What is a brand story?

A brand story communicates who you are, what you do, and why people should be associated with you. When people understand your brand story, they get an idea of why you are in existence.

Communicating openly and honestly implies that your brand is authentic, giving people more confidence to engage with you. The brand guidelines, including the brand style and usage criteria, ensure that your messaging and engagement is up to standard and consistent.

Remember to keep the guidelines in line with your company’s vision and mission statements

To get a rough idea of how to design an effective brand story, you can borrow tips from Walmart Brand Center. The guide contains simple ways to design tools for communicating with the Walmart brand, including brand colors, typography, brand voice, and logo creation. You will also find the appropriate icons, logos, fonts, and taglines accepted by Walmart, which helps give the brand a consistent tone.

Another example of how to create an effective brand story can be seen from Mozilla’s Style Guide, comprising brand guidelines for both the Firefox and Mozilla brands, as well as Press assets. The resources are rich with ideas for Mozilla users to understand the appropriate way to use the brand’s logos, trademarks, and products.

Mozilla’s brand guidelines - Image Credit: Mozilla.com

Despite the size of your business, you need to establish the basics for guiding your branding and messaging when communicating with customers and other stakeholders. Your brand assets must not be as comprehensive as Mozilla’s, but they should align with the goals of your business and the needs of your target market group.

With these ideas in mind, let’s have a look at the top 10 reasons for sharing your brand assets, guidelines, and story.

10 Reasons You Should Be Sharing Your Brand Assets

1. To build a strong brand identity

A brand story or brand guidelines, whichever way you prefer to name them, help communicate the face of your business. Brand identity refers to the visual components that represent the expectations, relationships, stories, and memories that cause consumers to make a buy decision.

Brand identity contains elements that enable you to communicate consistently with customers, employees, and other parties who use your brand assets.

Identity can be in the form of mission, core values, tone, pitch, etc. which are displayed on your brand assets

Brand guidelines help you maintain a set of rules that users of your brand colors, logos, palette, backgrounds, and typography can adhere to to ensure a coherent image.

The practice shows what your brand stands for as it communicates your business goals, values, mission and vision, personality, and promises.

For instance, a memorable logo communicates your brand identity design by aligning with your company’s emotional appeal or response. People are most exposed to your brand logo, making it an essential element for creating positive experiences and memories for your brand.

Ensure to create a simple logo, which can fit in different digital advertising mediums, as well as integrate an attractive color palette comprising 1 to 3 primary colors.

AirBnb’s brand logo has evolved into a bold pink geometric design that communicates the company’s modernity, fun and hunt for adventure, demonstrated by an upward facing triangle.

AirBnB’s brand identity - Image Credit: AllAboutAirBnB

Sharing your brand assets creates a certain tone with customers and other users, making it easier to identify with your message.

2. For brand recognition

Consistent brand guidelines help customers and other people who use your brand assets to easily and instantly recognize your business. It is a simple way to introduce your message to customers, indicating what your brand is and what your business does.

For instance, Google’s brand is easily recognizable thanks to the company’s four colors; it is easy for people to identify with the brand because of the strong and consistent visual appearance.

When your brand is identifiable, your customers will be able to choose your product or service offering over the competition.

Whenever you add new elements to your brand stories, such as more logo elements, social media headers, or even a new email signature, ensure to keep your brand recognizable by making the additions blend with your existing designs.

Customers can spot the things that make your brand stand out, and the best way to outshine your competitors is to share your brand assets consistently.

3. To personalize your brand

Edelman Trust Barometer report - Image Credit: edelman.com

Your customers want to interact with a human figure, not a faceless company. To do so, companies share their brand assets to make it easier for customers and other followers to trust them.

Indeed, according to a Trust Barometer report by Edelman, up to 64% of customers are now belief-driven buyers. Customers’ purchase patterns are influenced by the trust they have towards the brand. 67% of shoppers also agree that while a good reputation may prompt them to buy a product, they soon would stop buying it if they do not trust the brand behind it. The report also shows that only 34% of consumers (1 out of 3) trust most of the brands they buy from.

When you build trust, consumers find it easier to engage with you, they buy your product, remain loyal to your brand, advocate and recommend it to others, and defend it against detractors.

The best way to share your brand assets is not to tell the product or service features, but to demonstrate your transparency and build more stable relationships.

A consistent message shared through your brand colors, logos, typography, and other elements humanize your brand, making it more trustworthy, which leads to more customer returns and sales.

4. To align the brand with the right people

One of the reasons businesses should focus on sharing their brand assets is to demonstrate that they care and that they are accountable to society for their actions.

Brands use their values, colors, logos, and other visual appeals to attract the right partners and marketers; it is a way to tell people what the business stands for, making it easier for you to attract the right clients and employees who can stick with you in the long-term.

You should communicate your core values as a way to inform potential clients of the kind of people they will be dealing with in case they choose your proposal. There are businesses, marketers, and clients who will only work with people who stand for certain values, such as environmentally sustainable production or alignment to certain political or even religious beliefs.

For instance, as a way to communicate their personality, purpose, and promises, learning institutions, and law firms highlight more strict rules in their social media posts than other businesses. The practice enables you to attract those followers who align with the company’s mission and values.

Jaffe, a legal PR firm suggests that law firms should adhere to certain rules and values when engaging in social media. Such include abiding by ethical guidelines, training of the legal partners on the firm’s social media policy, and monitoring of social media posts to ensure they are responded to promptly and appropriately.

Such values imply that the law firm is reputable and clients dealing with the company, whether on social media or elsewhere, will be treated with the utmost respect.

Jaffe PR’s guidelines on social media policies & values for law firms - Image Credit: jaffepr.com

The more you align your brand assets with the interests of the target market, the more you will appeal to your buyers’ interests and improve sales conversions.

5. To promote professionalism

By sharing your brand assets you communicate to your target customers that your business observes a professional tone. The professional image should be maintained by the use of consistent logos and colors across different channels.

The brand assets displayed on your website and social media pages like Twitter and Facebook should be similar to avoid confusing your customers.

People tend to lose touch with a brand that keeps changing its assets on multiple customer touchpoints. Brand guidelines are even better because they enable anyone using your brand assets to adhere to a set of consistent values, logos, and colors, which implies the elements of professionalism and competence in your branding. Having a consistent brand image across both online and offline touchpoints,  including social media pages, company blogs, billboards, promotional QR codes with logos and even product packaging, is necessary to building brand recognition and brand trust.

Lululemon Athletica, a sportswear and yoga brand, is a good example of a business that carries a consistent message of keeping fit across its channels. You will find this value being practiced in the company’s stores and public outdoor outlets, where the brand conducts free yoga lessons. The email list sign-up page also displays an image of people doing physical exercise, while the brand’s Twitter profile shows people practicing yoga, further highlighting the consistent and professional approach towards Lululemon’s sharing of brand assets and values.

Lululemon Athletica’s email list sign up page - Image Credit: shop.lululemon.com

Lululemon Athletica’s Twitter page - Image Credit: twitter.com/lululemon

Remember to always display consistent brand colors and logos on your website and social media pages while maintaining a professional look.

6. As a source of agency

While it is easy to manage the appearance of your brand story, you cannot control how the audience perceives the message.

However frustrating this reality might be, sharing your brand assets is the best approach in taking ownership over what is communicated to your customers. In the process, you will discourage people from publishing their own narratives about your brand or even ignoring you entirely.

Given the evolution of the internet age, it is now easy for people to share potentially harmful messages regarding a given business. This development calls for businesses to develop and share the ideal and desirable brand assets then leave the interpretation to the followers.

While you may have the best entrepreneurial message, you can only be rewarded if you express it, and protecting how your brand assets are perceived is crucial in maintaining the right image.

The better you communicate the message through consistent brand colors, typography, images, and logos, the better the perception of your customers and other followers of your brand.

7. To guide your employees

Your brand guidelines will enable your employees to use your assets in the right manner. You will not have to worry if your marketing team is using the right brand colors, taglines, and logos because a repository of your brand assets will always act as a standard guideline.

Your brand assets are also useful to new recruits to ensure that they are using the right branding. A strong brand identity will guide your brand strategy, and since employees are your internal customers, they should buy into your business idea.

Therefore, you must ensure that your corporate culture blends with the business values and colors, and provide the necessary information required to use your brand assets with ease.

Shazam, an Apple-owned app, enables people to easily identify songs, movies, commercials, or television shows that they hear or see in shops, restaurants, and other places. Shazam implements straightforward brand guidelines that emphasize how to use the company’s logo.

Shazam logo guidelines- Image Credit: issuu.com

Sharing your brand assets lets your employees craft consistent visuals, messages, and ideas whenever they communicate with your company’s stakeholders, prepare presentations, or promote content on social media.

8. To communicate your value

Businesses gain competitive advantages mainly from their pricing or value proposition. Competing on price can prove challenging, especially for brands selling quality products and services.

Every now and then, there are new businesses coming up, which are selling almost identical products and services as existing brands, but due to scale and ability to sell in bulk, they end up setting lower prices.

Competing against such models can become an endless pursuit, which will not only cost you customers but also cause you to lose focus on more important business activities.

Instead, focus on value-creation by providing your customers with exceptional services and quality products and services, such that people buying from you will be willing to part with more to get the best value for their money.

A brand like Apple sells expensive, high-end products without losing customers to the competition because the company uses a unique value proposition of quality and customer service. This message is communicated consistently through the company’s mission statement, whose goal is to provide the best user experience, improve people’s lives, and empower the public through innovation and the provision of top-quality products.

Similarly, you can build your brand on a value proposition, by providing high-quality products and services, and communicating this message through your brand assets.

9. Deliverance

Sharing your brand assets is similar to making a proclamation. It is a statement you make to your customers, employees, and other stakeholders that your company will deliver on its claims and promises.

When you claim that, for instance, your brand logos, colors, approved images, and tone of voice stand for environmental sustainability, quality healthcare, or quality products and services, ensure that these statements and sentiments are shared across the organization.

Let your social media presence, website, and all communication channels and customer touchpoints deliver on the promise implied by your branding. This practice ensures that you only state promises that you can keep avoiding confusing your customers and possibly losing them to the competition.

10. For improved sales

Branding guidelines influence how customers perceive your business, leading to improved trust, loyalty, and ultimately, better sales.

You will gain more customers, followers, and sales conversions depending on how well you communicate your brand assets.

Indeed, research by Forbes shows that the use of consistent branding across all channels can raise your revenues by up to 23%, as it is a way to gain customer trust and loyalty, and it also shows that you are authentic.

Starbucks stands out as a preferred coffee brand because of its quality offering and consistent branding, which customers have come to identify with. On average, every customer visits Starbucks six times a month, with 20% of them visiting the outlets more than 15 times a month. The delivery of a consistent customer experience has enabled the company to retain more of its customers, hence, improved sales.

To keep your customers engaged and hooked to what you are selling, keep your branding consistent, irrespective of the communication channel you are using.