In the contemporary competitive digital space, the need for giving your brands a single identity is highly significant in making you stand out and find relevance with your potential customers. Effective brand strategy includes visual elements as well as brand voice that synchronizedly bring out the values of an organization, its personality, and unique selling proposition.
This blog post enlightens on why there should be harmony between your visual identity design and brand voice and gives practical brand strategy tips to achieve this.
The Essence of Brand Alignment
Brand alignment involves having a unified brand where everything from visuals to the way you speak about it are seamlessly integrated together. Through this, they will build strong memorable moments with their consumers. According to Lucidpress (2019), research indicates that consistent presentation of a brand across various platforms may increase revenues by 23%. This statistic highlights how important it is to have an aligned branding strategy in order to drive business growth.
Visual Identity: The Face of Your Brand
Your visual identity is the first point of contact between your brand and your audience. It includes elements such as:
- Logo
- Color palette
- Typography
- Imagery
- Design elements and patterns
Don’t choose only those visual components that look good; they must also convey your brand’s character and core values. For example, when we look at Apple’s minimalistic design choices, it is clear that their commitment to simplicity and innovation is deeply embedded in their brand.
The Brand Voice: The Personality Behind the Visuals
This refers to the tone of voice, style, and language with which a person uses to communicate with his/her audience.
- Tone of voice
- Vocabulary and jargon
- Sentence structure and rhythm
- Storytelling approach
Having a well-defined brand voice helps people relate to the brand on an emotional level. Take Dove, for instance, whose visually appealing real beauty/self-confidence-oriented brand voice fits well with its visual identity.
Bridging the Gap: Aligning Visual Identity and Brand Voice
- Define Your Brand Strategy
Before you start developing visuals or working on your brand voice, first thing you should do is define your brand strategy which lays out a strong foundation for this business process, including;
- Who are your customers?
- What values/mission does your company hold?
- Who are your competitors?
- What is your USP?
A comprehensive brand strategy acts as the pathway towards integrating visual identity with brand voices.
- Make a Whole Brand Guide
Develop a comprehensive brand guide that details both visual and verbal components of the brand. This must include:
- Guidelines on using logos
- Hex code-based color palette
- Typography specifications
- Image style guidelines
- Examples of marketing tone
- Writing style guidelines
A well-thought-out brand guide maintains consistency across all touchpoints and ensures your business remains aligned as it scales.
- Uniformity On All Channels
In today’s world of numerous channels, it is increasingly challenging to maintain brand consistency yet more important than ever. According to Demand Metric, 90% of customers expect brands to be consistent on all devices and platforms they use. For this purpose:
- Ensure you have the same visual elements used across your website, social media profiles and marketing materials.
- Use one tone in writing across every aspect – from social media posts to email newsletters.
- Give your team members lessons on branding so that they can understand and follow through with your company’s personality
- Match Visuals with Brand Personality
Your visual identity should be a real image of your brand personality. E.g:
- If you have a playful and energetic brand voice, then think about bright colours and dynamic design elements.
- For a more serious and professional tone, opt for a muted color palette and clean, structured layouts.
Airbnb’s visual identity uses warm colors and friendly illustrations that are in line with its welcoming and community-focused brand voice.
- Utilize Typography to Reinforce the Brand Voice
Typography is essential in connecting visual identity with brand voice. Go for fonts that exemplify your brand personality:
- Use Serif fonts which typically suggest tradition and reliability
- Sans-serif fonts can hint at modernity and simplicity
- Script fonts could bring out elegance or creativity.
For instance; Netflix Sans, the firm’s own sans-serif font contributes to their bold contemporary tone of voice as well as addressing licensing issues and making it easy to read across screens.
- Use Imagery that Reinforces Your Message
Your marketing materials should use images that make your brand more strong. For example:
- If your brand’s voice is about being genuine, then go for candid pictures of real people rather than those which look overly posed
- For a tech-based brand with a forward-looking voice, include sleek photos of products and futuristic designs
Patagonia uses its powerful outdoor photographs to support its environmental responsibility and adventure focused brand positioning.
- Always Adapt and Improve
Brand alignment is a process that keeps going on. Examine your visual identity and brand voice at intervals to ensure they are still useful and relevant. Some of the following ways can be applied in this case:
- Periodically conducting brand audits
- Seeking audience feedback
- Studying market trends or competitor strategies.
Coca Cola as one of the successful brands have been able to change its visual identity as well as its brand voice over time while retaining a few central aspects related to the brand.
Conclusion
Involving your look and voice of your brand in unison is a very important element of a successful brand strategy. When you create an integrated brand experience, you can enhance brand recall, reward customer loyalty and eventually catalyze business growth. Remember that this is not something that happens once; instead, it is an ongoing process which requires attention, consistency and willingness to change with time. As you fine-tune your branding strategy, always remember the importance of integrating what people see from your audience’s perspective with what they hear from their mouths.
At Ecompapi, we appreciate the convolutedness involved in nurturing a well-connected brand identity which is so crucial in today’s digital era. Our comprehensive online marketing approach guarantees that every aspect of your company’s strategic blueprint collaborates effectively hence yielding impressive effects. Whenever you need to either rebrand or even start up afresh, allow our team to help in creating visuals and language that will resonate well with the target consumers thereby propelling your enterprise forward.
