Extending Your Brand to Cover All Consumer Touchpoints
When we think of some of the world’s most iconic brands, we tend to think of them in terms of their logos. The Nike Swoosh. The adidas trefoil. The Apple… apple. These logos are memorable and iconic, cornerstones of our society. But the truth is, there is so much more that goes into building and reinforcing these legendary brands over time.
Every organization, big or small, needs branding guidelines that don’t just cover logos, but every additional branding element that is needed to cover every single consumer touchpoint. Karla Cook from Hubspot has an excellent article that covers how these guidelines are put together and even highlights some branding guidelines from extremely successful brands like Spotify and Cisco.
Last week, we spoke about how important your consumers’ perspective of your brand is to your brand’s actual image. This week, we’ll take a look at how you can start developing and communicating effective brand elements.
Creating Effective Brand Elements
We’ll start off by identifying some key traits of effective brand elements that help you communicate your brand’s identity to consumers.
We’re looking for elements that are:
- Memorable
- Meaningful
- Likable
- Transferable
- Adaptable
- Protectable
More than anything, your branding elements need to carry weight and be versatile. Keep in mind that your different elements have the capacity to carry large amounts of information in various different applications if you know what you’re doing.
Communicating and Protecting Your Brand Elements
Once you’ve established your branding elements, you’ll need to create your own branding guidelines which both communicate and protects your brand. Netflix’s brand guidelines website serves as a great example of what complete and thorough brand guidelines look like, including visual aspects like logo, typography, and color palette, as well as intangible aspects like brand tone and personality.
Brands with more tangible products will also include additional branding assets that serve to cover various different consumer touchpoints, such as Apple’s own developer website, which includes mockups of their products to ensure a consistent look as their partners develop materials that involve their products and ecosystem.
Wrapping Up
Ultimately, the key is to understand that your brand goes beyond just your logo. You must view every consumer touchpoint as an opportunity to share and reinforce your brand story and identity. Therefore, it is essential to thoughtfully develop branding elements that extend outwardly from your brand and allow you to build a cohesive branding strategy.