Our goal as marketeers should be to create a consistent customer experience that leads to an emotional response in people to our company, brand, products, and services. Every touch point you have between people in your company and people outside your company is an opportunity to enhance or detract from that customer experience.
The goal of branding is to create a consistent look and feel of everything that a company communicates. As individuals, we respond to much more than the just the words we read or hear. We engage with all of our senses, reacting to colors, fonts, packaging, sound, and more.
Creating a consistent brand presence is a big challenge. In many cases, marketing materials were created over time, by different people, with no thought to consistency. Many are not even aware they are creating branding elements. The techical person who sets up an email account for a new employee has never been trained to show how configuring the font, font size, and signature is an important piece of the corporate branding mosaic.
As I work with clients over time, I create a corporate style guide. This becomes the master document that everyone refers to. Training, education, and processes are needed to make it easy for everyone in an organization to follow style and branding guidelines.
My friend Isabelle Mercier, founder of LeepZone Strategies provides these reasons for creating and using a style guide in the blog post Here Is Why A Style Guide Is “Crucial” To Building A Thriving Brand:
Maintaining consistent communication brings:
- Ease of decision-making
- A common flow among the team
- A clear sense of direction
- A uniform customer experience
As for me, I work hard to follow my own style guides. If you look at my corporate logo above you should notice a consistency with the colors in the logo and the color in the banner of this blog. You will also find a consistent color palette, font, look, and feel at www.davidgreer.ca and in any of my communications with you.
What customer experience are you creating with your style?
