Guide | Brand Management in the Digital Era

1webdam.com | learn@webdam.com | ©2018 Webdam

Brand Management in the Digital EraLearn to build brand guidelines for today’s world.

Guide | Brand Management in the Digital Era

2webdam.com | learn@webdam.com | ©2018 Webdam

Here’s the toughest thing about being in charge of your company’s brand: you don’t actually have control of it.

Brand is whatever comes into people’s minds when they think of your organization. It’s based on every experience and interaction with your brand – those you control and those you don’t.

Your brand represents a vital emotional bond. And that bond is key when purchase decisions are made – yes, even B2B purchases. According to Forbes, 71% of buyers who see a personal value in a B2B purchase will end up buying the product or service. In fact, personal value had twice the impact of business value. That means B2B buyers care twice as much about their personal connection to your brand than they do about how it will actually impact their business.

Brand may be intangible, but, for a lot of companies, it’s the most valuable asset on the balance sheet.

Many companies spend huge sums of money on brand strategy, brand management, promotion and creative work that represent their brand. Brand experiences are often managed by someone else: Any manufacturer that sells products or services through a retailer relies on that partner for a critical brand experience. Franchises rely on independent business people to represent their brand to customers. Channel partners, event producers, distributors, brokers, agencies – the list goes on.

EventProducers

Distributors

Retailers

ChannelPartners

Agencies

Brokers

Franchisees

BRAND STORY CUSTOMER

71% of buyers who see a personal value in a B2B purchase will end up buying the product or service.FORBES

Guide | Brand Management in the Digital Era

3webdam.com | learn@webdam.com | ©2018 Webdam

With so much riding on brand – and so many people representing it – it’s surprising that the essence of those brands often remains bottled up in the minds of a few strategists and creatives or hermetically sealed in static PDF brand guidelines.

At their best, brand guidelines are a roadmap directing the use of visual elements to consistently represent brand standards. They ensure that everyone who represents your brand has the information they need to represent it right.

But today’s brand guidelines must also be dynamic, adaptable and easily accessible – the anti-PDF. It’s the only way to maintain consistency and stay up to date when your brand appears in an overwhelming variety of environments and relies on an extended network of specialists.

The purpose of this guide is to help you establish or evolve your brand guidelines so they can live up to these new conditions.

Here are the actions you can expect to take with help from this guide:

1. Establish your basic brand guidelines in one central location.

2. Position your brand to survive in today’s digital world.

3. Make sure your guidelines are successful.

The pyramids weren’t built overnight – and neither was Coca-Cola. Brand guidelines act as a solid foundation that allows your brand to be interpreted consistently and expressed in a variety of media and environments. And in today’s digital world your brand guidelines should also house your brand assets, including things like logo files, color palette files, downloadable fonts, etc. The rules and the tools you need to follow them – all in one place. Here are the critical sections to get your started:

Brand Guidelines Basics

INTRODUCTIONWho are you? Why are you here? Your introduction should include the company’s mission statement, key messaging and value proposition.

Mission Statement

Communicate your company’s core purpose and focus. Keep it simple and clear.

Key Messages

Articulate the key messages that enable everyone to answer positioning fundamentals – Who are we for? What do we do? Why are we better? Show proof in data points and keep it simple. Be sure to clearly represent your company’s tone and voice.

Guide | Brand Management in the Digital Era

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FONTS/TYPOGRAPHY

TONE AND VOICE

AUDIENCEWho are you talking to?Drill down into your target demographic so everyone creating communications for your company sees a clear picture of whom they are talking to. You can include a downloadable PDF and PowerPoint slides of your target demographics also known as buyer personas.

What are they? How do you use them?Designers, partners and team members should all maintain brand consistency by using the correct fonts. Identify the typefaces. Provide guidelines for different media, like print, web and product. Explain what font should be used in what situations, for example: headlines, sub-headlines and body copy. Put together a downloadable font kit in this section (make sure your font licenses allow this) so designers don’t have to chase down the fonts they need to start their projects.

What do you say, and how do you say it?Your brand voice is based on your company’s mission statement and key messaging. It’s part of your brand’s personality and always stays the same. The tone you are using can differ depending on the marketing channel or audience. Define what tone to use in which situations so writers and designers know what’s appropriate.

Guide | Brand Management in the Digital Era

5webdam.com | learn@webdam.com | ©2018 Webdam

TAGLINES

LOGO

COLORSWhat are they? How should they be used?Define your company’s approved color palette – you can even create branded names for each color. Represent your palette visually by including how often each color should be used with percentages and create a mockup to give them a color snapshot. Provide the values for print colors (also known as CMYK and Pantone) and web colors (also known as RGB and Hexadecimal). Many people don’t know the difference, so be sure to define what values should be used for what. You can create a color palette file (ASE) by saving your color palettes in Adobe programs – these can be made available for download so people can load the color palette in their design files and not have to type in color codes.

What is it, and where does it go?Show us all the versions (lockups) of your logo: Different sizes, with and without taglines, full color, black and white, black, white, wordmark only and logomark only. If you’re missing key lockups, be sure to fill in those gaps – you don’t want people inventing their own versions of your logos because your current offering doesn’t work for some layouts. Include various file formats, such as JPEG, PNG with transparent backgrounds, Illustrator and press-optimized PDF. You may also want to include how not to use your logo in this section; for example, don’t change the colors, don’t rotate, don’t place over loud backgrounds, etc. Provide a download link to your logo files so people can have all the latest versions.

What are they, and where do they go?In the logo section, list and show all the approved taglines and lockups for your organization. Even better, define where each one should be used. Provide a download link to your lockups.

Guide | Brand Management in the Digital Era

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MASCOT

IMAGERY

ICONSWhat does your system of icons look like?You may have a set of marketing icons and a set of product icons. These should all be visually aligned and custom to your brand message and or product functionality. Develop a system for producing new icons and outline that design system here. Make the icon creation template available for download along with all current icons in PNG and vector format.

What is your photography and illustration style?This is a great place to use (and show) a “dos and don’ts” methodology. How do images and illustrations work together? Relate your brand imagery to the tone and voice of your company. Give lots of examples in this section so even a non-designer will have a clear picture of your image style. Provide links to lightboxes of approved brand images.

Do you have one? How and when do you use it?Include usage guidelines and approved designs and illustrations in this section. Help users understand appropriate mascot use and placement by including adjectives and information about their origin and personality. Make illustrations, photos and vector files of your mascot available for download in this section.

Guide | Brand Management in the Digital Era

7webdam.com | learn@webdam.com | ©2018 Webdam

WEBSITE

PRODUCT UI

PRESENTATIONSWhat are your approved presentation templates?Tell people what (PowerPoint, Keynote and others) and where they are and how to use them. Post the most up-to-date templates in this section. Common practice is to include 1–3 decks based on team needs (size, content, etc). Add a download link to your presentation templates in this section.

What does your product look like?Don’t hold back on the details in this section: include product-font usage, a product-centric version of your color palette, logo usage, actual code used to create certain parts of your product – basically any details someone building a new product or feature would need to know to stay on brand. Note: Some companies have product UI guides that are more involved than their brand guidelines. Some have none at all. Give this section prominence based on your organizational needs.

What is the design system for your website?Similar to the Product UI section, this should be heavy on details. What do web designers and developers need to know to stay on brand? Provide downloads wherever it will be helpful to end users.

Guide | Brand Management in the Digital Era

8webdam.com | learn@webdam.com | ©2018 Webdam

Position your brand to evolve in today’s digital world.Building out your basic brand guidelines is just step one. Brands today have to exist in a wild variety of environments, from traditional channels like print advertising, sales collateral and retail to more exotic locations like social platforms and blog sites. So it’s important that your brand guidelines can adapt to these contexts.

Your brand also has to keep up with the pace of digital marketing. Brand communications move and change much more quickly than in the past. Static guidelines published as PDF documents or HTML pages can’t keep up.

Your brand guidelines have to stand up to a new set of demands. If you want your brand to live and breathe in this new era, three things are required:

Your brand guidelines must be:

• Easy to adapt for new and varying channels and audiences

• Easy to update at any time

• Easy to access by internal teams and outside partners

Guide | Brand Management in the Digital Era

9webdam.com | learn@webdam.com | ©2018 Webdam

How to accomplish this? The answer is a dynamic brand portal, a web-based platform where authorized employees and partners can access up-to-date brand guidelines and assets from any location. Companies have historically had to build their own platform on top of a central storage solution, although now there are commercial options available. Webdam offers an easy-to-use brand management solution called Brand Connect, which allows users to create multiple brand portals with simple drag-and-drop tools.

What kind of results can you expect once the portal is in place? Consistency. Your story being told the way you intended. And the greatest desire of any marketer: influence over the perception of your brand.

Want to take brand guidelines to the next level?Once you’ve got the basics of brand guidelines down, you’ll want to take the next steps: Get a baseline for your brand and evaluate the current state of your guidelines to spot gaps and opportunities. Identify the current marketing channels and areas where you want to explore. Adapt your brand guidelines to fit these new channels. And, finally, learn how to effectively distribute your brand guidelines so your brand story is being told the right way.

4 Steps to Setting Your Brand Free

Read Brand Guidelines Reinvented.

ABOUT WEBDAM

Webdam, is a leader in digital asset management, changing the way marketing and creative teams manage the world’s brands. Founded in 2005, the Webdam cloud-based platform connects the visual content that drives impactful brand experiences and allows brand-building activities to scale across the enterprise and consumer touchpoints. Over 700 of the world’s leading brands rely on Webdam to accelerate their marketing operations. For more information, please visit webdam.com and follow Webdam on Twitter or Facebook.