Most organisations have a dusty document (or a pdf file) somewhere that outlines their brand guidelines. Given that the development of your brand takes time, effort – and doesn’t come cheap, it’s important that all that investment pays off.
The Marketing Department should be familiar with how your logo appears, it’s relative size, positioning, background colours, etc., but what about Accounts? Does the Purchasing department know? Do individuals ordering their business cards know what the correct layout is? Do people ordering flyers for a client event know what the colour references and fonts are?
They should, but the longer it is since the last brand revamp, the more ‘creative’ people get with fonts, colours and logo structure.
Add into the equation a number of locations, whether these are separate offices, regional divisions, outlets, franchises or licensees and you might be surprised to discover how many versions of your brand emerge.
- Different layouts on business cards
- Different email signatures
- Different coloured logos, to fit with a third party production
- Logos moved into a corner to allow for other content on a marketing flyer.
What is the answer?
How can you protect your brand in then face of your staff’s best efforts to ‘make it work’ in their particular situation?
The answer is templates and a system that has some flexibility built in.
For instance:
- A template to create marketing material with different addresses, while still working within the brand guidelines.
- An email template with the correct fonts and signature structure.
- Invoice and purchase order blanks created ready to fill in.
- Templates for business cards – deposited with the printer, so there’s no opportunity to ‘tweak things a bit’.
- Layouts for posters and POS material
All this is possible with bespoke software that has all the templates embedded and makes life simple for everyone, while keeping your brand front and centre.
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