4 Non-Negotiables for Brand Consistency

Your brand is your greatest asset, and if it’s not protected by consistency, you could lose the trust of your audience. Keeping your brand consistent from visuals to voice helps it become recognisable, which drives both trust and loyalty.

Here’s why it’s more important than ever to consider how your brand is presented at every touchpoint.

Builds brand recognition

When your brand looks, sounds, and feels the same across every channel, including your website, social media, packaging, emails, it becomes easier for customers to remember and recognise it. Think of brands like Cadbury’s or Nike, you recognise them instantly from their marketing materials because they’ve maintained brand consistency over time.

If a brand’s imagery, fonts, colour palette, and tone of voice all remain consistent across platforms and locations, they build a sense of familiarity that audiences remember.

Strengthens your brand message

When your brand communicates the same values and tone everywhere, your message becomes stronger and more persuasive. Whether you’re educating, inspiring, or selling, consistent branding helps reinforce your purpose.

If a consumer receives, a cold, corporate email from a brand that’s usually friendly and a little cheeky, they’ll feel disconnected. Your values and identity should be clear at every single touchpoint your audience has – from your website and emails to your social media and advertising materials.

Creates trust

Consumers have more choice than ever, but they want to know that the brands they interact with are dependable. Authentically and consistently telling your brand’s story and showcasing your offering helps to build credibility, which in turn builds trust.

Keeping your brand consistent is a way of building your brand’s authority and trust. To start, focus on ensuring these four elements are consistent: logo, colours, fonts, and tone of voice.

Top tip: Brand guidelines are your secret weapon to make this happen. Find out why brand guidelines are so important and what you should include in brand guidelines in our blog.

Logo

While you may have various orientations of your logo, for example vertical logo, horizontal logo, and logo icon, they should all be cohesive with the same elements and colours. You may also have various formats of your logo, like vector graphic files such as AI/EPS and PNG, which allows flexibility and ensures it’s transferable across different marketing materials.

If you’ve had a brand refresh or rebrand, it’s especially important to ensure your logo is updated across all your materials, social media platforms, and collateral. If your old logo is used on your Facebook profile, but your packaging and website uses a new logo, your consumers can easily become confused.

Top tip: Having a vector-designed logo means no pixilation when resizing. Vectors are structured artwork and keep your logo consistent across different materials. This is especially important when printing.

Colour palette

Your brand guidelines should specify what colours your brand uses in its marketing materials. This goes beyond a vague ‘blue and grey’ – it should specify the exact shades that are acceptable to be used.

It’s important to provide the colour codes for your brand colours, as what looks like a colour match to one person could seem like a completely different colour to another. You can do this by using HEX, RGB, and CMYK colour codes, removing any ambiguity.

• HEX: A six-digit combination of letters and numbers, representing a colour in digital format.
• RGB: Represents a colour’s mix of red, green and blue.
• CMYK: A colour is defined based on its mix of cyan, magenta, yellow and key (black) and is preferred for print materials.

Colour psychology is no joke, and it can have a strong influence on how consumers perceive your brand.

Top tip: Use HEX or RGB codes for digital use, and CMYK for print.

Fonts

The fonts that your brand uses are a key part of your business’ visual identity. Certain fonts carry connotations of professionalism and reliability, whereas others seem whimsical or retro. If you start to stray from your set fonts, you could invite undesired and negative opinions of your brand.

Font choice typically consists of a primary and secondary typeface which complement each other. Using the same fonts when communicating across all types of platforms will help your brand to become more recognisable.