Posted on: September 29th, 2009 by Natasha Samek

11.45am. The creative team are in early to present some concepts for a campaign lobbying the Government demanding that Arlene be reinstated to the Strictly Come Dancing judging panel.

Everyone: OMG, wow. I’ve never seen anything like it. These are totally going to make people sit up and take notice
Account Manager: Yeah – amazing stuff, really DIFFERENT. Just a small thing though, can you work them up within the charity’s brand guidelines before we present them? i.e. change all background colour to a 36% tone of peach, copy to Gill Sans MD Condensed bold version 3.3 and add an 19mm coral blue curve to each corner – you know, just like the other stuff you did?

Uncomfortable silence ensues. The Account Manager considers the conditions of her company health insurance policy.

Creative resistance to brand guidelines is not unusual. What is unfortunate though is that the ‘fight’ somehow always degenerates into one of impactful vs. consistent communications. We all know that all marketing communications need to make an impact, so the debate shouldn’t be about whether or not to create impactful communications but, rather, what makes communication impactful? And that of course depends on the objective.

From a brand person’s point of view, a brand has a much bigger chance of creating awareness if there is consistency in the communications. Consumers see orange and know instinctively what brand is being advertised. Over time, people become familiar with the way that brand looks and speaks and it becomes part of our society, our culture. We recognise it, we expect it to be there, it’s part of our life. And that is a place where all brands want to be.

But just like anyone we see everyday, brands need to do something different if they want to excite us and change our behaviour, whether in terms of buying a new product from the company, giving money to an appeal or signing a petition for a specific issue.

Yes, a brand needs a soul, a personality that the target audience can understand and engage in and that personality should be inherent in all its communications -that’s where the brand can start becoming a valued part of our everyday lives. But design guidelines are just one expression of that and we need to be careful not to put too much emphasis on them and make them too rigid. If you’re trying to get people to donate money to a specific appeal, you need that communication to break into the consumer’s daily routine, something that an ad that looks pretty much the same as everything else communicated by that brand will unfortunately struggle to do.

2 Responses to “Not so strictly, please.”

1. reuben says:

   September 29, 2009 at 8:55 pm

   Great insight. It’s about values, not logos.
2. Andy says:

   October 1, 2009 at 2:04 pm

   First, nice link with the ’strictly’ thing

   Brand guidelines should be a menu for flexible expression, not a straight jacket.

   A brand needs to be able to express excitement, concern, fun, joy, ecstasy, urgency, pleasure etc etc. And the role of brand guidelines is to allow all of this whilst keeping everything in the same family.

   If this isn’t happening then the brand guidelines need reworking. The most powerful example of brand consistency is personality – and if that personality is being strangled then there’s a problem.

   innit.