Brand Consistency In A Globally Accessible World
Is the lack of brand consistency diluting your business image or even worse damaging your brand’s reputation?
Are you a marketing manager or business owner who’s thinking about launching your business into a new market, or maybe you’ve actually already been operating in a market for some time.
If you are you will know how important brand consistency is in terms of building brand awareness, especially when you’re competing, in a highly competitive market, or you’re entering a market where you haven’t established any kind of, presence or authority.
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More opportunities for people and brands to reach markets
With the internet growing at such a rapid pace, and the ability to access the internet becoming more and easier through technology and communications, it’s created more opportunities for people and brands to reach markets you previously would have not been able to reach before. And do business with countries you wouldn’t have thought about doing business with before.
While on the one hand, it’s great for, obviously, business growth. On the other hand, it has brought with it another set of branding challenges.
So what are some of the things that you can do to ensure your brand image and the way it is represented is maintained and consistent?
One of the best ways for me to explain this is to give you an example. We recently did some work for an established UK sports solutions provider, and while they had already established a considerable pool of distributors and dealers in the global market, which had been growing and growing up steadily. What they hadn’t expected was;
- the amount of work that would be involved in servicing and maintaining the demand for brand assets to support dealers in marketing the brand at a local level.
- The consistency of how much work would be involved in terms of making sure that distributors presented their brand to the same, high standards as was expected in the UK.
While the client already had brand guidelines for their UK market activity, they didn’t have one for the global markets. So one of the first things that we did was to create a brand guideline document.
Debbie at FIRE Creative hit the ground running fully immersing herself in the brand, our product ranges and the wider company.
Linda Forster, Global Marketing Manager
Create or review your brand guidelines
So one of the first things that we did was to create a brand guideline document. While they already had a brand guideline for the UK market, they didn’t have one for the global market.
So the first thing that we did was to review the assets that were there already and then upgrade them and bring together a global-specific brand guideline document for the distributors. The second thing that we looked at was what we call a dealer resource file, which was essentially a document that contained all the different existing brands, material, assets, marketing material, and examples of those, really to set a benchmark of what dealers in local countries and local territories could do.
The third part and one of the key elements of the brief was around the way Pulse Fitness wanted to sell and position their products in the global market. This needed to be slightly different to how they were doing it in the UK. They wanted was a more product-specific marketing and advertising campaign that dealers could use to sell the fitness equipment either individually or as a group package. To build out the brand and also maintain consistency.
So why is this important?
Probably the best thing to do is pick out any one of the big global brands. You’ll see one thing that sets a lot of the big well-known brands apart is the consistency of how they use their branding. No matter whether it’s a staff member, a lorry, a shop storefront, or whatever it is, big brands set very clear standards around how their brand is presented at every different touch points.
As you can see brand consistency can actually be a crucial part of helping your brand stand out in the market.
So I really hope you find this useful, and obviously if you know anyone else that might find it helpful then please feel free to share it.
If you are a marketing manager, and you are concerned about the consistency of your current branding and marketing material, here are 3 ways we can help:
1) Schedule a call or book a brand discovery session here.
2) If you would like to learn more about our work with Pulse Fitness, you can access the full study here.
3) Read or watch How To Maximise Your Brand & Marketing for further insights.
How to make your brand stand out
Is your brand identity starting to blending in or look outdated? Is the lack of consistency with your messaging and marketing having a negative impact on your sales & promotional efforts? If so, watch our latest vlog, where Creative Director, Debbie Evran shares 3 strategies on how to make your brand stand out 'for all the right reason' in the marketplace.
Today I want to kick things off by answering the question, "How do you make your brand stand out?” It's a question we get asked a lot by both businesses small and large, So I'm going to share three simple strategies to help you assess whether your brand is blending in with everyone or whether it's standing out.
1 | How up-to-date is your brand identity?
Maybe you've had your brand identity for a long time. How unique is it? How different is it? The economic landscape is constantly moving and changing so quickly and rapidly online. People and brands are having to reinvent themselves a lot faster, maybe within two years you have to re-look at your brand identity and say, "Is it relevant* to the current market and is it relevant to where you're going?"
*(what I mean by relevant is - how representative is your branding to what your business now offers? As a business evolves or grows the branding can often get left behind.)
2 | Are you being consistent with your branding.
From your marketing, your brand identity, your website, your marketing material, is it consistent? And again, is the way that you're communicating through those mediums consistent? And is it compelling enough? That is also something that's really important. You know, it's that whole idea that what you're saying is the same as everybody else? Or, or is it different? Is it unique? I mean the key thing here is really looking for what makes your business different from somebody else?
Of course… we did say three things, so...
3 | Is your brand positioned currently in the marketplace?
This is about looking at where you're positioning your brand in the marketplace. Sometimes a business might get to a point where it realises that in order to move to the next level you need to up your game, elevate everything that you're doing because the market that you were currently serving and the way that you were promoting yourself within that market was okay, but now you want to take your business to another level. And that creates another challenge, for example when you want to take your business from one level to the next and the way you marketed and branded yourself at the current level, no longer serves you in the next level, only because the next level is a lot more competitive.
So those are three strategies to consider when exploring how best to make your brand stand out. Within each of those three concepts, there is obviously a lot of other information. So in the next couple of videos, I'll delve deeper into the specifics of what strategies and ideas that you can do to help your brand; for example, be more consistent or be more attractive.
If you enjoyed the strategies that I've shared today, why not leave a comment below and I'd love to hear what you think.
If you're ready here's 3 ways we can help:
To learn more about how FIRE Creative can help take your business branding and marketing to the next level book a complimentary brand discovery consultation here. In it, we'll explore what's work and what's not along with what your core branding objectives are.