What’s Missing From Your Corporate Identity Manuals?
Every serious company has it — Corporate Identity Manuals. But in more than a hand full of companies it simply deals with the visuals (logo, colors, and fonts). This is like saying a person’s identity is his visual appearance — and nothing else matters. But we all know that is not true, right? So, what’s missing in your Corporate Identity Manual?
Everyone in marketing, sales, and PR has seen it numerous times — people caring more about the right tone of blue than the message itself. Enthusiastic (or pedantic) marketing managers, brand managers, and product owners are constantly ranting about web developers getting it wrong, and print companies being incompetent in getting the color tone right. Even with Pantone in place, this fails at times. And I admit — it is frustrating.
But these same people fail to complain about their communications being inconsistent. By this, I am appealing to e.g. a tone of voice across channels, an element of being (in)formal in written and spoken messages etc. No one sends an e-mail saying: “We are very informal on Facebook but very rigid and old-fashioned on our posters. Can we talk about our guidelines?” Not to mention the discrepancies that happen between the products (under the same brand). Yet, all these people know very well that Facebook compresses images and can distort colors. How frustrating, isn’t it?
Perceiving color vs. perceiving verbal messages
A human eye can distinguish between ca. 10 million colors (source). And yet, when we try to remember the exact tone of color, we can get it very wrong. It’s like remembering the exact taste of wine. We can tell the difference when we are tasting 2 similar wines simultaneously, but (unless trained) we can hardly tell what exactly is the difference between two similar wines if we try them with 2 weeks long break in between.
Now, think about messages. Can you say someone is feeling somehow bad just because (s)he uses different words? You have nothing to compare it to — you just remember the “baseline”. And it is the same as the brand. We subconsciously know something is off. Sometimes, even people within the company know something in the way they are communicating in marketing and PR seems off. But many people don’t care enough to change that.
Why should you care about your brand message and tone of voice?
Trust is built through being coherent.
Because trust is built through being coherent. People feel safe when everything feels “right”. And even if you are communicating to different audiences through different channels — this is still you. What is your core? What are your values? If you can stick to these, you cannot really be off. And believe me — it doesn’t hurt to have these written down. Because: what do you do when you need to figure the exact tone of blue you need to use on the poster? So why would you treat your tone of voice any different? Don’t!
