Policing the Corporate Brand

by Bruce Hitchen

A brand is much more than a logo. A corporate brand is how customers, the public, media, suppliers or any other group perceives a company. It is your company’s personality. A company’s brand is a result of many things. Sure, the company logo, brand colours, font, and tagline are important but it also includes how you answer the phone, how you conduct business, how you respond to the public or to the media during a crisis, the music people hear when they are on hold, the way you communicate, the photographs you use, the style of your company promotions. The list goes on and they all form “the brand”.

With so much effort put into developing a positive and consistent brand, it is natural for companies to want to protect their brand and ensure it is used properly. After all, it is not just the advertising department or agency that is developing branded content. There are so many groups who are using your brand from, employees, marketing agencies, media outlets, and other organizations, not to mention anyone who is active on social media.

Because so many groups have an influence on your brand it is important to develop strong guidelines to ensure the brand is used properly. As graphics, multimedia, and video producers, we are often responsible for creating content that utilizes a company’s logo, text, tagline or colours. To use them properly we rely on easy to read guidelines that help us understand the brand and serve as a useful tool to become stewards of the brand.

All too often we see brand guidelines that are a list of don’ts or can’ts rather than a helpful guide. Brand guidelines are often focused strictly on how to use the logo, fonts, and colours in print documents and they don’t address the requirements of video and multimedia.

Groups within organizations who are responsible for ensuring the brand is used properly and consistently can become seen as the ‘brand police’ rather than a helpful resource. We have actually dealt with companies that have asked us NOT to use their logo because they didn’t want to face the brand police. That seems a bit overboard and counterproductive.

The other side of that coin is when we see a company that has no brand standards and no controls and their brand is so diluted that it is hard to know how it should be used.

Having been in the situation many times with a variety of companies of all sizes I would say to any organization that they should develop strategies and guidelines around their brand. They should have consistency. Their employees should have a consistent email signature and use a consistent logo. These are all good things and they should be documented in a way that is easy to share and most importantly, easy to follow. Think beyond the printed document. Multimedia and video are important communications tools and have their own unique requirements and challenges when providing a consistent brand message. Engage marketing companies and production companies in a positive way to build brand advocates rather than agencies who avoid contact with the brand police.