Importance of Brand Consistency With Examples
Branding is one business concept that has been gaining momentum in the business world lately.
While some perceive it as some sort of mystical business incantation that guarantees business success, others think of it as a make-up of the recent generation.
For clarity, it is a conflation of three concepts – Reputation (Products image), Connotation (Product’s message), and Consistency.
Brand Consistency is a mash-up of the 2 concepts, brand, and consistency, which means acting and presenting your brand strategy in the same way over and over again without making alterations to your product’s image, promise, and message.
When we talk about branding, no doubt the word “consistency” comes up. Whether you’re talking about your logos, branding, or everything, you have to incorporate consistency throughout every area of your business.
You have to also remember that you need to send out the right message that will stimulate the customer experience to purchase products from you.
If you are lost on how brand consistency is crucial to your company, here are 10 important examples you should know about.
1. It Creates Brand Recognition
What do you think would happen when you repeatedly send a strong visual message about your business? People will begin to recognize your brand even if they have nothing to do with it. This is one of the benefits of emotional branding.
They will be attached to the elements of your brand and there’s a high chance they’ll first think of your product when in need of it. This is what brand consistency does.
Maintaining the core goals of your business drives consumers to recognize your brand for its particular beauty and purpose.
Take a look at Netflix
Where does your mind go at the thought of Netflix? Of course, you think of it as a platform that offers countless videos for streaming. Netflix is one brand that has pursued recognition by persistently pushing out the same mission.
By consistently providing users with original content and maintaining its humorous tone across all communication platforms, Netflix has dominated the television and movie space and can be easily recognized by the global market.
Another business that has gained recognition through brand consistency is Starbucks. Starbucks, with its over 20,000 stores, stays true to its brand identity.
As other businesses continue to lose what they stand for, Starbucks has remained true to its identity. One of these is its hand-crafted and customized beverage concept that earned it the recognition it currently boasts of.
2. Brand Consistency Implies Trust
If you’re the type that likes to maintain your relationship with good friends, you will realize and know their various personalities when hanging out together.
Through interactions, you begin to develop opinions and assumptions about them.
The moment you begin to notice some irregularities and inconsistency in their character, you become unsure of what to make of them and who they really are.
Now, imagine you are in a position to do business with this person. Of course, you’ll be concerned about your business with them due to their unpredictable nature. This is how consumers feel about a brand that is not consistent.
If your brand’s messaging tone on social media seems witty and humorous, it’s only right that your product packaging, product identity, video ads stay on the witty and humorous line. Staying consistent in this way implies the purpose of your brand.
One brand that understands this well is Nike!
Every element surrounding the Nike brand revolves around authenticity, winning, performance, and dominance. Ranging from its logo, designs, and slogan, Nike has kept to its core brand’s values, and identity.
Its consistency shows its purpose and professionalism which makes consumers stick around. Through the brand’s consistency, consumers are aware of how good Nike is at what they do.
3. It Builds Brand Awareness
Yes, there are some things to consider before starting a business, but after that, your ultimate goal is to get people to patronize you. All you want to do is push out your brand to a large audience and expect consumers to flock in.
While there’s nothing wrong with this, it’s necessary that you incorporate consistency in your marketing tactics as it builds strong brand awareness.
It takes time for consumers to become aware of your brand. Continuous repetition of the brand’s message and consistent use of your identity across all marketing platforms creates awareness.
BTS, a Korean 7-member boy band, recently gained waves in the global music industry. Across all continents of the world, they are becoming a household name.
How did they get there? Their popularity is one thing that’s a surprise to all who know them and there is no secret marketing strategy to be copied from them.
One thing to learn though is how they have stayed true to their music theme which is self-love, positivity, and happiness. By consistently pushing out music content that encourages self-love, this Korean boy group created awareness for themselves.
Bang Si-hyuk, the founder of BTS has this to say about the group’s immense popularity and awareness “Ever since BTS debuted, they’ve never suddenly switched gears or changed pace. They were consistent. I think this created the band awareness they currently possess”.
4. Brand Consistency Leads To Increased Revenue
Every business wants to experience a surge in its revenue. While there are countless marketing strategies that bring this dream to life, one of the easiest, effective and proven ways to do this is through brand consistency.
Ensure your brand content is consistent with regular frequency, appropriate quality, and standards.
Research reveals that brand consistency has a positive impact on sales and revenue through lead generation and communication with existing consumers. And if you are unaware, consistent messaging increases the likelihood of a purchase.
A famous brand that has been known to experience an increase in revenue due to its consistency is Coca-Cola. With its immense popularity, this brand understands the importance of consistency and has in no way excluded it from its marketing strategy throughout its 134 years of business life.
Coca-Cola has never deviated from its theme of “selling happiness in a bottle” since its founding centuries ago. Its familiar packaging, quality, and script lettering remaining consistent have helped boost its sales even with all the competition surrounding It.
5. It Gives Consumers Confidence
While considering the elements of successful businesses, what’s that one thing they have in common? It’s undeniably their brand’s consistency in product delivery and level of service.
McDonald’s brand consistency is on its highest level! No matter your location in the world, you’re likely to get a similar experience with someone at a different location – this strategy of theirs builds consumer confidence.
To be honest, there’s nothing more disappointing than having special customer attention from a brand at first only to discover on the second or third encounter that your previous experience was a fluke.
This kind of situation reduces consumers’ confidence in your brand.
Promising and sticking to your brand’s core values does more than give you a clear vision of your goals.
It enables consumers to know what to expect of your brand when making a purchase decision.
When walking through a store, they’ll feel confident about picking up your commodity as it’ll meet their expectations.
Consumer confidence in McDonald’s is a result of the rigid brand consistency that exists in all its locations. McDonald’s hamburger, fries, and milkshakes have existed for decades but the only changes that occur are its business system and not its recipe.
They have remained consistent in their taste, restaurants procedures, service, speed, and quality. McDonald’s consumers in over 120 countries feel confident walking into any of their stores as they know what to expect of the brand.
6. It Builds Consumers Trust and Loyalty
Just like you stick to friends you know and trust due to their reliability and consistency in character, consumers also patronize and trust businesses due to their consistency.
This happens when you or professional content creators carve out content that’s unique to your brand and you incorporate it into your brand in a way that harmonizes with every other element.
lt leads to consumers staying loyal to your brand. They’ll always feel that no matter what changes occurs, it’ll always stick to the brand’s promise and values.
Virgin group is one brand with roots in health, travel, communication, and entertainment. This brand promises to focus on consumer experience and it has done so by maintaining consistency across every channel and subgroup within its portfolio.
As a consumer new to the brand, whether you decide to patronize their flight, media, travel, or banking sector, there’s one thing that’s sure – you’ll get the same experience.
Consistently getting this fun and welcoming experience from the Virgin brand has enabled it to enjoy extreme loyalty and trust from consumers.
7. It Elicits Positivity About Your Brand
Here’s the thing. Consumers are more likely to buy a product or service they have a positive connection with.
But how do you get them to connect positively with your brand? You do that through brand consistency.
Constant exposure of your brand identity through carefully crafted words and imagery goes a long way to evoke positive emotions in your consumer’s minds. Positivity is one of the benefits of emotional branding.
Disney is one brand that through brand consistency elicits positivity.
8. It Reduces Competition
The market is already so competitive and saturated. Any business idea you think of has already been explored or might be re-designed by another party.
This insidious aspect of the business world is why it is crucial to maintain brand consistency to differentiate your market from the rest.
No brand product is without a substitute. There’s always a brand acting as a threat. However, LUSH, a cosmetic brand knows just how to get ahead of others by maintaining its identity as a natural handmade body care product.
On its social media page, the body shop maintains consistency by the use of natural colors. With its communication with consumers, the brand adopts a bright, fun, and funky tone. Its packaging style is consistent with its theme keeping the brand ahead of possible competitors.
Read: Steps to create engaging content
9. Brand Consistency Makes You Outstanding
One major strength of brand consistency is its ability to make a brand stand out even in an ocean filled with similar products.
Sending brand messages that align with the brand’s values, identity, and strategy sets it apart and makes it unique.
Luxury fashion brands such as Fendi, Louis Vuitton, Chanel, and Saint Laurent each have factors that make them outstanding and unique due to their consistency in brand expressions, image, style, and identity.
10. Aids in Defining Brand’s Set Goals
Maintaining brand consistency can help you and your employees stay in line with the company’s objectives.
As you strive to build your business, thoughts of diverting or changing your brand identity will arise.
It is through brand consistency that you stay focused on maintaining the key elements identifiable to your brand.
3 Components you need to consider to establish brand consistency:
1. Develop a Sales Playbook
The sales team will need to work hard to ensure your brand stays consistent.
A sales playbook is more than a training manual, but it is a framework to assist salespeople to close deals with specific tones and personality types that work within the company ethos.
If there is a disparity between sales and marketing, a sales playbook could be the way to bridge these two areas.
Ultimately, every department of your business is trying to grow relationships and make the business appear positive in the eyes of the beholder.
A manual that stands up to rigorous testing and communicates the core values of the business is something that can be used throughout the company.
2. Use Your Design and Logo Elements Consistently
One of the biggest problems in any business is the lack of communication. When we are looking at our logos and designs, one of the worst things we can see is our logo being tampered with by being stretched out of proportion, given new colors, or pixelated beyond comprehension.
To combat this, you need to create better communication. This is crucial for different areas of the business that you aren’t in contact with regularly.
If you need to work with a food contract manufacturer to label your latest product, you need to make sure that the quality control is there before it leaves the email outbox!
This same consistency should also be observed in your business cards, signages, custom box packaging, and other printed marketing materials.
You can do this by creating a shared folder on your company network. This will provide employees with access to only approved visual content. Also, provide instructions on how to use them.
You can create document templates and manage orders for promotional materials through one person or department. This helps works to maintain quality control.
3. Incorporate brand Consistency Across all Channels and Platforms
When you are communicating your image or brand, you need to keep one tone and personality.
When promoting on social media, you are just using one type of tone because you’ll use various social media platforms.
But while a platform like LinkedIn will need a more professional tone, it should not sound like it is coming from a different brand. The same goes for offline promotion.
This is constantly neglected. It can be detrimental to your business. Yes, especially when you consider billboards and massive marketing campaigns within the real world or offline.
Conclusion
While you try to build a solid foundation for your business, you may find yourself swimming in loads of brand ideas and identity for your business.
Sure, the right design, logo, and business identity features matter in conceiving a stable business. However, what really triggers a successful and long-term business life is Brand Consistency.
This is all about staying true to the core values, elements, and promises of your brand across all touchpoints. Consistency in businesses also includes your images and other visuals.
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If you are looking to boost your business, you’ve got to stay consistent all the way.
