Branding has been important to businesses forever, but it’s even more important in the age of social media and the internet. Advertising is everywhere, and it’s in all different forms. You see it on tv, hear it on the radio, and have it crop up in your social media feeds. This sea of advertising and branding can make it hard to stand out. Tempting as it is to switch up your branding to try and stay on top of all the changes, consistency is more important than anything else.
Consistent Aesthetic
Visible branding is perhaps the most obvious place where consistency matters. A recognizable logo, color scheme, and font pairings are all part of creating an instantly recognizable brand. You can enhance that aesthetic with music and voice over talent. In certain cases, smell even plays a role. There’s a reason that bakeries vent the air from their kitchens out onto the street. Your branding aesthetic isn’t one thing, it’s many things all working together, so consistency matters.
Consistent Tone
When those many things work together well, it creates a tone. If you’ve gone for a light, whimsical tone in your brand, then you don’t want to start a new ad campaign with a more rock and roll feel to it. People won’t immediately connect that new tone with your business. This isn’t to say that you can’t evolve your tone over time, but it has to come slowly and it has to be thorough.
Consistent With Business
All of this branding will be useless if it isn’t consistent with your product or service. Branding needs to be genuine, true to you, your business, and your clientele. Consistency really begins here; if you take a branding tack that doesn’t jive with your product or isn’t genuine to you, then it will not stick and it will not ring true with customers. So if you’re looking to get started with a brand, or you want to revitalize a brand that you’ve already established, get back to basics and ask yourself how your branding coordinates with the actual product or service that you offer.
Branding is all about recognizability; it’s hard to recognize even the most familiar product from your favorite company if they’ve completely changed the aesthetic and tone of their branding. Changing branding in any way is a big decision that can have lasting effects, so make sure you’re taking the time to do it right. Consistency is key.
