Marcus RichardsThe message that your brand communicates is the foundation of any marketing campaign, over multiple marketing channels and platforms. So, how do you ensure that consistency in branding is maintained? Let’s take a look.
Visual elements
When establishing consistent brand messaging, one element you must consider is the visual elements. This will ensure that any graphics, pictures, and other design work is consistent across platforms. To exemplify this, let’s look at TV shows and films that have developed online casino games – when playing slots online, you can find games like The Goonies: Hey You Guys, Ted Cash Lock, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire Mystery Box, and Deal or No Deal slot games. These games are instantly recognizable as being from the same franchises as their respective TV shows and films thanks to consistency in their visual branding, thematics, motifs, and overall design.
In order to do so yourself, you’ll want to look at things like color palette, logo, font choice, imagery, and any people or characters that will be represented. The color palette you select should stay consistent across all platforms – for Deal or No Deal, for example, the red, white, and black palette is used both in the TV show and online game. The logo should convey your brand image, and be memorable – take Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, for example, whose logo is iconic.
Looking at fonts and typography, this too should be consistent across visual design, ad copy, and even email campaigns – just look at Ted, which stylistically used all lowercase letters for its simple yet effective logo, or The Goonies, which has one of the most unique and unforgettable fonts of all time, so much so it’s used on the driveway of the real-life house’s signage!
“goondocks sign” (CC BY 2.0) by popturfdotcom
Language
With the design bases covered, it’s time to turn your head to the written elements of your branding. First of all, it is important to ensure that you have a clear brand message that effectively communicates your values as a brand. Why is this important? Well, 82% of consumers will look for a brand that shares the same values as themselves – if they don’t, they’ll take their business elsewhere. In fact, 75% of consumers reported parting ways with even their favorite brands due to their values not aligning. Just take eco-friendliness, for example – not only can this align your values with consumers’ ethics, but 55% would even pay more for products produced by a sustainable brand.
Now that you have solidified your brand values, what you stand for, and what you represent, you’ll need to get to grips with how you get this across to your audience. At this point, you’ll want to look at your word choice, voice, and tone. Settling on a very specific set of language guidelines ensures that your tone of voice is consistent across all written communication and campaigns. Not only this, but it ensures that the personality of your brand is effectively being conveyed through these communications.
Final thoughts
Establishing and maintaining brand consistency takes a careful balance between all elements, ensuring that the message conveyed by the words you use, tone of voice employed, color palette, imagery, and more, all contribute towards a robust and well-rounded multi-channel presence. Creating specific guidelines for both the written and visual elements alike will give a point of comparison, a benchmark if you will, through which to better implement such consistency.
