How To Make Your Branding Clear and Consistent

In this post I am going to show you a fun and easy way to make your branding clear and consistent.

Good branding can reduce traffic costs by more than 10 times that of unbranded traffic. It is not unheard of to get 50 ROAS versus 5.

Brands create barriers to switching. That translates to larger and longer lifetime values. It’s about more repeat customers who are more profitable.

But the sad thing is many people get confused about branding.

If You Confuse You Lose

I love this quote from Donald Miller, the author of Building a Story Brand. This is a major factor but it is not the only one. Some others are:

1. Inconsistency - people apply the wrong brand asset at different times.
2. Misunderstanding - people don’t get the purpose of branding.
3. Poor execution - incomplete and poor briefs lead to poor creative assets.
4. Style Guide OCD - 70 plus pages of style guides that never get used.

It doesn’t have to be this way and I have a simple process for you to follow.

Here's how, step by step:

Step 1: Know That Branding Is Hijacking People’s Beliefs.

Brands are what customers perceive them to be. But that doesn’t mean we can’t shape those beliefs.

When you think of the NIKE swoosh what comes to mind? Fast, nimble, movement.

What about the red arches of McDonalds. Hot, Fast, Repeatable Excellence?

Whatever you think most likely others do too.

So our first job is to think about:

• what brands already have the right set of customer beliefs
• you want to associate with your brand.

It is easier to associate beliefs than create them from nothing.

Step 2: Deconstruct Brand Elements

One problem is many people think about the logo, font and colour as making up a brand.

That is a bit like saying the movie it the roaring lion and the font used in the opening title. There is a much richer story to flesh out.

Have a look at my one page brand brief template.

Consider the actors in the story, the music sound track, the food at the table and the number of other elements.

Real branding is about culture, character and personality.

As an example it contains questions like “If your brand was a music genre what would it be?”

If the answer is Australian Hip Hop, then don’t sound track your video ads with electronic dance music. It won’t fit the narrative you are making.

Step 3: Do This With The Team That Are Marketing The Brand

If you have done the branding exercise by yourself then no one in the team is going to be “on the same page”. Real change comes from Leadership commitment and employee involvement.

This is a fun and easy 1-2 workshop to do with your team. You can pre assign questions to people and have them present back to the team. The team will know if it is on brand or not. Those conversations are magic.

Hope your brand is too.

Regards

Ant

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