Posted: October 14, 2019
“But what’s your brand identity?”
“Branding is way more than just a logo.”
“Networking today is all about personal branding.”
Branding is a hot topic in the world of business and realm of personal development lately. With everyone having their own side hustle and trying to turn their name into a brand, you’d be forgiven for thinking branding has jumped ship from mighty corporations to any individual with an Instagram account.
Brand identity is still an integral part of building a business. It can even be a major player when it comes to taking your small business or start-up from its current plateau to the big leagues.
Think of it this way: would McDonald’s be as iconic or recognizable from the freeway without the golden arches? How would you find your favorite apps amid a sea of icons on your phone without instantaneously recognizing their icon? Branding traverses both the digital frontier and the physical world. Mastering your brand identity across both will help your company continue to grow.
But having a brand identity isn’t going to get you success alone. Setting up a brand guide helps you and your team utilize the same playbook when it comes to your leveraging your brand assets.
The Benefits of a Brand Guide
Consistency: Remember the McDonald’s golden arches mentioned previously? One reason that McDonald’s is so ubiquitous globally is that their brand guide is consistent internationally. The same golden arches, menu, colors and font that you see in Tupelo, Mississippi is going to be as similar as it can possibly be in Dubai (minus the language adaptations, of course). Whether you’re marketing via a billboard, street sign, website, or paid digital ad, you want your company’s branding to be the same across the board.
Brand voice: You may hear about Wendy’s more often than you eat there because their social media team consistently delivers entertaining material. For Wendy's social media branding guide, they decided to use a very casual, snarky tone to reap higher engagement with other brands and their followers.
Recognition: Consistency leads to recognition. The bite taken out of the apple logo for Apple is consistent across all iPhones, iPods, iPads, and computer products. Even when most mobile phones look generally the same now, iPhones are recognizable because of the Apple logo. You want to aim for that level of recognition across your branding efforts.
Guidelines: Employees and third-party vendors will find their jobs are easier to complete when they have a defined set of rules to follow regarding log usage, color palette, styling for additional design assets, and anything else you wish to include in your brand guide. The last thing you want are four different flyers that all look completely different and don’t follow the look of your brand.
Professionalism: If you’ve seen a business with four different font types and a million colors on their website, your first instinct is that it’s unprofessional and that you may not trust that business with your spending money. Major corporations take the time and energy to instill a sense of professionalism by using the consistency and brand recognition of their brand guides.
What does a brand guide consist of?
The What: Mission statement, core values, elevator pitch, personality, tone
What does your company stand for? Why does your business do what it does? The mission statement and core values will convey the purpose of your business. The elevator pitch is a brief summary of the mission statement and core values. Your personality and tone will dictate how formal or informal communications should be and how PR and marketing should respond to events.
The Look: Logo, color palette, typeface, spacing, text effect rules
This is what people tend to think of when they talk about branding: what does your brand look like? You’ve got your logo, your color palette, your chosen fonts, and all the additional styling that makes you stand out from the crowd. Once you’ve set all those brand specifics, stick to it!
The How: Imagery/content catalogue samples
You’ll likely end up using stock photos or video, as well as graphics, to spread the word about your business, whether that’s on a website, a business card, or a Facebook post. Creating a content catalogue will allow you to look back over previous content used and repurpose existing content for new purposes. It should also reflect your brand guide, so someone new will have a better idea about your company’s branding.
How to Create a Brand Guide
If you are a small business, new company, or start-up looking to settle on your branding and create a brand guide, working with a professional designer is a well-spent investment. If you choose to create a brand identity on your own, you may find that as your grow, you’ll end up paying for a more expensive rebrand down the road.
However, you may find that for the time being, all you need is a defined set of rules for your existing branding. If that is the case, you’ll want to put in one place all your brand assets, typeface rules, chosen fonts and colors. You can use a word document to get started, a PowerPoint, or even a folder on a shared drive. As you grow and expand your branding, you’ll want to create a formal document that outlines your brand guidelines.