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In our blog last month, we explored the topic of best practice brand deployment – how to bring your new brand to life. When it comes to implementing a new brand, there’s one aspect that deserves particular attention; the design process.

How do you work with designers to execute your new brand? What are the hints and tips that make the difference between a successful and failed brand deployment? Here, we look at the steps you can take when launching a new or refreshed brand.

What is brand deployment?

Our previous blog goes into more detail on this, but brand deployment is all about the way you put your new brand’s guidelines into practice. It’s how you take your brand from theory to existence, whether that’s in brochures and hard-copy communications, online and digital marketing, internal communications, or physical brand assets like office décor and signage.

This can be a very exciting part of the marketing process. A new brand is an opportunity to revisit your corporate values and positioning, as well as your look and feel. Brand deployment is the means by which you convey these new values – your ‘brand’ in the truest sense – to your employees, your stakeholders and your customers.

Your marketing collateral and brand assets you create should complement and amplify your values and brand positioning, delivering a consistent experience for users.

Why flawless design is key to a new brand

The need for consistency brings us neatly on to the importance of design when it comes to brand deployment. Your design process is vital to a successful brand deployment; everyone has to see the brand executed in the same way for it to have the impact it requires.

This can be a challenge when you’re working with new brand standards. Even your internal teams may not be clear on the rules. Because your brand isn’t yet second nature, putting it into practice takes a little more time and thought than for an established brand.

Until your brand is used – on your website, your printed materials, your digital presence – it’s just a concept. The design process uses your new font, colours, graphic devices and imagery to breathe life into this concept and make it real.

How to deploy your brand via design

So, when it comes to using design to capture and bring to life your new brand, what steps do you need to take? What are the secrets of success?

1. Work closely with your design agency. Expert external brand support can make the difference between success or failure when it comes to a new brand – your agency will have been through this process before, and will have the expertise and experience you need. But close collaboration is vital if your designers are to live your brand in the same way you do. Maybe they’ve been on board from the start, working on the rebrand. If your agency has come up with your new brand concept, they will obviously live and breathe the details of how it should be executed – great news. If not, brand training and a collaborative approach will bring them as close to it as you are.
2. Create clear brand standards. Woolly guidelines are the fastest way to an inconsistent brand experience. Make sure whoever is creating collateral for your new brand is clear on how to use your logo, on approved imagery and style, and on other brand features, like tone of voice, all of which combine to deliver consistency. Issues with brand consistency are identified as one of the main reasons why marketers struggle to keep pace with the demand for marketing materials. Make sure your approach doesn’t prevent you from creating the content you need.
3. Consider whether a templated approach might help. Many marketers eschew templates, assuming that they stifle creativity. In fact, today’s smart template solutions can provide a failsafe and cost-effective way to create on-brand marketing materials, in-house or via a design agency. Read our blog to find out whether templates could be the solution to your creative challenges.
4. Make sure you capture the little implementations, not just the big ones. The ‘big’ aspects of brand deployment – the new website; the office décor – might be what catches the eye, but there are numerous other ways your brand is taken to customers that can be harder to manage. When business teams produce ad-hoc pieces of communication, digital or printed, this can be where brand standards fall down. Using templates, as above, via some form of marketing automation solution can help here. Not every piece of collateral demands external expertise. But having a means of ensuring that materials produced in-house adhere to the same high standards of branding and consistency to those produced professionally allows you to strike the right balance between external design support and internal production.

Bring your new brand to life

Having a new brand is hugely exciting – a chance to upgrade the way your organisation is viewed by clients, employees and the wider world. But effective brand deployment is key, and a good design process underpins your success here. Hopefully, the tips here have given you a place to start if you’re looking to deploy your new brand.

Perivan has a design agency, and we have just been through a rebranding and brand deployment process ourselves. We’re therefore perfectly placed to help you with your own brand deployment challenges. If you’d like to know more, please contact us.

Nothing in this document should be treated as an authoritative statement of the law. Action should not be taken as a result of this document alone. We make no warranty and accept no responsibility for consequences arising from relying on this document.