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The red and white colors on a soda can. The bullseye on the
retailer’s sign. The capital K on a box of cereal. We instantly
recognize Coca Cola, Target, and Kellogg’s, even without
seeing the name. The branding is just that strong.

Branding – whether in the form of logos, brand voice, typography,

imagery or color palette – defines your product, creating brand
recognition, reputation, and customer connection. But that trifecta
doesn’t happen by accident. It requires planning and intention.

But sometimes, brand inconsistencies can derail your best efforts.

Even worse, those brand inconsistencies can occur in-house
because of ineffective or missing brand management. The cost to
your brand equity can increase substantially in multiple ways.

Brand inconsistencies occur when organizations have no single

source of truth for their messaging and digital assets. For example,
many companies rely on storing brand asset information in
Google Drive or SharePoint. But not everyone involved in a
project may have access to that information – or to the latest
information. This challenge remains especially true when multiple
departments and third parties create and use the assets.

Companies need a brand management strategy that gives them

an easier, faster, and more reliable way to ensure their brand’s
messages and voice come through consistently, loud and clear.

2
Top Downloads
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2019-11-27 bis

DC-9845238.jpg
327 Brand consistency:
DC-2548793.jpg
218 no room for missteps
DC-5468932.jpg
186 Three to five seconds: That’s how long a consumer typically spends
in front of a grocery store shelf, deciding which product to buy.1 Why
such a short amount of time? Because the consumer often already
knows what they want while trying to locate it on the shelf. Once
they see the brand and product type, they grab it and move on.

On the other hand, if the consumer doesn’t see the brand

logo, color or other features expected, they’ll assume the item
has gone out of stock and select their second choice.

Or think about the shopper purchasing clothes or accessories

through an online marketplace. If the item arrives, but
the brand logo and other features don’t look familiar, the
shopper will undoubtedly suspect they’ve received a fake.

But the grocery item may be on the shelf, and the online order
may be genuine. The problem may be brand inconsistency.

3
“A brand is a perceived value. It’s the personality of the company,” said
Michael Lacey, Head of Brand and Content, Canto. “Brands spend a
lot of time and money to get the right colors, fonts, imagery, tone,
A brand is a perceived
and messaging to provide a unified look and feel. This unified look
value. It’s the personality
and feel creates familiarity and trust in the marketplace,” he added.
of the company. Brands
Big companies like Netflix, Coca-Cola and Amazon spend billions of
spend a lot of time and
dollars on branding,2 but even startups and midsize organizations can money to get the right
spend five to six figures on creating and maintaining their identity.3 colors, fonts, imagery,
tone, and messaging to
With that amount of investment, a company’s branding efforts must provide a unified look
stay effective. “When you’re trying to build an emotional connection and feel. This unified
between your customers and the company, brand management look and feel creates
is how you articulate who you are,” explained Erica Gunn, Chief familiarity and trust in
Marketing Officer, Canto. “Having that story and expression be the marketplace.
consistent across all the channels where you show up is important.
When a brand has inconsistencies, it causes brand erosion.” MICHAEL LACEY,
Head of Brand and Content, Canto

1 C
 olasuonno, Marina. “How Much Time Do We Spend in Front of a Shelf before Deciding to Buy a Product?
A Typical Consumer Journey.” Linkedin Com, 7 Nov. 2018, www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-much-time-do
we-spend-front-shelf-before-deciding-colasuonno/?articleI d=6466008166395052032.

2 WebsiteBuilder. “35 Eye-Opening Branding Statistics and Facts to Know in 2021.” WebsiteBuilder.
Org, 20 Mar. 2021, websitebuilder.org/blog/branding-statistics.

3 “TechCrunch Is Part of the Yahoo Family of Brands.” Techcrunch.Com, 28 Mar. 2019, techcrunch.com/2019/03/28/
startup-branding-how-much-does-it-really-cost/?guccounter=1&guce_refe rrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_
referrer_sig=AQAAALPz1u1JBiaJBC2ZXXKRW1dkucFG wYq9kT0sS9xejEmsJSRHc-7RA6A0KomGxHK7IP1X9veF1TksT9d6Vd
UDfvV0LSUmvcBhy1g_5joYwOiqHEs5g y0JXDAUF392nLuPrZl4tp0pWG2HsNqIjsxLDfU7WovX63WymHUxsCOz-ZqQ.

4
 Inconsistency is a
long-time challenge
Keywords

The impact of brand inconsistency isn’t a new theme. Ten years

ago, research showed that brands with consistent brands were
Europe X Collateral X
worth 20% more than those without them.4 And a more recent
study by Demand Metric found that fewer than 10% of the
200 study participants said their brand presentation stayed
very consistent. Furthermore, while nearly 90% said brand
consistency remained important, less than half achieved that
consistency. Sixty percent said that although they had brand
guidelines, the materials created still didn’t conform to them.5

When brand inconsistencies occur, winning new customers can

present challenges. The well-known Rule of 7 marketing adage says
it takes seven interactions with a brand before a consumer will
take action to buy a product. But, if those interactions don’t show
brand consistency, it will require more interactions (i.e., more time
and more advertising dollars) to make an impression, Lacey said.

Brand inconsistency doesn’t only hurt prospective customers.

As described earlier with the customer in the grocery
store, if a customer knows they want to buy a product but
can’t easily find or recognize it, they’ll often move on.

4 A
 uthor, Guest, and Guest Author. “How Consistent Branding Is Being Challenged in the Digital Age.”
Techipedia | Tamar Weinberg, 9 Nov. 2011, www.techipedia.com/2011/consistent-branding.

5 “ The Impact of Brand Consistency: Insights on the Impact and Value of Brand Consistency.” Https://D2slcw3kip6qmk.
Cloudfront.Net/Marketing/Press/Webinar/The-Impact-of-Brand-Consistency-Re port-New_Cover.Pdf, 2016, d2slcw3kip6qmk. 5
cloudfront.net/marketing/press/webinar/The-Impact-of-Brand-Consistency-Report-Ne w_Cover.pdf.
What causes brand inconsistency?
Few brand managers intentionally allow branding to go off course, yet
it happens regularly, Gunn observed. Although maintaining brand
integrity stays top of mind for marketers, they work in silos. “You’ve
got people who own social platforms; other people own email or
the campaign strategy, as well as creative designers. Your creative
and your copywriters tend to be most in tune with your brand
identity and brand storytelling, but for people who own different
campaigns or channels, it can get lost in the day-to-day of the job.”
A variety of brand inconsistencies can strike an off-note, Lacey
added. “One of the most frequent examples of brand management
inconsistency is when someone in the company uses the wrong
asset. Or it could be an outdated asset, the wrong brand colors or
logo, font, brand colors, inconsistent tone, voice, tagline or CTA.”
Some of the most frequent causes of brand inconsistencies include:
LACK OF COMMUNICATION: It’s like a game of telephone,
Gunn explained. A company may have great creative assets at the
center, but as more people get involved, the farther out from the
center they go, and they tend to deviate a little bit. “People become
focused on their own KPIs and their own things that they’re trying
to achieve. And sometimes, brand integrity gets watered down.”
LACK OF PROCESSES: Inconsistency in brand management
increases as companies grow, Lacey said. Often, small companies
have simple processes to maintain their brand identity, but as they
grow in the number of employees and locations, the company doesn’t
have procedures in place to keep everything consistent as they scale.
VOLUME OF ASSETS: Keeping brands consistent can seem even
more complicated when thinking about the many assets companies
use, from videos, photos, images, one sheeters, PowerPoint
presentations, webinars, and sales collateral. Multiply that by
different departments, including sales, marketing, customer success
teams, marketing partners, HR, third parties, and franchisees, and
you can easily see how brand integrity mistakes can happen.
NEED FOR SPEEDY DELIVERY: “When posting on social
channels, you might be more casual and post multiple times a
day, so every post doesn’t go back for review and approval,” Gunn
explained. When posting and tweeting about an event in real-time,
you may compromise speed with the need to stay on-brand.
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 INABILITY TO FIND THE RIGHT ASSETS: Beyond trying to SLOWED COLLABORATION FROM DISTRIBUTED WORKFORCE:
push communications out quickly, brand inconsistencies also exist The hybrid work environment has highlighted companies’ challenges
when difficulty arises in finding the right assets. “When working in creating consistency with brands, Lacey said. “It has shined a
with a network of resellers or vendors or partners, if it’s not easy light on the need for a single source of truth. Before, we had the
to get access to your logo or your color palette to spec, the first benefit of people sitting next to each other in an office, where
thing people do is Google your name and find the logo that’s they could communicate verbally. Now, we’re working at home,
there,” said Gunn. But that version might not be an approved on individual systems.” Finding the needed information can
asset with the current logo or the right color or resolution. prove more difficult and time-consuming, which can ultimately
affect a company’s ability to go to market quickly, he added.
OBSTRUCTED ACCESS TO THE CORRECT ASSETS: Marketers
may know the right asset exists but can’t get to them. Often, that
issue results because those assets end up stored on individual
Share
employee’s desktop files, in emails, or email attachments. They
may be kept in shared files like Dropbox or Google drives that
also have access controls, Lacey said. However, with no process
or architecture to organize the assets, finding the right one can
still feel like finding a needle in a haystack. “Lots of brands have
hundreds to thousands of files. You could spend hours looking for Cancel
the right one,” Lacey noted. In addition to the cost of this wasted time,
companies may have to recreate the asset when an asset can’t be
found quickly, duplicating their efforts and spending more money.

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Six ways to improve brand consistency–starting now
For all of the complications brand inconsistency can cause, brand managers can take these steps to reduce
the confusion, mistakes, increased time and cost associated with brand inconsistencies.

1 2
Develop and communicate brand guidelines. Ensure Be clear on collateral usage. Beyond knowing the
proper documentation and accessibility for guidelines brand guidelines, users need to know which assets to
to those within and outside the organization needing use for what purpose. Be specific with instructions,
to leverage them, including logos, colors, and all brand Gunn recommended. “We need to say, ‘Here’s the exact
elements. Make sure teams inside and outside the logo to use, here’s where to use it, and here’s where
organization know the brand guidelines, Gunn said. not to use it.’”
Otherwise, they’ll use what they can find.

3 4
Create approval checkpoints. Ensure the maintenance Keep collateral in one spot. “Instead of having some
of guidelines by making sure someone from the assets on one person’s laptop and others in a personal
brand team approves that an asset has the right folder in the cloud, make certain all of the collateral
tone, messaging, look and feel before using it, Lacey lives in one location so that anybody who needs to have
suggested. access knows how to get it. This practice also ensures
that all versions of assets remain together, making it
easier to find the most current ones”, Lacey said.

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 5 6
Make the collateral easy to find and use. Having
everything in one spot satisfies just the first step. The
ability to find what you need quickly is critical, and it
requires the power to search for an item and know it’s
the right version and the right format.
Use technology to create a single source of truth.
A digital asset management (DAM) platform that
helps organize and find assets serves an instrumental
purpose in brand management. When DAM is a part of
a company’s tech stack, marketers can make sense of
the thousands of assets stored. Lacey explained that
the ideal solution offers users the ability to search,
tailor geographically or according to other criteria,
ensure version control and have customized portals,
so the right people have access to the information they
need, while other information stays secure.

Gunn observed that although brand managers have felt frustrated with brand inconsistencies, they may not know how to fix them or
that solutions exist. They depend on marketing processes, tools and technology to increase scale and efficiency, so it makes sense to
look at digital asset strategy solutions to improve brand consistency, she added. “As the digital transformation continues accelerating,
managing those ever-increasing digital assets is an imperative to keep your brand consistent and maintain operational efficiency.”

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Canto is a leader in digital asset management (DAM) software, with
customers that include many of today’s top brands. This simple yet
intuitive solution gives organizations a visual way to centralize, organize
and share all their digital brand assets, empowering them to save
valuable time and gain a competitive edge. Canto’s DAM solution has
wide applicability to a variety of industry verticals, including retail,
manufacturing, education, transportation, hospitality, nonprofit,
healthcare, food and beverage, technology and more. Canto’s
corporate headquarters is in San Francisco, with offices in Berlin and
Frankfurt, Germany. For more information, visit www.canto.com.

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brands an ROI rich tool kit: Deep industry expertise, first-party
audience insights, an editorial approach to brand storytelling,
and targeted distribution capabilities. Our trusted in-house
content marketers help brands power insights-fueled content
programs that nurture prospects and customers from discovery
through to purchase, connecting brand to demand.

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