Strengthen & Grow Your Brand

Brand consistency: Building trust & value

Creating brand guidelines is the best way of formalising the correct behaviour of your brand assets, therefore standardising your brand’s visual expression. Using brand guidelines promotes the proper and consistent use of the brand assets. This consistency helps you build brand equity, which is your gold dust!

Brand guidelines are created at different depths according to the scope of work and amount of brand touchpoints included. Fundamentally, brand guidelines must consist of the following:

Logo — Your logo’s proper use forms the foundation. This includes clear instructions about how the logo should appear, where it can be placed, and how much space it needs around it (known as clearspace) to maintain its visual impact.

Colour and typography palettes — These guides ensure visual consistency. This section specifies your brand's exact colour codes, how they should be used, the fonts that represent your brand’s personality and how to apply them effectively.

Brand touchpoints — Print and digital applications show how your brand lives in the real and virtual worlds. This covers everything from business cards and packaging to website designs and social media layouts. Each application needs precise specifications to maintain brand consistency across different formats and sizes.

Tone-of-voice — Your brand’s voice is equally crucial. This section explains how your brand should sound in writing, from social media posts to product descriptions. This verbal identity should reflect your brand’s core values and personality while speaking to your audience in a way that resonates with them. Your tone of voice reinforces your brand strategy, purpose, core values and personality archetype through the verbal elements of your brand touchpoints. This includes the use of your tagline, your product instructions, social media captions, and all forms of copywriting.

Your brand guidelines help you to build trust through recognition, and every time someone encounters your brand looking and sounding exactly as they expect, it reinforces their connection with your business. This consistent presentation helps build valuable brand equity over time.

Your brand equity is your gold dust. A core purpose of your brand is to build trust in the minds of your consumers. Companies build brand equity through your customer’s consistent, positive interactions with your brand.

Consistent expression of your brand is essential to keep in mind when creating any brand touchpoint. Your brand guidelines should be treated as your brand’s bible. 

Launching your brand

There is no secret sauce to launching your new brand. When building awareness and trust, focus on consistency and quality.

If you have a small team, focus on a couple of the social platforms you’re comfortable with. LinkedIn is the best platform for B2C, and TikToc and Instagram are the best platforms for B2C. Be consistent with posting content of genuine value, tips and tricks, and insider knowledge. Document your story, your process, your ‘why’.

You do not need to post 20 social media stories in the first day! Build your brand equity naturally and organically for the long term. Building your brand really is a long game. Competitors will rise and fall, don’t compare yourself, don’t focus on others.

SEO is more important than ever, as every market has more competition. Think of a bicycle wheel. The wheel functions because it has many spokes supporting the weight as the wheel goes around. These spokes are all connected in the middle wheel hub. Think of the hub as your website, your digital shopfront. You want to build out all of the spokes to support traffic to your website. Social media, blogging, paid ads, backlinks. These are all ways of building spokes. Again, quality and consistency remain the focus.

Common mistakes to avoid when launching your brand

When the logo is placed near other elements or within frames such as LinkedIn profile images, the logo needs room to breathe. This whitespace is known as ‘clearspace’.

When a brand uses a combination mark (logomark + wordmark), social media profile icons should only include the logomark and not the wordmark. This is because on social media platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook, the company’s name always accompanies profile icons. Using the logomark only in profile icons allows the logomark to use the whole frame space while still using enough clearspace and easily viewable when presented at small sizes on the platform.