Insights into Building Comprehensive Brand Guides
Every company benefits from a brand guide, from a small business to a multi-million dollar corporation. When a company’s brand image, messaging, and promise are consistent and cohesive, they have a better chance of residing in the consumer’s mind. However, there is a caveat to merely possessing a brand guide. It can quickly become as useless as a screen door on a submarine or even dismissed if a clear strategy isn’t employed to create it.
It’s natural for a brand guide to become outdated over time, especially if it is a bit narrow in focus. Suppose companies view their brand guide as a flexible tool allowing creativity and adaptation while keeping specific guardrails in place. In that case, the guide can evolve right along with the company.
But how do you strike that harmonious balance between brand guidelines and evolution?
Aligning with Company Values and Mission
Once upon a time, someone founded your company based on a solution. They had an idea for a product or service that solved a problem for a particular niche. The rest is history. But as time goes on and the company grows, you don’t want to forget the why of it all. Why are you doing this? Why do you believe in it? The answers to those questions are your core beliefs and values and should make up your core messaging.
Your brand guide needs to reflect the company’s core beliefs and values. If you are about to refresh it, revisit your “why” to ensure you remain true to it with any adjustments you make.
Creating a Brand Guide with Longevity
A brand guide is just that: a guide. If it’s too rigid and doesn’t allow for changing trends or societal and technological shifts, it hinders creativity and growth and risks becoming tone-deaf.
On the flip side, the brand identity of the company is eroded if the brand guide is loosey-goosey and the sales team is given leeway to do whatever they feel on any given day. It becomes a buffet of unrelated themes, colors, illustrations, and words, blending in marketing chaos.
Your brand guide can provide direction and rules while allowing creativity and flexibility. You can create adaptable templates for staff to work within while still customizing for the medium. An important guideline is which elements can change and which are non-negotiable. Each brand asset should have guidelines for use tied to it. Funny icons and graphics intended for an Instagram story may not be appropriate for use in a product video.
Creating Consistency Across Touchpoints
How does your potential customer get a feel for your brand? It’s so much more than just a logo. It’s the look, feel, and the story behind what’s being sold. These elements all need to be cohesive to build a solid brand identity. A brand guide ensures a consistent impression no matter the touchpoint. You will need a deep well of assets to draw from when communicating across various mediums.
Start from the ground up. Talk to your sales and marketing teams about their ideas for where and how the company should interact with your audience. Next, list all touchpoints, from Zoom backgrounds to product videos, no assets are off the table. Now you are ready to fill that well of assets and make the brand consistent across the board. There’s the sequel a desperate studio needs: Indiana Jones and the Well of Assets. Will Indy have the tools needed to post to TikTok in the correct tone of voice for the company?!… Straight to streaming TV.
Speaking of tone of voice, do you want it to be conversational and quirky or strictly professional and formal? Examine your audience personas to develop your brand voice and use it across all of your messaging. You can create a messaging grid to align external communication on all mediums. This saves time and ensures cohesiveness in messaging/voice.
Comprehensive Components of a Brand Guide
Beyond the assets, your brand guide should also incorporate a few abstract elements: market trends, consumer behavior, and changing technology.
Reacting to Market Trends and Consumer Behavior
The ever-changing shifts in market dynamics, trends, and audience expectations can trigger the need for how the brand guide is used from an aesthetic standpoint. For example, if market research shows that your audience cares more about environmentally friendly production processes than ever, you may want to rethink your messaging and its vehicle. You might need to reevaluate your messaging grid so that the hierarchy touts your B Corp certification or highlights that you’ve changed your packaging to reduce the reliance on plastic.
Sometimes, consumers use your product in a manner you never imagined. A great example of this is Elmer’s Glue… when they learned glue was selling out in stores because pre-teens were using it to make slime and film themselves playing with it on social media. What to do with that? Well, they adapted some of their advertising and packaging to sell Elmer’s slime-making ability and set up a slime-making station for kids at their HQ. But you can bet that the core of Elmer’s branding stayed intact despite discussing something as left-field as slime.
That’s the balance you want to achieve with your brand guide.
Adapting to New Platforms and Technology
Your brand guide must be as nimble as a cat trying to avoid a bath to incorporate changes driven by digital innovation. If TikTok were to be banned in the US, something just as painfully addictive would replace it, and companies would need to learn the best way to market on a new platform. Similar to the thinking that needs to be adopted with upcoming tech like Augmented/Virtual Reality.
Using technology to your advantage, roll out new brand updates digitally first and see how your customer base reacts. If your changes hit home, then move to creating physical and print assets where applicable.
Tools and Resources for Evolving a Brand Guide
Now that you’re ready to create or update your brand guide, how can you do it efficiently and effectively? I suggest software platforms that streamline the work, such as Adobe for marketing, Figma for product or digital and Canva for sales teams. These tools help to make cross-team collaboration easier.
Feeling stuck or overwhelmed? Are you aware your company brand needs a defibrillator but are unsure if it’s the messaging or the illustrations that need a shock? Collaborating with an agency or consultant can help. An external expert will guide you through the process and help you see past your blind spots.
Checklist for a Comprehensive Brand Guide
Before you embark upon an evolution to your brand guide, take the following into account:
- Revisit your company’s core beliefs and values. Ensure they are the foundation of your brand guide.
- Find a balance of rules and flexibility within your brand guide. Define when customization is allowed, and what assets shall remain unchanged.
- Define corresponding use cases and assets.
- Use customer touchpoints to define assets and messaging.
- Research market trends, consumer behavior, and new technologies and discuss how and when you will adapt to them.
- Identify software tools that will usher you along in brand guide creation.
- Know when an outside expert will make the process easier and the outcome better.
As your company grows, having a comprehensive and flexible brand guide in place ensures your brand identity and reach increase right along with revenue. But you’ll want to put a clear strategy in place before ever moving forward with changes to your brand guide. Know who your company is, what you want it to represent to your ideal customer, and where those customers can be found in the wild.
Thinking about your brand guide now, aren’t cha? I encourage you to assess your current guide and consider whether an update is needed to align with current or future goals. I’m here if you need a brand guide sherpa.