“Branding” is a buzzword that seems to have long legs. Marketing experts have long talked about the importance of your brand, but a lot of folks aren’t quite sure what that means. For many, it’s just another phrase that gets thrown around, without meaning or context to back it up.
While a lot of people will use the shorthand “brand” for a company logo, a brand is about so much more. “A brand is the collective impact or lasting impression from all that is seen, heard, or experienced by customers who come into contact with a company and/or its products and services.” (Source: Investopedia.com)
Your brand is the experience consumers or partners have when engaging with your organization. As such it’s critical to control how that brand is managed – whether it’s your logo, font choices, photo selection in your marketing efforts, and more. To that end, a brand guide is a necessary, yet often overlooked component of your marketing arsenal.
We always provide (at the very least) a basic brand guide when we create a logo for a client. Some clients have very basic needs, so pointers on how to use their new logo, what colors are appropriate, and suggestions on coordinating font choices are enough to get them headed in the right direction.
Other clients need, or request, a more robust guide. These will include the aforementioned guidance on their logo, fonts and colors, but will also dig into things like identity/collateral layout specifications, tone and language guidelines, specifications for clothing and embroidery, and even directions on photo selection. Some guides can easily push 80 pages or more!
The LRCC Brand Usage and Style Guide (click to view.)
A good example of a guidebook that falls right in the middle is the brand guide we recently completed for the Lansing Regional Chamber of Commerce (LRCC). The LRCC had an established logo, but their communication efforts were a bit disjointed, with multiple staff members creating graphics that didn’t follow a consistent look and feel. No one was doing anything wrong, there just wasn’t any sort of overarching guidelines for them to follow.
We took their logo and built a straightforward, effective guide around it, creating new identity pieces, selecting new modern, yet timeless fonts, established suitable a color palette, helped define who their brand audience is, and provided guidance on how to select photos for communications. We also brought in content the Chamber had previously created, such as their Mission, Vision, and Strategic Objectives, which transformed their Brand Guide from just a “logo guide” to a singular resource for both Chamber staff and shareholders’ reference.
The nice thing about these guides is as needs arise (the current iteration of the LRCC guide doesn’t discuss how the logo will be applied to clothing, for instance), the book can be updated and redistributed to the staff for reference. The best style guides are living documents, that change and adapt with the organization, providing guardrails while still allowing for creative freedom and expression.
Obviously, a lot of work goes into a book like this, but it’s effort that is well worth it. Studies suggest consistent branding will return 23% more revenue on a yearly basis. But only one in four businesses has a defined brand guideline, and 60% of those businesses say the material they create doesn’t always conform to brand guidelines. (Source: Lucidpress)
Even if you have an established logo, if you don’t have a clearly defined set of guidelines on how to USE that logo, you’re potentially leaving money on the table. And I don’t think that’s something any business-owner wants to do.
If you’re interested in learning more about elevating your brand with a new brand style guide, give me a shout at stephen@gotandem.biz.
