Branding: Put on a consistent face

It should be.

Branding is the face you put on your company to show the world. It says a lot about your organization and it makes an impression, whether positive or negative. It defines who you are and the company you keep: what you stand for, the relationships you’ll build, the activities you’ll support.

So, just what are we talking about here? Branding is a carefully crafted body of guidelines and rules that regulate the “look and feel” elements of your business. They encompass the logo, typography, color palette, descriptions and other aspects of what you show the public.

These guidelines give your brand continuity, consistency. Standardization is important in an organization where many people touch the brand. You don’t want two people sending out conflicting versions of the logo or the company description. When that happens, it diminishes some of the company’s public integrity, suggesting that your attention to detail isn’t as sharp as it might be. It also presents different versions of what you want people to see.

Consumers know the logos of famous brands, such as Coca-Cola and Google, and that familiarity engenders confidence. Start sending mixed messages about the brand and that confidence erodes. Uniformity is a virtue. An ever-changing brand – even if the changes are slight – is not.

In the absence of a clearly delineated set of standards, it’s hard for a business to maintain brand integrity. Whether a printed-out document or a PDF file, it’s important to spell out all the particulars of the brand.

Within that document, you should include the logo and its variants (if any). Specify whether any text is allowed to be included in or near the logo – a slogan, for example. Spell out the precise distance all text and other elements must be from your logo. You may decide that the height of a horizontal logo is a good yardstick for how far other elements should be from the logo itself.

It’s often helpful to include several “what not to do” examples in your style guide. For example, you can picture the logo too close to other content, with the wrong colors or containing other branding violations.

Colors are critical when it comes to branding. List the PANTONE colors, the RGB (red, blue and green), CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow and black) and hexadecimal color codes. If this is an area foreign to you, get the help of a graphic designer to determine these designations.

List the fonts that are acceptable for use, too. And write a boilerplate that describes your company for inclusion in all your press releases, unaltered.

Remember, if you need help with your branding or composing a body of standards, don’t hesitate to contact Z Corp PR & Digital. We can guide you through the process.