The saying “consistency is key” might feel like a cliche – but it’s a cliche because, quite simply, it’s true. We commit to consistent behaviours every day in order to build a pattern in our personal habits (i.e. brushing our teeth twice a day for dental hygiene), or in the workplace (meeting deadlines to build trust with clients) – and it’s no different with design and brand identity.
Being consistent is the key that unlocks brand recognition, familiarity and loyalty among your customers. Without consistency across all touchpoints of a brand, it’s difficult for consumers to create a memorable impression of your brand, and thus strong recognition. With recognition comes brand loyalty – and loyalty is what helps a brand stand apart from its competitors. It works like dominoes – once a consumer recognises a brand, they will subconsciously gravitate towards it over one that is unfamiliar, or that constantly switches up its look and messaging.
As a brand identity agency, let us take you through how other brands create and maintain consistency – and why you might need help to settle on a consistent design approach.
1. Maintain a Consistent Tone of Voice
Source: Apple
When we say Apple, which apple did you think of first – the global tech giant and its products, or the fruit? Apple has established itself as one of the most prominent global tech brands, and a huge part of this is excellent consistency in 360-degree branding. Its sleek and minimalist design translates across the brand’s website, packaging, UI/UX design and other collateral. Even the copywriting is recognisable anywhere; Apple’s tone of voice matches its minimalist product design with concise sentences with a hint of smugness.
Tone of voice shapes both design and copywriting. It communicates your brand’s personality and values consistently across all touchpoints, building brand recognition and deepening customer engagement.
How to put this into practice: Develop a brand voice framework that outlines your brand’s personality, values, and communication style. Think “do’s” and “don’ts” for how things should be phrased, written, or responded to. This will serve as a guide for all your content creation or community management needs, and ensuring consistency across different channels.
2. Adapt and Evolve, Gradually
Source: Coca-Cola
Coca-Cola has been around for over 100 years and is easily one of the most recognisable drink brands globally. Everyone is familiar with its red and white colours, iconic script and glass bottle shape – and even though the logo has gone through multiple changes throughout its existence, its brand evolution has been gradual, without significantly altering the overall look and feel.
The brand spends a lot of its budget on advertising and marketing, ensuring consistent exposure towards consumers to maintain recognition and recall. Alongside this, Coca-Cola uses emotive language and taglines to attract consumers like, “Taste the Feeling” and, “Open Happiness”. Its ads often feature people smiling and enjoying their time drinking Coke. This way, Coca-Cola consistently updates its branding to meet modern-day consumer expectations while maintaining brand recognition, which avoids alienating its existing, loyal customer base.
Coca-Cola knows its core values and doesn’t ever deviate from them. They leverage on that by aligning the messaging in their ads to these values and translating the message across multiple channels, ensuring memorability. Because of this, the changes in design over the years have not affected this brand affinity, as the branding elements are consistent, and customer loyalty is maintained.
How to put this into practice: When considering a brand refresh, there’s no need for a drastic makeover. Instead, focus on gradual updates that modernise your look while preserving your core brand elements and values. You’ll still have to calibrate your changes based on the public’s reaction, and you’ll also avoid unneccesary changes that may harm your brand.
3. Use Consistent Branding elements
We are all familiar with the Nike swoosh and popular slogan, “Just Do It”. Like Coca-Cola, Nike has maintained its branding identity over the years, setting them apart from newer brands and positioning themselves as an industry leader.
Nike’s mission statement – “Bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world. If you have a body, you are an athlete” – is translated into its empowering marketing campaigns and partnerships with influential athletes, maintaining consistency no matter the channel.
Source: Nike
What Nike does best is creating balanced content that promotes their products and enriches their audience. The brand often pairs its products with influential athletic figures to maintain its mission statement and translate its values, encouraging its audiences to be active and do their best.
The Nike swoosh holds everything together, but its messaging and highly relatable slogan are a huge part of what makes their marketing work. By using these brand elements consistently – even across very different campaigns focusing on various sports or messages – you can foster brand recall and train your audience to immediately identify a Nike ad amongst all the other noise in the sporting apparel space.
How to put this into practice: Develop a comprehensive brand style guide that outlines all your brand elements, including logo usage, colour palette, typography, imagery, and tone of voice. This will ensure consistency across all your marketing materials and touchpoints.
Building Brand Consistency: A Lesson from Giants
While not every brand can be the next Apple, Coca-Cola or Nike, emulating these industry giants will provide you with valuable lessons in brand consistency.
For those who some help, it’s time to turn to a brand identity agency. Partnering with one can help you define and implement a consistent branding strategy that aligns with your values and resonates with your target audience.
A branding agency can conduct a comprehensive brand audit to assess your current branding strategy and identify areas for improvement. They can then develop a long-term strategy that encompasses all aspects of your brand, from logo and visual identity to messaging and tone of voice. This strategic approach is crucial for achieving brand consistency across multiple channels and media platforms, improving brand recognition, and, ultimately, building the brand loyalty you crave.
Without consistency in your approach, you simply can’t unlock a strong brand identity that truly aligns with your values.
Need to build consistency across your brand? Our strategic communications agencycan help – get in touch with us at [email protected]