Brand guidelines are for brand-guided companies – companies that are led by their brand values and beliefs and a strong visual identity. These organisations understand what makes them different and have developed a systematic approach to expressing and managing every aspect of their brand in a consistent and coherent way to their employees, clients, suppliers and all stakeholders. They do this through the effective creation of brand guidelines that actually get used every day. Why? Because they know that the most successful businesses* are brand-guided ones.
Of course it’s easy to be cynical about brand guidelines. How many well intended marketing departments and their agencies jump through the loops trying to pull together the dreaded do’s and don’ts only to find that once the initial launch fanfare is over the guidelines get left on the shelf, forgotten and gathering dust.
Thankfully the digital era has to some extent changed this. Instead of the expensively printed, monolithic slabs of paper housed in shiny ring-binders, the new, more flexible PDF/online models have won the day–not least because they are much cheaper to make and distribute. But, dare I say, the sceptics still influence and if they had their way, brand guidelines would either not exist or consist of…the logo – which of course is the brand in their eyes!
So, are brand guidelines just a necessary evil or can they actually become as important as other issues in the boardroom such as technology, operations, R&D, energy, and HR? After all brand is about ALL of these things and more, it is not just the visual identity system – or at least it shouldn’t be.
Brand is the big picture. It’s what differentiates one business from another. It is the DNA running through the whole organisation. Understand it, live it and communicate it and your business will benefit. Brand-guided businesses gain an edge over non brand-guided businesses and so brand guidelines should be mentored by management (not just the marketing dept). They should be celebrated every day by everyone and instilled upon all those who come into contact with the company. This is the way to change perceptions and it is the sum of those perceptions which forms the brand’s reputation – be it a good, bad or indifferent.
The role of brand guidelines, or Brand Books as they are increasingly known, is to not only illustrate the visual identity system, but to tell the story of the brand so that everyone knows what makes the organisation tick and why it is different from its competitors. Businesses should be brand-guided companies and their brand guidelines the reference.
For a fascinating review of the world of corporate identities over the last ten years www.identityworks.com
If you would like to discuss how to develop your brand contact Richard Maennling (Head of Branding) on +44(0)1273 766300 or +44(0)20 7734 8855
* Booz Allen Wolff Olins European survey among Marketing and Sales Officers, 8/2004.