When every aspect of your brand aligns with your business’s mission and vision, it can become powerful, even iconic. On the other hand, when you share content that isn’t consistent with your brand identity, your audience might be left confused, disappointed, and even distrustful.
That’s why it’s critical to ensure everyone who works on your brand plays by the same rules—a practice known as brand compliance. Learn more about why brand compliance can help you build a brand that’s instantly recognizable, no matter where your audience encounters it.
What is brand compliance?
Brand compliance is the practice of ensuring that your brand’s content, assets, and messaging align with your brand identity and company values. Typically, companies measure brand compliance against a set of brand guidelines that specify how a brand is represented across various marketing and communication channels. These include rules about the use of logos, typeface, tone, images, color palettes, and messaging.
Brand compliance is an expectation that applies to everyone at the company, as well as external partners. It creates a single point of truth about your brand vision and how that vision comes to life, helping you maintain brand equity, or your brand’s perceived or intangible value.
Key components of brand compliance
- Clear, comprehensive brand guidelines
- Asset libraries
- Training programs
- Review and approval processes
The most iconic brands have entire marketing teams and legal departments dedicated to ensuring brand consistency and protecting brand identity. But you don’t need a fleet of lawyers to ensure that your branded content has the same tone and visual elements. You just need the following essential components.
Clear, comprehensive brand guidelines
Your brand guidelines should include both visual and voice guidelines, each with detailed instructions to make them actionable. That means covering as many use cases as possible with practical examples, visual aids, and explicit do’s and don’ts. You may also include materials for designers including font files, hex codes (six-digit combinations that represent specific colors), and logo files in multiple formats.
Adherence to your brand guidelines is the foundation of brand compliance. If the guidelines aren’t crystal clear, your team can’t comply.
Asset libraries
Create a centralized hub of approved brand assets, so that everyone knows exactly where to find compliant imagery and creative templates for emails, social media posts, sales decks, and other branded assets. Doing so will ensure your team isn’t working from outdated materials or cobbling together their own off-brand content.
To create a hub, you can use a file sharing platform like Dropbox or Google Drive. You can also opt for brand management software, which allows you to manage and store your asset libraries in a centralized, cloud-based, auto-syncing platform.
Training programs
Make brand compliance training part of your onboarding process. Introduce all employees (not just marketers) to your identity, values, and practices. Include information on where to find brand assets such as logos or color palettes. Distribute a digital copy of brand guidelines, so that employees can comply with minimal supervision.
If elements of your branding change, be sure to communicate that throughout the organization and be diligent about updating public and internal assets.
Review and approval processes
Even when templates, training, and brand guidelines are available, internal team members will inevitably identify unique use cases not covered by existing materials. Ensure they have the flexibility and information to create the assets they need without compromising your brand integrity.
Provide a communication channel for structured review of this modified material to ensure quality assurance. At the end of the day, it’s better to have people feel comfortable sharing their customized materials for review than to have them use assets you haven’t seen.
Tips for improving brand compliance
- Make brand guidelines accessible
- Continuously communicate brand standards internally
- Create a brand-centric culture
- Establish an audit process
- Implement a feedback system
- Monitor and measure
Here are a few tips for ensuring your company’s content creation efforts help build a strong brand identity.
Make brand guidelines accessible
Make sure your brand guidelines are readily available. They should be clearly organized and use consistent naming conventions and metadata tags for searchability. Sort your brand materials in clean asset libraries organized by use case or campaign. It’s also a good idea to use a digital asset management platform to house this content for easy updates.
Continuously communicate brand standards internally
Brand compliance is an ongoing job, and establishing your brand standards from day one can help ensure consistency. When you make revisions, explain what has changed and why to the entire organization. Take advantage of all-hands meetings or town halls to showcase what’s new or exciting with the brand.
Brand lunch-and-learns can be a great way to bring people together in a casual environment. Answer questions and consider providing branded lookbooks with photos and graphics to show employees what your brand looks like in action.
Create a brand-centric culture
Set the tone for the team and create a culture of brand guideline compliance. That means setting a strong example. Brand compliance is everyone’s job. When you have a culture that self-regulates, mistakes—like sending an off-brand marketing email—are quickly noticed and corrected. When your company shows a commitment to upholding brand standards, everyone feels responsible for compliance.
Establish an audit process
Implement a brand audit system that evaluates materials as they’re produced and distributed. Every piece of content you distribute—emails, social posts, sales decks, and ads—should be treated as a brand marketing asset, and evaluated as such. Even company swag should be rigorously held to brand standards. Establish protocols for reviewing planned projects and assets with the brand team. Review all your historical content on a regular schedule and remove outdated brand elements.
Implement a feedback system
Help mitigate branding misfires by ensuring everyone has an avenue to provide feedback. If your marketing and sales teams feel that approved messaging isn’t resonating with customers, that’s something your brand managers need to know.
Consider setting up an internal feedback platform where employees can report branding issues; for example, create a form employees can submit anonymously. Reports can then be directed to the brand manager or marketing department for assessment.
Monitor and measure
Brand compliance doesn’t stop with implementing your strategies. Adopt systems to measure internal consistency and how your brand is portrayed externally. This can help you spot areas where you can improve, adjust, or reinvent to better connect with your target audience. Tools like Google Alerts can keep you informed about how your brand shows up worldwide, and sentiment analysis tools can help you gauge customer perceptions of your brand.
Brand compliance FAQ
How do you measure brand compliance?
The most common measurement of brand compliance is the number of reported compliance issues. However, marketers need to be wary. Few reported issues could mean your employees are compliant—or it could mean they simply aren’t reporting issues or paying attention.
How do you enforce brand compliance?
Brand compliance starts with training and education for internal team members and external partners. It is maintained by implementing asset review and approval processes, a digital asset management tool, and brand monitoring.
Why are strong brand guidelines important for brand compliance?
Strong brand guidelines cover use cases across the organization, ensuring everyone from sales reps to product designers understands the brand. Enforcing brand standards and compliance is easier when everyone is equipped with the templates and tools they need to create appropriate assets.
