Aligning your creative material is key to building your brand equity with your consumers. With increased brand equity you also increase the credibility, trust and money generating potential of your brand.

Creative material is anything that pertains to your brand including the website, logo, business cards, critical brochures, etc. Really anything that is associated with your brand especially those tangible pieces that you might leave behind with potential customers.

The Natural Downfall of Creative Design

Many times as companies grow larger, individuals might take liberty to create materials needed for sales calls, meetings, etc. This can be dangerous because it creates inconsistencies in how your brand is presented.

Inconsistent branding can cause you to lose opportunities in building brand equity and professionalism.  From a marketing and sales perspective, it is difficult to get prospects to hear a message.  In fact, many prospects have to hear the same message 5-9 times before they even register it.  Now imagine each of your main points of customer exposure has a different message!  It’s nearly impossible for a prospect to understand what you brand is about.

Because items like brochures, business cards, and other collateral sometimes get the most exposure it is important to make sure that these items are aligned and consistent in presentation.

Try This

Dig up all of your collateral and lay it on a table so you can visually see if there are any glaring inconsistencies. This exercise might also reveal some hidden opportunities for improvement.

Things that will typically be misaligned are color shades, distortion of images, logo variations, multiple fonts, and an inconsistent “voice”.  Aside from the design, the content should be written with consistent messaging and over the years, this tends to change.  If the message needs to change, great!  However, all pieces being used should reflect the new messaging.

Create brand guidelines to clearly communicate what is allowed and not allowed when creating new material for different projects. This is a great way to keep consistency and build brand equity.  Someone internal to the company must be your brand guardian making sure others use the brand as you intend.

Not sure if your brand collateral is aligned? Contact Iconic for a free consultation.

 

 

 

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