Brand identity is an integral part of any business. Customers, clients, your audience, and any prospective leads rely on branding and consistency to establish trust and form a compatible relationship

Brand inconsistency can damage your corporate identity and break down trust between you and your demographic. So what happens when an employee decides to go rogue using your branding and what can you do to prevent brand misuse?

When you have multiple content contributors, employees, or people working under the umbrella of your business, brand monitoring can feel overwhelming. However, there are now some impressive tools and technologies available for maintaining brand consistency. These tools are especially helpful as you work to keep templates, logos, documents, and presentations, uniform across the board.

Below, we will discuss the importance of brand uniformity, how brand misuse can damage your growth potential, and what you can do about it.

Why Branding Matters: Consistency is Key

When you think about some of the most famous and recognizable brands in the world, you will quickly realize that they aren’t ingrained into our minds because of their great logos or stunning color palettes. Instead, brand consistency is what makes these companies stand out. Consider companies like McDonald’s, Apple, and Amazon. Each company has a clear and consistent pattern within its corporate identity.

The uniform hamburgers at McDonald’s, the packaging of Amazon delivery boxes, and the designs of Apple electronics are just some examples of invariant brand exactness. And it is this uniform brand identity that sets these corporate giants apart from competitors.

Corporate Moguls like Amazon, Apple, and McDonald’s understand that consumers cannot be relied upon to purchase products on merit alone. Human beings are creatures of habit. The branding identity of your organization should be compatible with the preferences of your audience. Why work against the current if you can use it to propel you forward?

On the other hand, what if every time you went to Mcdonald’s, the hamburgers were different sizes? What if they were only cooked all of the way through 50% of the time? What if your Amazon deliveries only showed up 80% of the time?

Or worse yet, what if the employees at Apple, Mcdonald’s, or Amazon decided to go rogue and handle business how they saw fit? How well would that go over with loyal customers?

Consider These Statistics:

• Consistent brand presentations increase revenue by up to 23%
• 95% of organizations have branding guidelines, but only 1/4th have formal guidelines that are consistently enforced.
• Over 60% of organizations report that materials are always, often, or sometimes created that don’t conform to brand guidelines.
• 81% of companies still deal with off-brand content according to the study.
• Over 75% of employees use Google to find their own company logos
• 70% of business documents are started from blank or old presentations…NOT corporate templates
• 69% of marketers say updating company content is one of the most challenging aspects of rebranding

Employees Who Violate Corporate Brand Standards Can Cause Legitimate Problems

Branding incursions can come from inside or outside of your network. From fraudulent gift cards to domain squatting, there are plenty of ways that your branding can be damaged by outside sources. However, employees may also choose to go rogue with branding principles. This harms the topline and growth potential of your organization in various ways!

Employee Brand Misuse Can:

• Damage trust between current clients and customers
• Deter prospective leads from using goods or services
• Set a bad example for other employees, causing a perpetuation of the issue
• Create legal issues and expensive problems
• Inhibit the growth of your brand relative to your peers and competitors
• Damage working relationships you have with other businesses or prevent future networking

Brand Misuse is More Common than Most Companies Realize

It is incredibly common for employees to misuse, misinterpret, or ignore brand guidelines. Among other things, brand misuse can significantly detract from your company’s ability to grow relative to its peers.

This can damage your business’s relationship with customers and may also prevent new leads from using your services in the first place. As you can see, these problems are extremely problematic and can hurt your company’s growth potential.

Whether your employees refuse to use a pre-made template, integrate unapproved fonts, or change the way they handle clients in general, brand misuse damages the trust established between your audience and your company. Even if brand misuse is accidental or meant for good, it can still cause issues. As such, you should do everything possible to prevent it from transpiring.

Your company brand is one of its most important assets! Did you know that 60% of materials are edited by sales reps before they reach their final destination? Although brand management teams are considered the guardians of your brand, changes can happen along the chain of command. These changes are often meant to help materials target a specific demographic but can end up doing damage to your brand

What You Can Do: Proactively Protecting Your Brand

So how can you protect your brand from internal misuse? As it happens, there are many helpful steps you can take to proactively prevent issues in the future. As they say, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of enforcement!

Watch for Issues Like:

• Documents created by employees that go against brand standards
• Negative social media mentions
• Domain abuse and rogue apps
• Using dated branded content (e.g. old logos, trademarks, etc.)

Astute Review: It’s Like Spell Check For Your Brand!

Want an effective way to prevent branding issues from inside your organization? If so, Astute Review is here to help! With Astute Review, you can prevent brand misuse and grow your team adaptively using empowering strategies! Astute Review allows you to choose from various products and services to save you time and money. These products and services can prevent an array of problems from surfacing.

With eyes across your organization and analytics that show you where issues may be arising, you can increase your reach with confidence and peace of mind! It’s like having spell check turned on, but for your brand!

• Real-Time Brand Monitoring
• Presentation Automation
• Assets Library
• Prevent Employee Brand Misuse

Astute Review Works Where You Work

It can be challenging to get your team to adopt new sales tools and digital enablement resources. With Astute Review, employees do not have to learn any new platforms. The tools automatically embed where they already work!

Empower Your Teams

Many files do not go through a marketing review process before getting to prospective clients. Astute Review empowers employees to stay on brand by checking their work for uniformity without negatively impacting creativity or strategic sales tactics

Eyes Across Your Organization

Astute Review increases your marketing reach organization-wide. Analytics are available to show you real-time data and help you lead marketing teams in the right direction!

Learn more by clicking here to watch a video or here to browse Astute Review products and services!