4 reasons that make creative consistency important for your brand

A brand is the set of expectations, memories, stories and relationships that, taken together, account for a consumer’s decision to choose one product or service over another.
Seth Godin

What is brand creative consistency?

Google, McDonald's, Apple, Amazon, Mercedes-Benz, Nike, Coca-Cola, Facebook, Samsung, Starbucks.

Anything? Feelings? Colors? Flavors? Memories?

A few seconds ago you were reading these words, feeling some inherent associations, having some memories, thoughts and so on. Probably it is interesting why especially these words have become so famous, so dear to us, why particularly these words accompany us in our daily life. As you may have guessed, these words were not chosen at random. These are some of the most recognizable brands in the world. So the question may be, how did these brands become so recognizable and what is the secret to their success? The answer is simple. They all have one thing in common: brand consistency. So, what is it and why is it important?

In branding industry, companies always strive to develop their image through actions that explore elements making up the brand. Consistency is essential for achieving this. Brand consistency is one of the most indivisible and important parts of a brand strategy. It’s about being able to maintain communication and position the company in line with its values and attributes that make up its identity. This means that whatever you do in terms of developing your brand, should be in line with the core values, principles, slogan and other elements of your brand. Each new point in the development of your brand should evoke the same feelings, memories and desires in people as before. In general, brand consistency ensures that your brand is easily recognizable across a variety of marketing campaigns. It is noteworthy that it’s not just about the visual elements of a brand, it's high-level marketing.

CustomerThink identifies three critical areas where brands must be consistent to boost customer loyalty: customer experience, values and brand identity. When talking about brand consistency, it is necessary to emphasize the creative consistency in a special way. In a creative sense, it’s assuring that your logos, design elements, messaging stay the same at different stages and forms of communication with people.

Creative consistency is maintaining the brand appearance across every single touchpoint. Even in the smallest of touchpoints, consistency is everything. There are different definitions of the term “touchpoint”. As defined by the president of “VisionEdge Marketing” Laura Peterson, a touchpoint is any interaction (including encounters where there is no physical interaction) that might alter the way that your customer feels about your product, brand, business or service. As the famous entrepreneur and designer Jonah Sachs says, your brand is a story unfolding across all customer touchpoints. According to Salesforce, consumers interact with 6 to 8 touchpoints just to get to sales. The touchpoints that consumers encounter throughout the acquisition of a brand can be grouped into several major groups։ before purchase (website, blog, emails, social media, paid ads, public relations, sponsorships, event booths, etc.), during purchase (website, local branches, delivery methods, e-commerce cart, etc.) and after purchase (customer support, knowledge base, customer surveys, etc.). The above is used especially in the process of developing a brand strategy, aiming to achieve brand consistency. Nike, Starbucks, Coca-Cola and others are great examples of brand consistency. Just seeing the famous logo of the Nike, most people will immediately remember the Nike brand and the slogan: Just do it. Compared to Reebok, which has changed its slogan more than 10 times, Nike has been using this slogan for more than 15 years, which shows its commitment to brand consistency.

The importance of brand consistency: the main reasons and brand creative consistency achieving.

Both psychological and economic reasons underlie the ability to create and maintain brand consistency during the transition from one touchpoint to another. First of all, brand is a psychological concept, it reflects people's perception of your company and your business. Thus, the potential for brand consistency is primarily due to the perception of consumer’s insight and behavior. From an economic point of view, it ultimately reduces the marketing costs of the company and, by increasing the brand visibility and availability, affects sales growth and profitability. The main reasons for the brand consistency importance are the following ones:

• It makes a brand easily recognizable: creating a consistent brand helps people easily recognize a brand over time and be more comfortable interacting with a brand along with different touchpoints because they know what to expect.

• It communicates credibility and dependability: consumers trust brands they recognize and those that are committed to their values.

• It helps manage perceptions of consumers and builds brand equity: when the brand does not change, consumers' expectations do not change. Customers know exactly what to expect when companies give them a consistent brand experience. Consistent branding protects investments made in brand development and builds brand equity over time.

• Its marketing is on a higher level: brand consistency takes a company to the next level in marketing. No need to persuade people to buy your product or service. The brand becomes so consistent with the product experience that when the consumer sees the logo of that brand, he already thinks about making his next purchase.

Brand consistency is a broad and complex topic that can be the key to the long-term success of any brand in any market. It is necessary to take into account that the brand consistency is not reflected only in a positive way and there can also be a negative brand consistency, which will require a lot of resources and time to get rid of. The work to build brand consistency is based on strategic efforts and is done by aligning ideas with campaigns and marketing actions. The basic steps to achieve the expected results are understanding the meaning of the brand and adopting clear values, developing a guide to brand communication strategies and standardizing rules, using consistent messages, extremely careful rebranding, rethinking creative production, modular approach designation, etc.

Visual consistency is an integral part of the brand's creative consistency, and here’s where Viewst comes with innovative ideas for various advertising campaigns. It’s important to scale the visual content from one channel to another, keeping the consistency at the same time. Viewst is the right tool for all busy creative minds allowing to create high quality banners literally in minutes that can be used on numerous platforms.

And at the end remember: consistency is what transforms average into excellence!