The term 'brand' first emerged more than half a century ago as a way of cattle ranchers to identify their animals. As packaged goods started taking off, brands were to differentiate them from the generic competition. Brands became more than a generic name and more about the intangible sum of all the product attributes.
A simplified definition of a brand is a name, term, design, symbol or any other feature that identifies one sellers' goods or services from another. It is also the way a company, organisation or individual is perceived by those who experience it. Brands are perceptions and a company's brand is one of its most valuable assets.
Your company logo is part of your brand and in our blog ‘Presentation Matters’ we outlined why it was so important. Your logo forms part of your visual identity. In this blog we'll take it one step further and cover the importance of brand consistency.
In an increasingly crowded environment, consistency in terms of your company look, feel, tone and messaging builds credibility, trust, recognition and loyalty. This doesn't mean that all your communications need to look the same but there should be some visual cohesion. If a potential customer receives a brochure from your company and then goes to your website to look at what your company offers in more detail, they will expect the brochure and website to have a similar look and feel. If they don't look similar, this may raise doubts in the customers mind about the goods or services they may receive.
Making sure you stick to a number of standards such as colour palette, font and size and spacing of your logo will help ensure there is visual cohesion between all your communications. Setting guidelines will also provide guidance to any designers creating digital or print designs. Every designer has their own visual style and without brand guidelines may impose their own visual identity on a design and dilute any brand equity that has already been built up.
If you look at these examples of recent Vision ICT adverts you can see the consistent use of our brand. The adverts look like part of the same family and as a result our brand identity is strengthened in the eyes of our customers.