July 21, 2014
“Do you feel it is necessary to always use the official slogan? I think if we used a variety of informal but related slogans, the variety would attract attention, keep people guessing and anticipating what will be next, and be something people would talk about. The primary slogan needs to continue to be the official slogan and used in official contexts so it would still be on people’s minds, but I know that if it is all people ever see, it may seem to get ‘old’ and overdone and lose its ‘oomph.’ To counter that, would ‘temporary’ slogans on temporary materials be okay?” – Signed HobbyPilot in SC
Like so many things, these aren’t “Yes” or “No” questions. There’s a longer explanation and rationale we’ll try to address.
First, unless a volunteer took care of your creative (and we generally don’t recommend that because after all, you get what you pay for), you spent money from your budget to have a professionally researched, thought out, and designed package to brand you, your company, or your organization.
It doesn’t matter how much you spent. The fact is that you felt that branding your cause was important enough to make a financial investment to professionally present you to your audience.
There are auditory, graphic, and/or textual cues created as a part of your branding that are designed to work together to create, build, or reinforce perceptions about your product or organization. Why would you want to dilute that?
While your company may not be Coca-Cola or McDonald’s or Chick-fil-A, your product and organization’s public face is no less valuable.
Successful brands don’t rotate their branding standards for fear of something getting “old” or “overdone.” In fact, they do just the opposite. They protect their branding standards with every breath.
Aside from registering taglines and logos with the US Patent and Trademark Office to retain legal rights to them, companies monitor (whether in-house or through a third party) how their names and identities are being used to make sure even Tweets and Facebook posts stay within fair-use guidelines.
They produce detailed graphics standards guides that expressly illustrate the sizing, colorization, and positioning of their logos. They show how their taglines should appear with their logos and whether or not one can appear without the other. There are a host of other explanations companies give to expressly protect their brand images, but you get the idea. For whatever it’s worth, multinational corporations aren’t the only ones to protect their brand identities. A lot of other groups do it, too – from political campaigns to small businesses to local governments and everything in between.
They actively protect their brand images because they work hard (or they should) to make sure the public market perceives them the way they want to perceive themselves. Packaging, printing, messaging, advertising, media and community relations, social media, websites, mobile apps, and even internal communications tie in with their branding. It provides consistency, and it’s the repetition of that consistency that makes people think about and remember your brand.
Now, what about losing that “oomph” and countering that with temporary taglines on temporary materials?
That’s actually two different issues.
The first deals with losing that “oomph.” When identities become stale, it’s not because the same thing is presented. It’s because the same thing is presented the same way. Part of the challenge of keeping brand identity fresh (the fun part after the initial creation) is the ability to present that identity in new and different ways.
Chick-fil-A’s cows still hold the signs that read “EAT MOR CHIKIN.” They’ve done it since 1995, but they change the way they present the message so it stays fresh.
SUBWAY has told customers to “Eat Fresh” since 2002, but they use a variety of messengers from weight loss success stories to athletes to animated characters to get the message across.
BMW has been “The Ultimate Driving Machine” since 1975, and the German auto maker doesn’t seem to be changing its direction any time soon. With their constant annual sales growth, I don’t think I would, either.
Again, these are just a few examples, and chances are you aren’t BMW, SUBWAY, or Chick-fil-A, but those brands show that it’s not the message that gets old. It’s the way the message is presented that needs to constantly be refreshed.
Now, what if you have a sub group of your organization?
Sometimes, these may be subsidiaries under a larger corporate umbrella that, for whatever reason, need their own corporate identities without being attached to a parent company.
Other times, you may have a group within your organization that has a more specialized focus or product or service from the larger institution where each sub group should have its own identity BUT should still be easily identifiable with its parent.
Let’s say, for example, you’re a local government like a municipality and you have a branded identity you want residents, businesses, and potential residents and businesses to identify with your city. You also have a number of departments under that larger umbrella (e.g. Emergency Services, Public Works, Parks and Recreation). Creating alternative/variant logos and taglines for those departments that also easily link them to the bigger group not only reinforces the city’s branded identity as a whole, it highlights specific areas of service people can expect to receive.
By creating variations tied to the larger group, you still reinforce the identity of the overall organization.
The second issue is the temporary taglines on temporary materials.
Is there a temporary promotion? Is there a contest? Is there an event? In these cases, generating promotional activities for those things is perfectly fine and even advisable, but materials and communications, while specific to the promotion, contest, or event, should not eliminate the clearly identifiable and official branding of the sponsor. After all, you paid to create a brand identity and work to promote it so people think about you a certain way. You don’t want to dilute that and the effort that has gone in to building and reinforcing it.
Just make sure the elements of your official branding are included correctly and that throwaway event slogans or clipart logos included by enthusiastic employees on to a flyer don’t overshadow your established look and feel. In fact, the smart play is to limit who has control over creation and production of those materials so good intentions don’t lead to branding mistakes you need to recover from later.
Does any of this mean that it’s not OK to do a complete branding overhaul from time-to-time? Absolutely not.
Sometimes, it’s necessary.
If the mission or vision of your company or organization changes, it may be time to do it. If technological advances change the way you operate and conduct business, it may be time to do it. If you merge with another organization and your product or service offerings change, it may be time to do it. If your organization is evolving in to something completely different than it was before, it may be time to do it.
There’s no doubt that there are reasons for a wholesale rebranding, but make sure the time and reasons are right and that your organization will ultimately benefit from it. If the time isn’t right and the reasons aren’t right and a simple tweak or two to your established branding will do the trick so you can illustrate evolution without scrapping your look and feel, don’t change. Keep building and reinforcing the identity that is getting you or that got you where you are or where you want to be.
If you have a question we might be able to answer or if you have a campaign, an issue, or a project where we can lend a hand, drop us a line through our Contact page. We’ll be glad to try and give you an answer or point you in the right direction to someone who can if we can’t.
