Forty years ago, when you wanted to reach new customers, you had your “secretary” type up a letter on a typewriter or desktop publisher and print it on branded watermarked letterhead. Alternatively, you may have placed an ad in the local paper. Today, you might send an email, a tweet or a direct message. You might post an ad on social media, or even place an ad on a streaming service.
There’s no doubting that brands have evolved—as have brand management tools. These days, websites aren’t the only tools that are bringing brands online. Here are some tools that brands are using to modernize their brand guidelines and create more consistency across all media channels.
Brand Guidelines
When your brand’s logo was revealed to your team, you may have also received a PDF document with guidelines that detailed how the logo can be displayed, exact colors to use and approved fonts. That document probably lives somewhere on your server, but no one can find it.
How many times have you had to ask your branding agency or graphic designer to send logos? Or remind you of the exact brand colors. There’s a reason why repetition of brand colors matter, and it’s not just for aesthetics. As reported in Forbes, color improves brand recognition by up to 80%. Once you select that signature color representing your brand, don’t stray.
Thankfully, there’s an online tool to display brand guidelines in a visually appealing way– just like a website. And you can even download logo files, images, graphics, and colors.
Brand Voice
Consistent presentation of a brand has increased revenue by 33%.
Brand consistency remains important. Why? Because it takes most people between five and seven impressions before they remember a brand. And each time your brand rolls out a new look or feel, that clock starts over at zero. Consistency and cohesion of the brand is something that many companies find to be a struggle, so think of it as a way to differentiate your company from competitors. In fact, one study of B2B companies found that less than 10% said they maintained brand consistency.
On the flip side, delivering brand voice with consistency has become more difficult as brands delegate their social media posting or ad copywriting to agencies or freelancers. So, how do you measure if a brand’s voice is consistent? There’s a tool for that, too!
Pluralytics
OnBrand is an AI-powered messaging tool that makes sure you are delivering your ideal brand voice. Fill out a short questionnaire (it takes about 5 mins) and include some content samples. From there, Pluralytics uses an AI brand voice engine to analyze your messaging for values, tone, and brand style consistency.
Presentations
Quarterly board meetings put your team in presentation hell, as executives spend hours and hours pulling data into PowerPoint presentations. If you do the math on four or five executives each spending at least three hours updating a deck, that number could be staggering. Multiply that by four board presentations per year and that number could equal your entire digital marketing budget. Imagine if you gave back time to your executive board members by creating a beautiful, easy-to-use template that beautifully displays the story of your company in all its glorious detail.
It's a Zeck, not a deck.
Zeck reimagines everything by flipping from an archaic board deck to a first-of-its-kind, stunning, interactive board website.
Here are some of the benefits of a “Zeck” vs a boring deck.
- Save time building presentation templates
- Impress your board with beautiful, consistently branded presentations
- Manage access so your team only sees and edits their content.
Brand Collateral
Designing flyers, social media post images, signage, posters and even presentations with consistency can be a challenge–and that’s when designers have your brand guidelines. The truth is that even experienced graphic designers can interpret your brand guidelines differently. As a designer, I may go rogue to add a complementary font or color scheme to give a particular design a new look.
With Canva, you can quickly and easily upload fonts, colors, logos and images that are approved for your brand to enable you to design brand materials of all kinds, including presentations, flyers, social media images, invitations and more.
In my opinion, Canva is a game-changer. I’ll admit, I was not always a fan of the tool as a trained graphic designer. But Canva has evolved to have almost the same functionality of the Adobe Creative Suite, but without the hours of training involved in learning how to use it. Canva was developed for non-designers but is now used by everyone. If you haven’t tried it, start a free trial and check it out.
A non-designers design tool
With Canva, you can quickly and easily upload fonts, colors, logos, and images that are approved for your brand to enable you to design brand materials of all kinds, including presentations, flyers, social media images, invitations and more.
In my opinion, Canva is a game-changer. I’ll admit, I was not always a fan of the tool as a trained graphic designer. But Canva has evolved to have almost the same functionality of the Adobe Creative Suite, but without the hours of training involved in learning how to use it. Canva was developed for non-designers but is now used by everyone. If you haven’t tried it, start a free trial and check it out.
Forms Management
Ever sit in a doctor’s office and wonder why we’re still subjected to filling out endless paper forms? Or have you asked why we’re still printing and faxing so many things? Or still, meeting in person to sign a document?
That got us thinking—why do we still do things this way? Is there a conspiracy to keep us hooked on paper? If so, who’s behind it all? The answer: Big Paper. Just kidding. But that’s the campaign supporting FormStack’s idea to eliminate paper from your patient experience. We’re here for it. No patient likes touching a sticky pen and clipboard to fill out stacks of photocopied paper with the same information on each page over and over. There has to be a better way. Oh right, it’s forms management!
Ready to evolve your brand?
In this blog post, I’ve provided some modern tools to upgrade your brand and maintain consistency. But I realize it also takes someone to set up all of these tools for you and your team. If you’re as strapped for time as most executives and lean marketing teams are, we get it. But the good news is you’re in luck. We can help develop or refine your brand and establish these modern tools to maintain consistency. Contact us to get started.
About the Author
Stacey Harrison is the lead brand strategist and designer at Heart & Hustle Brands and has provided creative direction for healthcare, industrial, and financial services brands for 20 years. She started Harrison Creative Group in 2017 to serve businesses that need a professional brand image on a budget. In 2021, the company rebranded to Heart & Hustle Brands to walk in the shoes of clients that experience a change of name or brand refresh.
