Brand advisory as a key to successful transformation
What makes a global brand successful? According to Justyna Dorman, brand communication specialist at Admind branding and Piotr Wiśniewski, creative director, it is the willingness to adapt to changes in the market and remain consistent by sticking to solid brand principles.
BRAND IMPLEMENTATION
Research shows that visual communication consistency improves brand visibility among recipients by up to 300%. Therefore, rebranding may be an opportunity to rethink the identity, message, and brand promise of the company systematically and consistently. But it’s what comes next that matters the most - the tools we use to implement the new ideas.
UNDERSTANDING THE CHALLENGES
To make a successful brand implementation, it's necessary to have a broader business perspective and appropriate strategic and design experience. Well-planned brand management is important not only to make a smooth rebranding process but also to operate the brand goals daily. Brand books and manuals are essential at the very begging, but to make them easy to use there is a need to implement brand governance.
Brand Governance is about the standardization of the tools, the systems we use, and the processes we develop. It’s crucial to manage and maintain the brand to keep it consistent. It can increase awareness and brand knowledge inside and outside of the company, as well as foster independence regarding the use of brand principles among the community.
BRAND GOVERNANCE VS BRAND ADVISORY
Brand Governance, or as we rather say “Brand Advisory”, guides both consumers and employees through the visual aspects of the brand. It offers the opportunity for knowledge sharing, dialogue with the client, and brand exploration. What is usually associated with this term are the actions taken to ensure that the rules of identities will be followed, but it is also more than this.
We have decided to abandon the term "governance" as it does not reflect how we educate the client about the brand and support clients in creating on-brand materials. Brand Advisory term, better describes our service and our specialized team in Admind, combining and connecting all factors for internal and external brand awareness: knowledge sharing with the audience, brand support, and involvement in principles development.
By respecting the guidelines of particular identities, we honor the clients' needs according to cultural or time zones differences. BA team is not only taking the role of the governor but as well the advisor, by not forgetting to educate the global corporate client. It is their role to constantly react and adopt consistent solutions, so they can work for both the brand and the client. Such an approach helps huge brands grow.
BRAND TRANSFORMATION
Based on our experience working in the agile model, we have developed our project methodology where BA has a crucial role.
Step one in the process is to define the rules in visual brand communication. Afterward, during the whole day-to-day brand service, our BA team collects insights and makes sure to improve them, to make them on-brand and in line with the customer and market needs.
The second step is to create an accessible database - a repository, where everyone interested has access to the developed tools. It's a place to take care of the knowledge transfer, where everyone interested can easily access to find the on-brand guidelines.
Another crucial step is to educate - through everyday contact with the client, and also through pieces of training or workshops during which interested parties can better understand the visual communication strategy of their brand.
And, last but not least: the advising - even the best guidelines will not answer all doubts, so we provide a dedicated team for consulting with brand specialists.
REAP THE BENEFITS
Therefore the ideal brand governance service needs to be complex and comprehensive, supporting consistency across different businesses and markets in all relevant platforms. It will support a strong and recognizable brand.
