What Is Brand Compliance? How to Ensure Its Adoption in All Creative Processes

Investing in brand building is vital for growing businesses. However, according to The Brand Growth Study, most marketers aren’t investing enough in brand building. Business owners should direct more than half of daily tasks and activities towards raising brand awareness and consumer interest.

Make sure your investments pay off with brand consistency and compliance.

Why Is Brand Compliance Important? 

When companies invest in brand compliance, they’re investing in building trust among customers and prospects. Your brand has a unique value proposition, and when this message is communicated consistently across marketing channels and different locations, you augment the brand experience. The following details the main benefits of brand compliance: 

Ensure Brand Consistency 

While they may not seem significant, even the smallest variations in branding can impact your brand integrity, for better or worse. This is why companies are encouraged to maintain a consistent brand. Consider the effect of a consistent brand identity when sharing company values and new product lines. It’s in these moments that a consistent brand voice and image can influence customer decisions. 

Solidifies Brand Recognition 

When a brand’s image is constant no matter where they encounter it, customers and prospects are more likely to recognize it. This builds brand recognition, which matters because people are more inclined to choose the products or services of a familiar business. For example, consider visual identity. According to Oberlo, using a signature color in your brand’s image can increase brand recognition by 80%.

Enhances Brand Communication 

When companies maintain brand compliance, it makes it easier to communicate about brand goals, even outside of marketing efforts. For example, a unified brand purpose can be applied to job descriptions, enabling your business to attract more qualified employees who fit your company culture. In all, brand compliance ensures all communications contribute to telling the brand story. 

Prevents Incorrect Use of Brand Elements 

When a company doesn’t consider brand compliance, the risk of misuse increases. You’re likely to experience more accusations of false claims, and you may run into legal issues for not complying with industry standards. The result of these issues is often a diminished brand identity. A clear approach to brand compliance can mitigate these concerns.

How to Ensure Brand Compliance 

The benefits of brand compliance are clear, but how can brand managers enforce these guidelines when overseeing personnel across a range of departments? The task becomes more challenging when managing brand image for multi-location companies. The following strategies are some of the most effective for ensuring brand compliance: 

Design and Implement Brand Compliance Guidelines 

Creating guidelines makes efforts toward brand compliance official. They enable marketing and branding specialists to get creative while preserving a uniform brand image (brand conformity). It eliminates the uncertainty about what is or isn’t allowed, often enhancing creativity and productivity. Typical items in brand guidelines include: 

• Brand messaging (tone of voice) 
• Brand colors for digital and print marketing campaigns 
• Typography (fonts and sizes) 
• Logo variations and dimensions

Empower Adoption with Training and Culture 

As essential as brand compliance is in ensuring the proper use of brand assets, it’s not solely about enforcement. It’s also about ensuring your brand’s core values appear in marketing and related materials. 

Since aspects like visions and values are more abstract, incorporating culture in your compliance strategy can be beneficial for securing employee buy-in. How were brand standards developed? Stressing how the company’s value played a role moves employees from simply complying with guidelines to respecting them. This can increase the adoption of brand guidelines.

Examples of Successful Brand Compliance Stories 

When companies follow through with brand compliance, the results are substantial. Consider these two examples from iconic brands that implemented brand compliance successfully: 

Apple 

Few companies have achieved the brand reputation of Apple. Customers wait expectantly for new products from Apple, particularly the iPhone. How does Apple generate such loyalty? It’s in large part due to their brand consistency. Serving global markets, Apple focuses on creating customer-centric experiences that put people’s emotions at the forefront. People are excited about Apple products, including everything from innovative features to the packaging. With an instantly recognizable logo, people all over the world know Apple, and they likely have a distinct emotional response to the brand. 

GEICO 

Another household name operating in a different sphere, GEICO has dominated the branding game. While the insurance company has made strides with social media and digital marketing, it’s most widely recognized for its television advertisements. 

What makes a GEICO ad so iconic? A similar brand experience is found in them all. All feature the famous tagline (you can hear it now), which reminds consumers that the company can help you save money. Secondly, GEICO makes people laugh with humorous situations and outrageous characters. When buyers want car insurance they can afford and aren’t sure where to begin, they remember the ad that made them smile and add GEICO to their list of options.

See the Impact of MarcomCentral on Brand Compliance 

With well-defined brand compliance guidelines in place, businesses gain the advantage of a consistent brand identity that can enhance their reputation. When going through your brand compliance checklist, be sure to include the brand management portal from Marcom. 

Our platform, MarcomCentral, includes clear compliance capabilities that enable brand management and marketing teams to control how brand materials are uploaded and edited. This feature ensures any finalized content that comes out of the platform is brand-compliant by default.

This optimizes workflows, enhances brand compliance monitoring, and ensures authorized personnel at all locations access the most updated and relevant assets. Managers can also centralize marketing efforts through custom branding and user permissions with the brand management portal. Other benefits of MarcomCentral include:  

• Enhanced sharing capabilities: Team members can more easily share marketing materials, comment on them, make real-time adjustments, and collaborate with partners. This system ensures employees are more involved in online brand compliance activities.
• Access to shared resources: Distributed marketing management allows teams to use shared resources, like customizable templates. This gives local design teams some control over brand compliance without needing to hear from central teams.
• Centralized content repository: A centralized repository for content ensures that only authorized personnel can access materials that were approved following the review process. Feedback about these assets is also stored in secure, compliant repositories, enabling brand managers to monitor all activity. 

To learn more about MarcomCentral,reach out  and schedule a demo.