Why consistency matters in brand messaging
In today's fiercely competitive and cluttered world, branding is key to the survival of any business in the market. Every company must know that what it communicates to its audience will shape people's perceptions of the brand. Every brand needs a personality and a voice. The communication pattern that creates a standardised way of conveying the brand to the public is called brand messaging.
Brand messaging is the value proposition you convey to your target audience; it reveals your personality and sets you apart from the competition. It is communication that should resonate with your target group; tell a compelling brand story; help customers and prospects to understand your value (why you/your product is useful) and values (what you stand for). It articulates the brand promise and arouses a desire to buy.
What is brand messaging consistency?
Brand messaging refers to the definition of the tone of voice, the line of communication, and the main messages that a brand establishes when communicating with its audience.
Consistency is the key to successful branding. And consistency goes beyond the product itself. The brand promise must be clear with every interaction each stakeholder experiences. It is the consistent, desired experience that builds trust, and trust is the foundation for loyalty and promotion.
Why brand consistency matters
Consistency is particularly important with brand messaging. When messaging is consistent, it is more likely to connect with the people you are trying to reach. It helps build loyalty and drive sales. Inconsistent messaging can be confusing, warping expectations and many times, driving them away.
However, for effective branding, consistency applies to other elements too. Besides always delivering messages aligned with the core brand values in the same tone, it is important to present the brand logo in a similar way, and repeat the same colours throughout your visual brand elements. Over time, these elements become ingrained in the minds of consumers, and they’re more likely to remember your brand. Brand consistency also ensures that your brand is easily recognizable across marketing channels and touchpoints.
Benefits of brand consistency
Consistent branding isn’t just about using identical colours or designs across different types of marketing collateral. Aesthetics are part of your brand experience, but you should also strive for consistency in your messaging, content quality, and audience interactions.
Brand recognition is the foremost and most obvious advantage of brand consistency. It makes your brand immediately recognizable by your target audience. Here are some other ways a consistent brand experience benefits your business:
- Provides differentiation for your brand
- Shapes brand perception
- Evokes positive emotions
- Increases familiarity and trust
- Unifies disparate business units
How to build and ensure brand consistency
Building brand consistency is a strategic effort and can be quite a daunting task. Companies should invest, first and foremost, in creating a brand guide to define their brand elements and rules so everyone is on the same page.
Brand guidelines are essential to ensure all materials and messaging stays on-brand and on track. They are rules that should never be bent since consistency is related to standardization. With solid guidelines, the tendency is that branding will always be aligned with the elements that make up the brand.
Based on this, some best practices to follow include:
- Create a brand style guide that includes your company’s mission, the brand’s colour palette, fonts (including when and how they’re used, such as for certain headings, etc.), brand voice and copy guidelines, photo and imagery styles, and any other information that your team needs to know to maintain consistency.
- Make approved materials available. Most companies have different professionals from different departments who create brand material in some way. To ensure brand consistency, provide easy access to up-to-date, approved brand materials such as logos, templates, images and even content. Maintaining a centralised digital repository of on-brand, approved brand assets for all teams to access makes sound sense to ensure brand consistency.
- Prepare for change in advance. Here too, the centralised asset repository makes good sense. Any potential changes to marketing materials can be easily facilitated and stored in the digital asset repository, so it is easily accessible to different team members when the time comes to update brand collaterals.
Interics IN-BRANDS for brand consistency
Interics IN-BRANDS is a reputed brand consultancy, brand launch agency and advertising agency in India with over 30 years of experience in the field. With a strong team of strategists and graphic designers, Interics IN-BRANDS has the expertise and experience to be your special branding partner to create an effective brand launch strategy. From helping companies determine and articulate the brand's purpose and brand positioning, through market research, to brand identity design and definition of the brand's design elements, to designing a comprehensive, detailed brand style guide/manual to facilitate adoption and usage across the organisation – Interics IN-BRANDS provides comprehensive service.
For our Integrated Branding Program, we collaborate with top management to harness the ‘big picture’ by understanding what the company believes in, its challenges, and where it wants to go and thence come up with the right brand positioning strategy. With extensive research to derive market, competition and customer insights, we develop a comprehensive brand launch strategy that would help unleash the Brand’s true potential.
As an extension of Brand Strategy, we provide Brand Architecture, to support futuristic growth; and craft the Brand Image with a compelling Story expressed through a robust Design Language for Brand unity across touchpoints. Finally, with proven interdisciplinary skills and experience of Brand roll-out, we enable a seamlessly executed brand launch along with synergistic brand communication across platforms and geographies – all while maintaining brand integrity with compelling design.
About Interics IN-BRANDS
Interics IN-BRANDS is a division of Interics Designs, the branding agency in India with over 30 years’ track record as design agency, brand launch agency, and packaging design company India. We have an impressive portfolio of clients for brand positioning strategy, startup branding, corporate identity program in India, product launch strategy, creative packaging design, spatial branding, effective Integrated Branding and much more.
Conclusion
Brand consistency is crucial for building trust with your organisation's target audience. With consistent brand messaging and visual elements that embody your corporate identity, you can become instantly recognisable and build a strong rapport with your audience. Over time, brand consistency will help your organisation increase brand value by creating a positive brand image in the eyes of your existing and potential customers.