards manuals we create for employees may sit and collect dust. It's just another chore for staff to think about, isn't it?
But, consistency is such an important part of branding. It sets the tone for the look and feel of a brand. It builds credibility and professionalism. Yet I'm always surprised by how many national organizations overlook it and allow their remote office locations to do their own thing, or the remote locations do their own thing because the national office didn't respond to a request in a timely fashion.
I've seen regional and local communications pieces that look very amateurish compared with the collateral produced by their national offices. And I've heard stories from employees of major corporations that their head office marketing departments just can't keep up with staff requests from across the country, so they produce their own material.
From low-budget to high-end, it seems that many companies and organizations are experiencing challenges in this area. What does your organization or company do to ensure brand consistency? What are you doing right, and what do you think they should be doing to improve? Let's talk!
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Comments
As part of a very large national organization ( The Arc of the United States ranked 10th by Forbes), we are stymied by a disjointed naming convention where our local chapter identities differ from our national organization. Hence, while a well known brand locally, we suffer nationally...especially in attracting corporate support among other things. Suggestions for developing consistency in our names?
Posted by: John Askew | 05.16.06
Great topic! My personal favorite. We here at the Arts Center (pricetower.org), have just underwent a full branding overhaul and repolishing. We started from the ground up with marketing research, logo investigation and then have branched out with our branding ad campaign, website, signage and slogans (The Landmark Experience or The Landmark Destination). I do think that many non-profits have not taken this aspect of the business seriously enough. We have seen a change in our patron's pride of our organization and the buzz about what we do has increased over the last year. We began this process in Jan. 2005 and so far we have had great response with the results. It is a continual process that we have to 1) inform our internal staff about 2) educate our public 3)evaluate the results in order to keep our image fresh and consistant. It is tough to keep everyone on the same page, but I believe that is my #1 job.
Posted by: Jennifer Cordero | 05.16.06
I am the Creative Director over 2 automotive aftermarket performance companies, and worked for 6 years at an agency before this.
I think one of the biggest problems that I see with consistency in branding is that people don't understand it's importance. I continually have to educate clients, customers, junior designers, fellow employees, etc. as to why consistency is so important and they still don't get it. I've even had GMs and Marketing VPs fight me on the issue and not allow me to do my job to ensure consistency in the brands I manage.
I get people wanting to bend the rules and change the look "just this once" or "because I think it looks cool" all the time. No, you can't put flames on the logo, you can't change the color - not even on the Christmas party invite. Yes, you have to use the corporate fonts, you have to follow the ad template and yes, that new product package needs to look like all our other products'.
Truth is, I'd love to mix things up and do new things to satisfy my creativity. But consistency is key to brand building.
Posted by: Kevin Foutz | 10.17.07