…but you don’t need to be a designer to maximise your brand’s potential.

Everything that comes out of your business will be judged, and not just your service or products. Every piece of communication, whether that’s an email, a PowerPoint presentation, a Google doc or a LinkedIn post created in Canva is as important as any large branding, or advertising campaign. It’s the consistency of brand codes, values and yes ‘design’ that builds trust and credibility for any brand.

Half the battle is knowing what your most common outputs are likely to be. It could be that your business runs a very strong email strategy in which case you need a building block approach to Mail Chimp or Brevo.

Or it could be that you rely heavily on quick fire LinkedIn posts that you create in-house in Canva. Either way, what’s important is that you, as a business, can ensure that the comms look, feel and sound like they are from the same stable.

‘Brand design’ is the visual and tonal translation of an organisations passionate purpose. This set of ‘codes’ distinguishes one brand from another and is normally beautifully crafted into a guidelines document, however…

“85% of organisations have brand guidelines but only 30% enforce them consistently”.

Marq (formerly Lucidpress) State of Brand Consistency Report 2021

There’s nothing helpful about being given a brand guidelines document if you have no idea how to use it. Onboarding, and having your people understand your passionate purpose is essential but it is imperative that they can hit the ground running with the necessary templates and brand toolkits.

If your brand has been created well, and your agency has done their due diligence, then you should have all the necessary templates and assets to maintain brand consistency. The important thing is to have these assets and tools readily available, and just as importantly, fit for purpose and easy to use.

At Yolk Creative London Ltd , we often recommend running brand workshops and doing ‘handover’ tutorials to ensure that our clients and their in-house teams are in the best possible position to understand how the brand toolkits work and what’s best practice. This allows them to get the best out of the assets and the best out of the brand that they represent.?

Now I know I said that you don’t need to be a designer to maximise your brands potential, and that is true, as long as you’re able to understand design principles.

I’m not for one minute suggesting that it’s as ‘easy as Canva’ to deliver branding but having the right templates in place which have been designed well certainly helps with visual consistency.

Learning to understand how a brand has been put together, and being able to use its codes properly, is a by product of the people working with the templates and the creatives who conceived them communicating effectively.

Guiding Smart Energy GB… below the line.

Smart Energy GB is ‘the’ independent, non-profit, government-backed organisation that helps households and small businesses across Great Britain understand how smart meters can benefit them, their families, and the environment.

Our purpose on this particular project was to decipher and deliver a unified approach to the new brand roll out in 2021, ensuring Smart Energy GB could function with confidence and without brand consistency being a concern.?

We worked closely with the Smart Energy GB team, AMV BBDO and an extensive wider all agency group and were responsible for setting the tone for all comms including guidance for online and social advertising.

We produced a complete BTL toolkit, including a style guide and the full inventory of print and digital design templates. These were distributed to the Smart Energy GB internal team who then were taken through the kit in a branding handover session. This enabled the whole team (and third parties) to coordinate their efforts for the launch of the full campaign.?

Don’t leave me hangin’ - keeping an eye on Bimuno?.

Some agencies see the handover of the guidelines as the end of a project; however, I think that it’s a good idea to do a creative review, or audit, of what the business is doing with its new brand in the early stages of roll out – this not only helps iron out any creases, it’s also an opportunity to highlight any additional needs that the client may have. A good example of this is the branding audit that was carried out with Bimuno after their initial brand relaunch.

By working with their internal team, we were able to assist them in getting to grips with the guidelines, ensuring that our design sensibilities were considered. When you’re dealing with a huge amount of content, and assets, for a launch it’s easy to get tunnel vision and lose track of the ‘brand design’ and the importance of consistency.

The examples here show how we helped advise, and shape, the use of the brand assets for the internal artwork team. I will never take any credit away from an in-house team who are expected to deliver output at pace with a new brand.

In-house teams get a bad rep, but I think the onus is on the agency to look after these teams of talented people and make sure that they are in the best possible position to deliver on the brands potential.

Identifying & understanding the blockers to good brand building.

Yolk Creative London’s insights piece entitled ‘How to make your brand mean business’ explores what the potential internal and external ‘blockers’ are to having a successful brand.

Templating and guidance are essential components to maximising a brands potential, but what else is there?

Find out how to make a convincing case for investing in brand AND have the ability to hit the ground running by downloading the insights piece here:

https://thisisyolk.co.uk/how-to-make-a-brand-mean-business