The hardest part about branding is keeping tight control on your branding consistency — always using the same logo, sticking with your tag line, maintaining your presence in the media, sticking with YOUR plan. The reason that branding consistently is hard is that it’s so much easier, and often faster, to get things done and checked off your list.
We’ve all done it. Grabbed a logo and slapped it on a piece of advertising and in our haste to get it to print, we simply “forget” to ask ourselves how it fits with our manifesto, or check to make sure that it looks and sounds like the other advertising we’ve done, or that the logo is the “right one” and not the one with the funky colors. It’s tempting in that moment to waiver from your brand position and just get the ad done and sent off – but if you do, you’re doing yourself and your business a huge disservice.
Faster isn’t better for branding consistently
photo credit Arend
Every person who sees that hastily put together ad that is not tightly aligned with your brand, will see your company representing itself differently. And while that may not be the end of the world, it certainly does make it harder for you the next time you want to put an ad out – because they won’t know what to expect from you. You’ve also lost a vital opportunity to reinforce your brand message and strengthen your overall brand position by sticking with consistency.
Admittedly, making sure that everything your company produces is representative of your brand is hard. It’s especially hard for product promotions. But if you spend the time and find a way to make the product promotion reflect your brand, you’ll be better off. The dollars you spend on marketing the promotion will be leveraged in the future every time you run a new ad – and that’s a worthwhile investment.
So while it’s harder to keep brand consistently, it will payoff in the long run with leveraged dollars and customers who know what to expect from your company. And when they know what to expect, they know why they would want to do business with you.
- Published: September 9, 2010
- Author: Tisha Oehmen
- Blog: Finding Brand Blog
- Category:
- Tags: Advertising, brand, brand consistency, , brand position, Branding, Consistency, declaration of passion, logo, Manifesto, marketing, product promotion, promotion, Service, Tagline
- Comments:
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Excellent team to work with! Mike and Tisha are fantastic at coming up with new ideas while staying true to my companies vision, values, and…
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Can not recommend this team enough. What started as a one-time website re-design has evolved into Paradux handling the vast majority of our marketing. Business…
We would not be able to run as smoothing, quickly, or efficiently if it was not for Paradux Media Group. Tisha and team is hands…
Recently, I had the opportunity to work with Paradux Media on a website build, and I just couldn’t have been happier with the process and…
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branding 101. Well written although through the use of borderline too many buzz words/phrases. Tell us all something we don’t know. With a bio and credentials like yours you should be able to come up with something (well, lots of somethings) more than this!
I know it seems basic to someone who understands the need for branding, but in my experience branding 101 is exactly what many businesses struggle with, particularly around the consistency aspect. Even mid-large businesses regularly take the expedient approach rather than being true to the brand. Does that foot with your experience?
On a side note, what branding topics would you like to see here?