Every business in the world, no matter its size, benefits from tactically developing a brand and maintaining it as a recognizable representation of the organization. A strong brand identity propels it to the forefront of those consumer attitudes which facilitate their spending decisions.
Simply put, an effective brand illustrates to the public a company’s product or niche, and highlights what sets it apart from its competitors. It combines a number of major factors, including marketing and public relation efforts, logo and promotional material, communication efforts, and core values.
Why It’s Important
Branding efforts allow businesses to differentiate themselves from their competition and gives them a leg to stand on in the minds of consumers. It attaches a personality and attitude to the product and the company that produces it. This personality is what people relate to, establishing relationships with consumers. This, in turn, encourages brand loyalty, which cements the company’s future in the market. Furthermore, the establishment of brand consistency creates a platform for the company to stand on in order to get messages out to its audience.
Realistically though, establishing and maintaining a recognizable and trusted brand is truly an art form, and not every company gets it right. Here are several companies that are absolutely nailing it.
Wells Fargo
Image by Flickr via Ron Cogswell
Wells Fargo keeps its brand communication traditional and straight-forward, honoring its history of more than 150 years of banking success. Its promotional materials focus on its core values: strong ethics and customer service priorities. These values are evident in the slogans the company has used over the years, including “Together we’ll go far” and “The next stage.”
The company sticks with the same font, color, and logo across all marketing platforms, establishing its historic stagecoach as its ever-present symbol of historic tradition and commitment to excellence. As a clear demonstration of Wells Fargo’s success, today it holds the spot as the 23rd largest company in the U.S.
Image by Flickr via toprankonlinemarketing
There’s a reason that Google, Inc. seems like it’s taking over the world (Spoiler: it’s because it is).
Internet users everywhere know what Google is and what it does. The Internet powerhouse company uses the same recognizable typeface and design elements across every aspect of its marketing platforms. In today’s social media dominated world, it’s worth noting that Google has had a presence on every single social networking site from the beginning. Now that it has a social network of its very own, the Google logo is even more cemented in the depths of the Internet.
Google has managed to keep its brand image consistent amid a flurry of developments. These paradigm shifts and ingenious acquisitions played key roles in morphing what started out as a simple search engine into the product and software-developing, answer-seeking, Internet-dominating titan that it is today. And a lot of that success is thanks to its significant brand consistency.
Verizon
Verizon is the largest wireless carrier in the U.S., but it offers many services that go beyond the confines of the mobile market. It’s also a one of the largest providers of high-speed Internet and phone services to both commercial and private customers.
The telecommunications company utilizes an integrated marketing campaign that focuses on a young demographic, typically between the ages of 25 and 35. It sends consistent brand messaging across all its marketing platforms, including social media, TV spots, sponsorships, and radio advertising. The overarching image Verizon seeks to achieve is its reliability, customer service excellence, and superior technology that enables it to provide unprecedented service standards. It relies heavily on this image and its solid reputation to acquire new customers and earn loyalty from existing customers.
The Verizon logo centralizes these efforts, by reflecting the same recognizable color scheme and font that the company employs across all its marketing platforms.
Target
Image by Wikimedia Commons
One of the largest retail stores in the world has really hit the bull’s-eye with its brand consistency. Target’s iconic logo has represented the company since 1962. In addition to the brilliant and subsequent advertising campaigns, it promotes its core values of integrity, customer service, and affordable quality. The current tag line it uses conforms to this notion as well:
“Expect more. Pay less.”
Target’s brand consistency starts in its stores and stretches across all its marketing platforms, focusing on the Target shopping experience. From its store designs to its commercials and other promotional efforts, Target seeks to distinguish itself as a classy, high-end discount store with exceptional customer service and better quality products than its competitors. A consistent color scheme and endearing commercials humanize the company, making it natural for customers to develop a bond and sense of loyalty with the brand. How well they recover from their holiday hacking problems will largely depend on their brand loyalty. One suspects that they’ll do fine.
As you can see, brand consistency is absolutely instrumental in the healthy development and progression of any company large or small. Take some pointers from these companies and see what brand consistency can do for your business.
Author: Teddy Hunt: A freelance content writer with a focus on technology. When not behind a computer, Teddy spends the majority of his free time outdoors and resides in Tampa, Florida.
