The Importance of Brand Consistency
To strengthen brand recognition, expose your customers to your company’s primary messaging, visual branding, and other features consistently.
When you travel with Singapore Airlines, you feel that many aspects communicated through various media are extended to the aircraft – the Singapore Girl, the high price levels, the ambience etc. Due to this, Singapore Airlines has been consistently voted among the top airlines in the world
An advertisement interrupts your TV viewing. The white backdrop with natural, smiling ladies in white shirts and tank tops is light and fresh. The Dove ad is recognizable without a narrator or branding. How? by recognizing consistent marketing messages like celebrating true beauty and a clean, fresh appearance. Dove has gained global brand recognition by using these traits to develop its brand narrative.
Even in traditionally unmarketable areas like healthcare and utilities, competition for consumers is severe. Branding sets you apart from the competition, but it doesn’t mean anything if you don’t base your brand promise on reality or keep up with it. Delivering the brand promise across all stakeholder touchpoints builds brands. Trust, loyalty and promotion are built on consistent, desirable experiences.
Brand Consistency?
The way a company communicates its core values, brand promise, customer experience, and brand identity is through brand consistency. It means how well your company’s marketing material matches your brand identity and rules. Brand consistency ensures brand recognition across marketing platforms and touchpoints. This unifies the brand experience for current and future consumers.
Brand consistency builds trust and loyal consumers. Consistency makes your brand more identifiable and trustworthy to customers. This helps people connect with your brand.
According to Harvard professor Gerald Zaltman, 95% of purchases are subconscious, making them more emotional than practical. Good marketers sell sentiments rather than products because people are motivated by emotions. Why go to the same laundry detergent or coffee shop? because you know what to anticipate and will love it. By providing a consistent experience across channels, you build brand awareness, trust, and repeat business.
Many executives oddly oppose keeping the brand promise they spent so much time and money on. They may neglect brand ideals while managing their team’s daily tasks. It occurs more frequently than you think because people assume branding is about generating a phrase and logo that millions of people will remember.
Authenticity—real accomplishments, strengths, and emotions—is the foundation of successful brands. Leaders frequently assume that branding can hide a broken system or persuade the world of a lie if they spend enough money. Consumers know better.
Branding fails if an organisation:
- Unwilling to hear what consumers, staff, and others say about them.
- Reluctant to discover employees’ strengths and personalities, allowing them to become brand advocates
- Reluctant to spend on high-quality components, including frontline personnel training, to ensure brand consistency in customer experience
- Finding creative ways to communicate about your brand every day while being on-brand is another problem of brand consistency. Maintaining brand consistency while updating the design for new campaigns or events may be difficult.
- Finally, making brand ambassadors of personnel is tricky. Employees must uphold the brand’s principles to be brand consistent.
Branding requires consistency. Consistency transcends the product. Stakeholder interactions must convey the brand promise. From R&D to finance to talent development, every department contributes to branding.
Consistency doesn’t exclude change. Consistency allows you to expand your offerings to more individuals. After consistently delivering on your brand promise, you can grow.
Richard Branson, a brand name, went from leading a record label to an airline. He built a multibillion-dollar corporation on risk-taking and adventure. He surprises people yet always delivers a customer-focused, visually beautiful, mega-cool experience.
Brand consistency measures
Three key areas where companies must be consistent to build loyalty:
- Consistent customer service builds brand trust.
- Values—Speak and act.
- Brand identity elements: these graphic elements distinguish your brand from competitors.
- Branding Guidelines
Branding rules govern how employees represent the company. Logo, typography, colour palette, typefaces, photos, and story components (tone, POV) are included. The brand’s narrative, buyer personas, and more should constantly be represented in firm material. Create a digital asset and brand gateway for workers to utilise brand standards to motivate the marketing team. This will ensure that everyone in the firm has access to the latest branding rules, even if markets change.
- Visual Elements
Visual consistency is crucial to branding. Make sure your visual identity matches the branding style guide across all marketing materials. Have a distinct visual identity that customers remember, and give it a competitive edge by using a cohesive strategy across all contact points.
- Help with internal branding
Recognize company-wide brand consistency. Encouraging staff to understand the brand’s values, messaging, and narrative helps firms seem more professional to consumers. An organisation might appoint a brand manager to oversee its products and services to aid internal efforts. Brand managers may ensure staff know about consistent branding, use the proper brand voice in marketing, and follow brand rules.
- Brand evolution
Branding may vary as firms adapt to market developments. Companies and goods must adapt to market requirements. When this occurs, keep branding consistency in mind and examine these modifications. Don’t change brand values. Instead, logos, typefaces, and colour palettes may vary. Take a haircare company. They may adjust their bottles’ packaging or use recycled plastic to meet the market’s need for less plastic.
Building trust and differentiation
Brand consistency builds audience trust. Brands can build trust, become instantly recognizable, and go above and beyond what customers expect by using consistent brand language and visual elements that reflect their corporate identity. By developing a favourable brand image with customers, the aforementioned brand consistency techniques boost brand value and equity.
