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Keeping Campaigns Cohesive
For your marketing to be as effective as possible, campaign elements need to hang together as if they were wrapped in duct tape. A key aspect of a strong marketing campaign is including high-impact visual and copy elements that unite the messaging. When a communications campaign has a memorable, consistent message and the same look and feel regardless of the platform, the impression you make is of a significantly large and more sophisticated organization.
Unfortunately, keeping a campaign consistent is a lot harder than it looks. Once the campaign is launched, there are any number of subtle pressures that can run it off the rails. Unless you take care at the beginning to establish and enforce objective standards for things like logo use, type fonts, colors, icons and other graphic design elements, company communications can become a hodgepodge — and that’s not a good way to make an impression on customers.
The process of maintaining a cohesive marketing campaign begins with the development of the Big Idea, the core message on which all other campaign elements will be derived. Here at SCORR, we start by creating a strategic marketing action plan or StratMAP that takes a comprehensive look at the marketing situation and identifies important audiences and marketing messages. Only when this is complete do we begin work on the creative execution of the campaign.
Not that long ago, we only developed Big Ideas for a relatively few platforms — print advertising, brochures and possibly broadcast, direct mail or outdoor. When the Internet came along, we had to consider how to express consistent design concepts on computer monitors; now we’re designing communications with smartphones and social media in mind.
Keeping central control of a marketing campaign once it’s been launched is the best way to ensure consistency, but many companies allow divisions or branch offices to develop some of their own promotional materials. In these situations we often create templates for price sheets or other materials that might be developed locally. This allows remote offices to customize the message while keeping all other campaign elements together.
For companies that may have in-house graphic design capabilities, we create a digital Style Guide that establishes exactly how graphic and textual elements are to be used. This document describes precisely which logos, colors and fonts are acceptable for each platform and application so that new materials will share the look, feel and core message of previous materials. We’ll also include a library of approved photography, illustrations and other design elements.
Keeping the campaign cohesive over time is vital because brand perceptions are built gradually and only through repeated exposure. About the time you’re getting tired of your current marketing campaign may be just the time it’s starting to work in the marketplace.
Be diligent. Establish graphic standards and insist that they are followed. Make sure that everyone who is authorized to create customer communications understands the importance of a consistent presentation of your company’s image. Be patient. Stay the course.
It’s the only way to end up with marketing that really sticks.