eConnection from Epiphany Marketing

Greetings! It's been a while since we last shared our adventures in marketing with you. In working with clients over the past year, we've taken a lot of notes. This bulletin and those to follow offer some of what we've learned or reinforced from these collective experiences. Please let us know what you think, and contribute your own thoughts on the subject too. Working together, we'll all be better marketers and builders of personal connection.

Happy Thanksgiving, Ron Marcus Principal



Graphic Style Guide
The key to keeping your brand consistent and powerful. A Graphic Style Guide is a manual that tells you exactly how to design in multiple media with your company logo, fonts, colors and templates. This guide is essential to putting your best brand forward. Here’s why. Building a strong brand is all about building trust. And the foundation of trust is consistency. When you act the same way every time, people trust you will continue to act that way. And, when you look the same way every time, this reinforces the feeling of trust in you.

Without trust, there’s no loyalty, and no repeat business. Simple, right?

Imagine if, every few days, your local McDonald's changed the color of its arches (the grass green arches?) and menu names (I'd like a Big Jack please)? What would this do to your perception of the food? Would you stop and wonder if standards are being upheld in the kitchen? I sure would. It's the same with your own brand. You want to avoid anything that will cause your customers to question the consistency of your company and by extension, its products and services. We cannot overstress this point.

Yet, so many companies are forever letting their design staff and vendors routinely change fonts, colors, logo treatments and graphic design of collaterals, ads, direct mail and Web pages. This creative freedom may be great fun for the designer, but it will create confusion for your customers, whose trust will diminish with every change. With a Graphic Style Guide, you have a step-by-step instruction manual which ensures that anyone creating anything that conveys your brand — from a flyer to a brochure to the look of your Web site and even your interior decor — will know exactly how to design to maintain complete brand consistency, at every touch point, in every communication.

This is critical. Any company considering creating a new brand identity (logo, stationery, templates for printed collateral, etc.) should automatically insist on having a Graphic Style Guide to go with it. The extra amount you'll pay your vendor to create this now will save you immeasurably in keeping the trust and loyalty of your customers. What’s more, your designers will thank you for having this document, which will simplify their design tasks.

What's in a Graphic Style Guide?
Logo usage — color variations and applications, and improper alterations. Colors — includes CMYK and Pantone spot colors for printing, and RGB for Web. Fonts — standards for headlines, subheads, body copy, bullet lists and more. Includes font types, styles, colors and placement. Sample design templates for stationery, ads, flyers, etc. San Diego State University has an excellent style guide to use as an example. You can download the pdf here (or just ask me for it: ron@epif.net).

Who should receive a copy of your Graphic Style Guide?
This guide will help anybody who will have anything to do with designing anything for your company — graphic artists, interior designers, the receptionist, office manager, and you too as a creative director.

Want to know more?
Give me a call (858.866.0700 x100) or an email (ron@epif.net). I'll be happy to talk more with you about graphic style guides, and about branding in general. Until next time, Ron & the Epiphany Marketing Team

ABOUT US
Epiphany Marketing is a San Diego–based full–service integrated marketing agency. We help companies with strategic planning and tactical execution of marketing communications programs.