You know it’s extremely important for your company brand to remain consistent. Your goal is to provide one unified voice across all media platforms. Brand presence should be distinguishable, much like an author or journalist is recognizable by their writing style, your company should be recognized by its brand. You know all of these things, but are still curious: When Do I Need a Professional?
Why Do Professionals Become So Annoyed by DIY Designers?
Is it because they are eating into professionals’ profits? No. Well maybe a little. However, the most common complaint among pros is that client produced materials destroy brand image. Professional designers, copywriters, and marketers work tirelessly to build and maintain company brands. They use carefully selected elements and language to target a specific audience. The number one problem of companies attempting to create their own print and media is that these elements and language are not being consistently used, and therefore the company’s brand and image is inconsistent.
What is Brand Recognition?
My brother and I used to play a game when we were younger. During our favorite TV shows we would race each other to guess which company’s commercial was playing before any logos or names were mentioned. Close to 80% of the time we were right about which commercial belonged to what company. That’s the sort of brand recognition you want. Think about some of the world’s strongest brands. To illustrate this point, one of my advertising professors in school explained that Coca-Cola is the second most recognized phrase in the world (“ok” is number one). If you were to travel to another country and see an ad for Coke, you would be able to identify the brand regardless of the language used. How has Coke accomplished this feat? Superb branding strategy.
What Do You Have Already?
Hopefully you invested in your identity. Remember, good design says in seconds what your reputation says over a lifetime. It’s the reason you are well dressed and well groomed for meetings. As hard as we try to advocate for getting to know someone, first impressions matter. If you only have the budget to work with a professional on one project, I would strongly advocate that it be your company identity. Why? Because once you have your identity, you have a solid branding platform. An identity should include not only your logo, but also the exact color values and font families used to represent you, as well as preferred voice and language. Once you have these things, there is a little more wiggle room for creating things on your own.
What Can I Do?
Once you have your identity nailed down, you can use it to build and maintain your brand’s image. The idea is to make everything associated with your company recognizable. How do you do this? By remaining consistent. Some of the things to consider when crafting and maintaining a brand:
• Colors
• Typography
• Spacing
• Imagery
• Language and Voice
If you can remain consistent in these areas when creating your own materials, you are staying within your general brand standards.
Template Use:
One way to be sure that your standards are being upheld is to develop templates for materials that are used more often. You see this a lot with company memos, press releases, and scheduled publications. Using templates is an easy way to provide structure and increase recognition of your brand. The goal? To have someone recognize your collateral based on consistent content presentation. If the Coke logo were removed from ads, chances are that because you are so familiar with the brand, you would still be able to associate the ad with Coke. If you are looking for a resource to help build these templates, look into the Non-Designer’s Design Book.
When Do I Need Help?
Don’t ever be afraid to ask for help. If you don’t have a professional in your network who is willing to offer free advice, please get in touch with me. Bringing in a professional for larger or extremely important projects is usually a good idea. If you are unsure about the ability to maintain your brand and image throughout these projects, get in contact with a brand specialist. Ask for a free meeting and consultation. There is no harm in creating your own materials, as long as you are maintaining the brand image you have worked so hard to build.
Leave any questions in the comments section or shoot me an email. I answer every single one.