How to leverage visual identity to drive creative performance webinar

On Tuesday, our in-office team attended Facebooks’ live Master your Marketing webinar. The webinar was interesting and fun. Facebook’s team discussed how brands are creating their contemporary brand image and centred around a style guide for forging your own unique brand image.

But why is your brand important, especially it’s visual component? As the Facebook team elaborated, “in today’s world identity is everything”. Any visual distinction or way to set yourself apart from others can be considered a breakthrough with consumers. This can come down to extremely simplistic choices like a simple color palette your brand is associated with. Black and green for Spotify, red and yellow for McDonalds, or blue and orange for Mrkt360. 

Your brand’s identity relies on consistency amongst all it’s visual components, from colors, to fonts, logos, and design. If your brand switches colors or fonts or it’s logo design too frequently, how can consumers be expected to remember your brand or what it represents. 

Think of the iconic, simple, minimal, white apple logo of Apple. Now imagine the font Apple utilizes. It’s websites, commercials, and product design all employ a consistent theme of minimalism. Essentially, you can often observe a commercial or see a product and already know it’s Apple without them even telling you. Apple has very much mastered their marketing.

Trust is a vital component in a buying decision, and customers buy from brands they trust. Trust is only built with consistency. Consumers trust your brand when they can know what to expect from you. It’s why maintaining a single brand style is so essential and makes your brand feel legitimate. 

The four essentials required for creating a consistent brand image are;

Logo: The image which represents your brand.Type: fonts and typefaces your brand writes in. Colors: The colors which will appear alongside your brand. Mnemonic: The key message or idea of your brand. 

So with this in mind, think again about Apple. It’s logo, it’s type, it’s colors, and it’s mnemonic. The iconic plain white Apple logo. The SF Pro font it writes all it’s content in. The white, black, or grey which accompanies its products, commercials and web design. And it’s mnemonic, “think different” or even the sound an Apple computer or laptop makes when you power it on. All of these components of it’s brand identity have been consistent since the 1980s. It’s what allowed Apple to become a trusted company and one of the largest global corporations today. While there has been subtle changes along the way, the Apple of 2001 still looks nearly the same as the Apple of 2021. 

To summarize, your visual identity should reflect your business and it’s values. Once you settle on a logo, some colors, and fonts which you want to associate with your brand, remain steadfast with them. Consistency is king in building rapport and trust with your audience and potential customers. 

All this information applies across visual channels as well, from commercials, to online ads, and everything in between. Maintain consistency and maintain your brand values. Create an identity and stick to it.

If you would like to learn more about leveraging your visual identity for your business click here to watch the Facebook webinar.