Why brand manuals should be mandatory for small businesss

The ‘big guys’ have them – 2 inches high sometimes, bound and sent whenever their logo is sent for a new advertising medium. I’m talking about brand manuals. For anyone who has worked for a large company, you’ll no doubt be familiar with these bibles of dos and do nots. They demonstrate what you are not allowed to do – stretch your logo, change the background colour, how much space it needs around it – to ensure the brand remains consistent. It also talks about the ‘brand story’, this is the background information of the business, what it stands for, what it means to it’s consumers, often written like it is a living, breathing person.

These large companies have invested thousands creating, and millions building their brand and as the logo will be used by so many people in their company, everyone needs a clear understanding of how it must not be tampered with. But how does this relate to the small business, where the number of staff can fit in one telephone box, and you can simply check over someone’s shoulder to make sure the logo is not being abused? A small business needs consistency in presentation even more than the big companies!
So you’re trying to grow your business, and every cent you spend promoting your business must be deliberate and thought out. You go to your signwriter, and they take your logo (in whatever type of file format you can dig up) and sign write your car with their interpretation of what your business should look like. Now you create a website, and again send your logo to the web developer, and they in turn present your company to the electronic world in their best interpretation of your business. You’ve now booked some space in the local newspaper. They offer to design your advert for free, and so again you send your logo to them, tell them what you want the advertisement to say and their design wizzes create an advert for you with the information you’ve provided.

Now, take your advert, your website and your car and put them side by side and ask yourself (honestly now):
1) Does each of these say exactly the same thing?
2) Do they look exactly the same?
3) Does the colour look exactly the same from one to the other?
4) Hmm, why does my logo look blurry blown up on the side of my car?

Each of these businesses have done a great job presenting your business, the only problem is you’ve told them a slightly different message about your business (we all get bored saying the same thing over and over, even if it is the first time they have heard it), and they’ve done the best job the can with the information you’ve given them.

Imagine now if you’d given each of these design companies exactly the same message. Say a book which dictated the exact colours they should use for your logo in the medium the use (pixels on a screen, 3M adhesive, ink on newsprint), that told a story of your business, and displayed previous work that’s been done to match it to.

What that would give you, who is so careful about spending marketing money, is strength in repetition. That when your consumer sees your business for the first time they don’t take too much notice, but then again they see your car, and exactly the same look, then find your website when they have a problem that your business can provide the solution for. Before long the accumulation of the exact same presentation of your company builds memorability, and with it report and recognition of your services.

The electronic file age has brought with it a new language, and so also in the design industry, as we talk about dpi, jpeg, eps, bitmap, cmyk, process, rgb, spot, pms and so on, unless you’re dealing with these file types and settings daily the average business should not be expected to know what’s what. This is why you also need an electronic brand package somewhere, with these listed and easy for you to grab and send off, without the need to know what they mean.

Finally, as the business owner, and the one closest to your branding, you see your logo day in, day out and can be the worst offender for “ahh, let’s mix it up a little, I’m bored with how it looks”, a brand manual can remind you as to why you present your business in the way you do, and remind you of the importance to not change it around just because you are bored. How do you think Richard Branson feels about his Virgin brand? He’s had decades of staring at that red scrawly text, but has the discipline to leave it intact, and remembers that it’s about what his consumers think of it, not whether he’s ‘over’ a red logo.

I suggest if you’ve not got a manual in place, have a read of your business plan, to remind yourself why you’re in business, then sit down with your designer and start putting one together, for the time it takes to do this, it will be an investment and adding value each time you spend money on advertising.