Which company comes to mind when you see red and silver combined with bold text and a positive message? Coca Cola. If you are watching TV and see a commercial with golden arches and red and yellow accents you know it’s from McDonald's. Even Liberty Mutual has that bright yellow color that we have all come to associate with LiMu Emu, our favorite insurance company mascot (and Doug, of course).
Whether you are watching TV on a Friday night with friends, scrolling through social media or performing a deep dive google search on the meaning of life itself, you are constantly being presented with ads, or even posts, that promote a service or a brand. You recognize some of these ads or posts almost instantly, even without really looking at the ad. Why is that? Because of the brand’s consistency in how it presents itself throughout all marketing channels.
What is brand consistency?
To keep it simple, brand consistency is the delivery of a brand’s message in a way that is aligned with the brand identity, values and strategy time after time.
Let’s focus on one of these aspects of a brand: Brand Identity. Brand identity refers to the visible elements of a brand, such as colors, fonts, design aspects and logo. These elements are “the face” of the brand and they are what consumers see first.
Brand identity is the reason we can recognize a Coca Cola ad so quickly, and why we know the package that was left on our doorstep came from Amazon just by looking at their “A-Z arrow/smile” logo.
Why is brand consistency important in Social Media?
Being consistent in distributing content that is aligned with your brand’s identity and brand guidelines is crucial to gaining brand recognition and spreading brand awareness! This, in turn, brings long-term results and helps build brand equity. The companies that we mentioned at the top of this article did not become instantly recognizable in a day, they have been employing a consistent brand identity throughout all marketing channels for decades.
I remember when I used to work as a graphic designer for a small commercial real estate company which had been in business for many years, their brand message was 50 years old, their brand identity was fairly new, only 7 years old. Their colors were mainly shades of blue combined with white, tan and a tiny bit of red. When I was given the responsibility of managing the company’s social media as both, content creator and calendar manager, I started to put the brand identity to work. Within a few months, what was once an Instagram page that lacked aesthetic flow and in which the brand’s identity was almost nonexistent, became a beautiful page filled with organic content and the brand’s blues.
The result? Being consistent had allowed us to become recognizable and start to create trust in our followers. Our engagement increased remarkably, company employees felt more inclined to participate and engage through social platforms and we gained a few more followers on the way.
Of course, there are instances when you are going to need to deviate from your brand identity to reach a new audience. For example, when publishing a pink post in response to breast cancer awareness during October or when showing your festive side during the holidays, but most of the time your brand’s identity should be present without fail.
Can it get a little boring? Well, for the marketer who is always creating your brand’s content, yes it can, but this is a good sign that your brand is being consistent and this is more likely to cause recognition in your target audience.
Also, being consistent does not mean that you can’t be innovative on new ways of presenting your brand. By all means, innovate! Change the content you present, try animated posts, videos and more, just be sure that your brand’s identity stays consistent all the time.