Last year, I was fortunate enough to attend one of our client’s creative summits in Chicago. This is a meeting of the company’s creative and branding department, and its creative partner agencies from all over the country. The funniest thing to happen at the event was when the creative director for the company came on stage and shared that many of the agencies present were using the wrong logo for their communications. Even though this is a world renowned brand, it seems with the re-branding and subsequent revisions, their corporate logo changed faster than agencies had access to it, thus the confusion in use. This brings me to the point of this post. It’s not unheard of for large corporations nowadays to have dozens or in some cases, hundreds of marketing partners, including multicultural, PR, digital, social media, B2B, experiential and general market agencies, to name a few. All of us that have the task of marketing and helping communicate our clients’ company and products are responsible for the protection of their brand; you could say we’re their first line of defense.
These companies have invested large amounts of time and money developing their unique brands and all the elements associated with it, which can include fonts, specific colors, rules of placement, and even in some cases, the photography that may be used. This is why when working with a new client, regardless of their size, you should always make sure they have at the very least a brand style guide, and if your client doesn’t have one, suggest helping them develop it for future use.
While some of us laying the groundwork in graphic departments might find all these rules constricting, we need to remember that we are designing the public face of our clients, and as such, it is our privilege and our responsibility to make sure the side the public sees is always consistent. After all, Coca-Cola wouldn’t be the same in orange right?
Juan Alvarez | Creative Director
Juan you are right on point! It is extremely crucial to maintain continuity in branding via consistent execution of creative elements (i.e. logo, collateral, signage, etc.). Suggesting brand style guides to a client lacking one, is displaying how the agency is being proactive. Not only is it beneficial to the company, the style guide impact’s the agency and creative depts. bottom line by promoting effective internal and efficient external communications with vendors; thus resulting in timely turnarounds of creative production.