As we have established in earlier articles, brand identity is essential to any business of any size in order to achieve distinction and awareness. Brands can be more or less successful based on how the branding process is approached and implemented.
Whenever the success of brands is discussed or researched, the notion of brand consistency rises as one of the most important elements in branding. Any time we try to find out what’s common between great world brands, we find that they all follow a consistent pattern of visual elements and a consistent voice. Therefore, although branding strategies can vary from one business to another, yet they all need to be consistent in order to build a rigid and strong brand.
What Consistency Gives your Brand
Trust
Branding is very much like making a promise. When you communicate your brand, you state all the good qualities and attractive features about your product or service through visuals, slogans, content, etc. Delivering these qualities and features exactly as described, or even better, builds a good reputation of the brand, and eventually, a good relation between you and your customers. Keeping your promises makes your customers trust your brand and your product/service, and it keeps them coming back. Therefore, the consistency of the performance a brand cultivates goes side by side with the promise made by that brand.
It is the kind of trust you have in your surgeon; you know you’re going to be unconscious on his operations table, and you will be totally and completely helpless, but you trust he/she will take care of you and that you’ll be feeling a lot better after the surgery. This trust is based on good reputation that is built based on good experiences. However, this very reputation can be broken with one mistake caused by inconsistent performance. Therefore, branding consistency has to be reflected in the consistency of brand performance as well, or else it would be in vain.Familiarity
Consistency in branding makes your brand stand out from the crowd by making it more recognizable. Recognizable means more familiar; and since the purchasing process is rather emotional than anything else, people tend to like what looks familiar to them. Therefore, thinking that they know your brand and that they’re familiar with it will definitely achieve higher sales rates and more leads.
Imagine that you are in China on business. You don’t know any Chinese, you have a lunch break and you’re so hungry. What will you do? Will you try something new at a random Chinese local restaurant, and bear the risk that you might not like it? Now, what if you happen to be near a McDonald’s? Which will you choose?It is more likely that you’ll choose McDo. Not because you’re so fond of it, but because you know it. You recognize it. You know what to expect when you walk in. You have no risks whatsoever. You expect everything to happen as you have it in mind.
A whole new level of marketing
When you achieve trust and familiarity through consistency, you move your brand to a whole new level in the market. You are beyond the need to convince your customers, they are already loyal and waiting in line for your next release. Apple Inc. is a good example of such a brand; people just line up to purchase the new iPhone, iPad, Mac Book, etc. or any new product from Apple before even knowing what the product exactly does. They even make pre-orders.This happens as well in book authors like Danielle Steel, Dan Brown and Paulo Coelho. When an author has reached a place where people trust that they will have a good experience reading his/her book, and that they don’t need to wait for reviews or ratings, they just go grab the new book; no second thoughts. The same thing applies to singers, actors, directors, etc. This shows us that brand consistency is not only limited to enterprises and companies, it applies as well to personal brands.
In brief, the main recipe to brand consistency is to be true to your audience, always keep your promises, always deliver up to their expectations or better. Don’t ever try to outsmart your customers by pretending to be something that you’re not; they will know and you will destroy your reputation irreversibly.
Author: Lama Lawand