The value of an identifiable logo cannot be overstated. A brand’s content marketing strategy initiatives are based on a set of guidelines that acts as an identity of the company and reflect the brand’s personality and dynamic. As a company consolidates, its content practices evolve into a brand style sheet so as to maintain consistency in content output. Branding a new business from scratch requires branding guidelines to make building a strong brand easy.
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Why Your Business Needs Brand Guidelines
Your brand elements are your interface to the general public and therefore, the first image of your brand. Marketing strategy these days recognizes that brand guidelines ensure long-term brand visibility. Branding elements such as colours, visuals including design, font and the language of your brand’s communication are the most important branding strategies for your startup and over time they become unique differentiators. This is essential since it sets your brand apart from your competitors. Using brand guidelines ensures consistency in communication and promotes a brand’s identity.
Getting Started With Your Brand Guidelines
- To formulate the optimal style sheet and tone of voice, start by identifying your audience. Ask questions like, how old are they? What is their gender? Which parts of the world are they in? What are their values? How much do they use social media? What entertainment do they consume?
- Then, identify your brand’s personality. How do you want your brand to be projected to your target audience? It could be smart, accessible, creative, serious, sophisticated, reliable, or encompass a range.
- Once you have figured out your audience persona, match it with your brand’s style guide. This will create your brand elements with core purpose and visions.
- Your style sheet should reflect your brand’s personality and spirit. To gain maximum visibility, brands often employ an outstanding visual style sheet, most commonly put to use in social media marketing.
- Think of some of the most memorable logos and mascots that brands are synonymous with, such as the Amul girl, McDonald’s Clown, and the ubiquitous bitten apple. In their own ways, these images have each occupied a distinct place in the audience’s mind that immediately recalls the brand.
5 Key Components Of Brand Guidelines
Startup branding requires a thorough consideration of a variety of factors while creating a brand style guide. Here are five key factors to consider when creating your own style guide.
- A color palette, including primary, secondary, and tertiary colors.
- Visual elements such as font, size, formatting, and spacing.
- Logo and their usage guide
- Brand language and tone.
- Imagery
At what point do you formulate brand guidelines?
In creating a style sheet, there arises a relevant question. Ideally, you set down guidelines when your brand is expanding. When you start your business, chances are a very small team (if not an individual) will manage the brand’s look and communication. However, as the company has grown, a larger team has dedicated itself to creating a social media content calendar and using branding strategies to grow its presence on various social media. At this point, it is essential to bring in a style rulebook so that there is consistency in the brand’s communication and outreach, which sustain and add value to the brand.
3 Brilliant Branding Trends In Brand Style Setting
One of the most noticeable trends is short names with one or two syllables. The minimalist movement has made a mark on brand names. Often, these names combine multiple word units with the core unit communicating what the brand is, such as Grammatica, Snapchat, Airbnb, and AdRoll.
- Visuals
- Setting The Tone, Literally
- Is It A Good Idea To Change My Style Midway?
Visuals
Visual trends in branding include using bright and bold colors and minimalist designs. However, the best way to go about this would be to align with the type of industry the brand belongs to so that it fulfills the expectations of the target audience used to a particular kind of brand image.
Your brand’s visual style sheet is perhaps more important than your verbal communication since it is imprinted on your audience’s mind in a far more effective way. A vast majority of the population has a heightened visual sense perception and will easily respond to your logo and visual elements.
The central design as part of the logo is crucial to your brand since it symbolically communicates what you are. Consider Udemy’s upward arrow is meant to signify the growth and uplifting that comes with knowledge. Likewise, Nike’s bold tick signifies action, power, and speed.
CrazyTok’s logo and design represent its digital forwardness, with the bold yellow standing for its contemporary, youth-friendly tone.
Based on your brand personality, you choose colors or a palette range that communicates your identity, with some research into color psychology. Many brands prefer to keep their color messaging simply by sticking to less than 3 core colors.
Setting The Tone, Literally
Verbal communication goes a long way in engaging with your audience. Over time, brands establish a certain tonality and usage of language that becomes a unique identifier. Amul has consistently used puns in its creatives, and Zomato’s social media marketing is known for its copy that is so engaging and relatable to the Indian audience. Dove’s tone strategies are successful because they consistently communicate body positivity, which resonates deeply with its target audience.
Amul’s topical ads use plenty of puns to capitalize on the popularity of their ubiquitous mascot, the Amul girl.
Is It A Good Idea To Change My Style Midway?
Brands do change their style sometimes. In India, over a decade back, many old and established companies were hurrying to redo their logos in ways that would appeal to an emerging audience. Today, the international marketing trend in style change is minimalist alteration. Brands such as General Motors, Renault, and Post It, have made alterations to their logo while retaining elements of the former, so as to not totally break away from what they were identified with. Burger King, on the other hand, has brought back their older classic logo with mild alterations. This points to the value inherent in the logos of old brands: they represent the nostalgia, trust, and goodwill that the brand has earned over time.
Burger King has recently revamped their 1994 logo, in a move that indicates the value of trusted old brands.
A carefully designed (and even edited) style sheet goes a long way in contributing to a brand’s public image and goodwill. The net result is customer loyalty and trust, and a certain value that the brand enjoys in its domain.
A startup branding strategy is essential for any new business seeking differentiation and traction. Great branding is at the heart of every great business and for that, we share valuable advice for getting your startup off to a head start.
- Identify your brand’s personality.
- Identify your customer persona.
- Match the two to create your brand’s unique style sheet.
- Logo, visual elements, etc. to use colors, formatting, tone, etc. that communicate your brand.
- Brand’s language and tone to be consistent for long-term brand identification and user engagement.
