Episode 16 Transcript

Welcome back to The Overthinker’s Guide to Modern Marketing,  the podcast for people who’ve been told their brand must be completely consistent and have consequently spent forty-five minutes wondering whether using a slightly different shade of blue on LinkedIn could bring down the entire company.

I’m your host, Sean Makin, a man who has spent enough time around brands to know that consistency is important, but also that if everything looks, sounds and behaves exactly the same forever, you haven’t necessarily built a strong brand.

You may simply have frightened the marketing department.

Before we begin, make yourself comfortable.

Perhaps acquire a drink.

Coffee. Tea. Something involving oat milk and a small lecture about sustainability.

The usual.

Then find somewhere suitably impressive to sit.

Ideally with a background that suggests you’re a thoughtful international business leader rather than someone sitting at the kitchen table waiting for the washing machine to finish.

Right then.

Today we’re talking about one of branding’s most sacred commandments:

Thou shalt be consistent.

Same logo.

Same colours.

Same fonts.

Same tone.

Same imagery.

Same everything.

Forever.

And to be clear, consistency does matter.

It helps people recognise you.

Remember you.

Trust you.

Understand what you stand for.

The problem is that somewhere along the way, consistency became confused with sameness.

And those are not the same thing.

Because a strong brand should feel familiar without becoming predictable.

Recognisable without becoming repetitive.

Coherent without becoming so rigid that somebody in Marketing requires written permission to use a photograph containing the wrong shade of beige.

So today we’re going to ask:

What does brand consistency actually mean?

What should remain consistent?

What should change?

And have brand guidelines occasionally become the corporate equivalent of being told not to touch anything in your grandmother’s front room?

Let’s overthink it.

Part 1: The Great Consistency Commandment

For years, marketers have been told that consistency builds brands.

And fundamentally… that’s true.

Recognition depends on repetition.

If your logo changes every Tuesday, your colours depend on the mood of whoever opened Photoshop that morning, and your company describes itself differently every time somebody asks what you actually do… you don’t have a brand.

You have an identity crisis with a marketing budget.

Consistency creates familiarity.

Familiarity reduces uncertainty.

And reducing uncertainty helps create trust.

Human beings rather like knowing what they’re dealing with.

It’s why we return to the same cafés.

Buy familiar products.

Choose brands we’ve used before.

And become mildly suspicious when the supermarket moves the baked beans three aisles to the left without consulting us.

Aside, genuinely aggrieved:

Supermarkets do this occasionally.

You enter confidently looking for toothpaste.

It has moved.

Suddenly you’re wandering around household cleaning products wondering whether you’ve misunderstood the fundamental geography of the building.

But you’ve now spent £47.

Familiarity is powerful.

And brands use it very effectively.

The colours.

The visual cues.

The language.

The personality.

Repeated consistently enough that eventually our brains recognise them almost instantly.

You don’t necessarily need to read the company name.

Something in your brain quietly says:

“I know them.”

And that matters.

Because recognition makes decisions easier.

Every time customers encounter your brand, they’re adding another tiny piece to their understanding of who you are.

But here’s where things start getting slightly strange.

Because businesses discovered consistency works and did what businesses often do when they discover something works.

They applied it everywhere.

Enthusiastically.

Repeatedly.

And occasionally without asking whether it still made sense.

Consistency became a commandment.

Thou shalt not deviate.

The logo must always appear in precisely the correct position.

The colours must never change.

The typography must remain sacred.

The photography must follow the approved visual language.

And the corporate PowerPoint template must be obeyed.

At some point, brand management begins to resemble border control.

BRAND MANAGER: Purpose of visit?

DESIGNER: LinkedIn post.

BRAND MANAGER: How long will you be staying?

DESIGNER: About three days.

BRAND MANAGER: I see you’ve used an unapproved secondary colour.

DESIGNER: It’s just slightly lighter.

BRAND MANAGER: Step aside, please.

And this is where a perfectly sensible idea begins to go wrong.

Because consistency slowly becomes confused with sameness.

Suddenly every social post uses the same template.

Every advert follows the same layout.

Every photograph has the same carefully approved treatment.

And everyone becomes slightly terrified of creating anything without first checking page 74 of the brand guidelines.

Brand guidelines, incidentally, have become fascinating documents.

They often begin innocently enough.

Here’s the logo.

Here are the colours.

Here are the fonts.

Perfectly reasonable.

Then they grow.

Logo exclusion zones.

Secondary palettes.

Typography hierarchy.

Tone-of-voice frameworks.

Social media templates.

Environmental applications.

Eventually you’re reading page 137 entitled:

“Correct Logo Placement on Reusable Water Bottles.”

And you begin wondering whether perhaps we’ve lost perspective.

There are brand guidelines longer than some novels.

Except novels occasionally contain plot development.

Brand guidelines tend to contain seventeen pages showing things you’re absolutely forbidden to do with the logo.

Do not stretch it.

Do not rotate it.

Do not recolour it.

Do not distort it.

Do not apply shadows.

Do not place it on a complicated background.

Do not leave it unattended near other logos.

At some point, you start wondering whether the logo is emotionally fragile.

And again, none of these rules are inherently wrong.

Standards matter.

Without them, brands can become chaotic remarkably quickly.

Give an organisation unrestricted access to PowerPoint for long enough and someone will discover WordArt.

History has warned us.

So yes.

We need rules.

We need structure.

We need consistency.

But rules should protect recognition.

They shouldn’t prevent creativity.

Because here’s the problem with sameness:

Eventually, people stop noticing.

The same layout.

The same imagery.

The same headlines.

Again.

And again.

And again.

Eventually your audience doesn’t consciously decide to ignore you.

Their brain simply does it automatically.

This creates an interesting paradox.

Consistency helps people recognise you.

But excessive consistency can help people ignore you.

A consistent brand has a recognisable identity.

A repetitive brand simply repeats itself.

A consistent brand has principles.

A repetitive brand has templates.

A consistent brand adapts to different situations.

A repetitive brand looks identical everywhere because somebody is frightened of what might happen otherwise.

Imagine meeting someone who behaved exactly the same way in every situation.

Same clothes.

Same tone.

Same phrases.

Same emotional response.

Every day.

Monday morning: “Fantastic to see you! We’re passionate about delivering excellence.”

Funeral: “Fantastic to see you! We’re passionate about delivering excellence.”

Being arrested: “Fantastic to see you! We’re passionate about delivering excellence.”

You wouldn’t think:

“What a wonderfully consistent personality.”

You’d slowly move away.

Because healthy identities adapt.

They respond to context.

They evolve.

But they remain recognisable.

And brands need to do exactly the same thing.

The objective isn’t to make every piece of communication identical.

It’s to make every piece of communication feel like it came from the same organisation.

Part 2: Consistency Isn’t Sameness

Consistency means there is something recognisable underneath.

A point of view.

A set of values.

A promise.

A personality.

A way of behaving.

Sameness means everything looks and sounds like the last thing.

A strong brand doesn’t need to behave identically in every situation.

It needs to remain recognisably itself.

Your website might be polished and considered.

Your LinkedIn content might be more conversational.

Your annual report might be formal.

Your customer emails might be warm and practical.

Your technical documentation might be precise.

Different contexts.

Different needs.

Different expressions.

But underneath them all…

the same organisation.

Businesses frequently become terrified of variation.

Someone creates something slightly different and immediately:

“Is that on-brand?”

This is one of those questions that can be extremely useful or bring an entire creative department to a halt.

Because sometimes what people really mean by “Is that on-brand?” is:

“Have we done something exactly like this before?”

And those are very different questions.

If the answer always has to be yes, your brand can never evolve.

There is a particular type of meeting where somebody says:

“It doesn’t feel very us.”

This is a dangerous phrase.

Because nobody can quite explain what it means.

Everyone stares at the design.

Heads tilt.

“I’m just not sure it’s us.”

What would make it more us?

“I’m not sure.”

Excellent.

We have entered the realm of Brand Feelings.

Usually, after twenty minutes, someone suggests making the logo bigger.

Order is restored.

But underneath that slightly absurd conversation is a legitimate issue.

Strong brands do have a recognisable feel.

The problem is that this shouldn’t come simply from repeating the same visual devices.

It comes from something deeper.

The brand needs a clear idea of who it is.

What it believes.

How it communicates.

How it behaves.

What it promises customers.

Get those things right and you can allow much more freedom in how the brand expresses itself.

Because consistency comes from the thinking, not just the template.

Take tone of voice.

A brand might have a dry sense of humour.

That doesn’t mean every communication needs a joke.

A complaint response definitely doesn’t need:

“Oopsie! Looks like we’ve made a little boo-boo!”

There are moments when personality needs to understand when to leave the room.

Context matters.

A company can be friendly without being flippant.

Professional without being cold.

Confident without sounding arrogant.

Playful without behaving like a children’s television presenter during a product recall.

That’s what mature brand consistency looks like.

It flexes.

A good brand voice should make communication clearer.

It shouldn’t force customers to decode your personality before they can find the returns policy.

What should remain consistent isn’t necessarily the exact language.

It’s the underlying character.

The tone changes.

The character doesn’t.

The same principle applies visually.

Your colours matter.

Your typography matters.

Your logo matters.

But that doesn’t mean every piece of communication needs to look like it came from exactly the same template.

There should be variation.

Different compositions.

Different imagery.

Different emphasis.

The identity provides enough structure to keep everything recognisable.

Creativity does the rest.

Too much variation and the brand becomes confused.

Too much repetition and it becomes predictable.

Eventually the audience doesn’t actively dislike you.

They simply stop noticing you.

Which is arguably worse.

At least irritation requires attention.

So strong brands maintain recognisable assets while allowing their expression to adapt, respond and evolve.

Because the objective isn’t:

“Everything must look the same.”

It’s:

“Everything should feel like it came from us.”

Part 3: The Brand Guidelines Incident

Brand guidelines are useful things.

I’ve created them.

I’ve worked with them.

I’ve defended them.

And I’ve occasionally watched people stare at them with the expression of someone who’s just discovered there are apparently rules about white space.

Without some kind of framework, brands can unravel surprisingly quickly.

The logo gets stretched.

The colours start drifting.

New fonts appear.

Departments begin inventing their own PowerPoint templates.

Someone discovers gradients.

Another person decides the company needs a new strapline and quietly adds one underneath the logo.

Before long, the business has seven slightly different versions of itself circulating in public.

So guidelines matter.

They create order.

They protect recognition.

They give everyone a shared understanding of how the brand should appear and communicate.

The problem begins when the guidelines stop being a guide…

and become the law.

There’s a subtle but important difference between:

“Here’s how our brand works.”

and:

“You are not authorised to think independently.”

Imagine something important happens in your industry.

A major announcement.

A change in regulation.

A new development customers genuinely need help understanding.

Your business has expertise.

It has an opinion.

It has something useful to say.

And crucially…

it needs to say it now.

Marketing writes something.

It’s clear.

Useful.

Timely.

Perhaps even interesting.

Everything is going suspiciously well.

Then somebody asks:

“Has Brand seen it?”

Ah.

The image isn’t from the approved image library.

The headline doesn’t fit the approved social template.

Design is busy.

Legal wants to review the copy.

Sales wants to add a product paragraph.

Leadership wants to review it.

By Friday, everything is perfect.

The image is correct.

The logo has exactly the required exclusion zone.

The typography is flawless.

The wording has been reviewed by nine people.

And the conversation everyone was responding to…

ended on Tuesday.

Nobody saw the post.

Nobody shared the post.

Nobody remembers the post.

But somewhere…

a brand manager slept peacefully.

This illustrates a genuine problem.

Brand consistency can become an excuse for slowness.

Modern brands cannot always afford to be slow.

Customers ask questions now.

Conversations happen now.

Competitors respond now.

Culture moves now.

If your organisation requires seven layers of approval before it can say anything, you may be perfectly consistent.

But you’re also permanently three weeks late.

And being consistently irrelevant is probably not the objective.

This is where brand management has to distinguish between control and clarity.

Control says:

“Everything must pass through us.”

Clarity says:

“Everyone understands what good looks like.”

In the first culture, people constantly ask permission.

In the second, people can use judgement.

The best brand guidelines don’t simply tell people what to do.

They explain why.

Why does the brand sound this way?

Why do we choose this kind of imagery?

What do we want people to feel?

What should we never sound like?

What matters most?

Those principles give people something much more valuable than rules.

They give them the ability to make decisions.

Because a brand understood by fifty employees is far more resilient than a brand understood by three people who approve everything.

The purpose of guidelines shouldn’t be to prevent the unfamiliar.

It should be to help us decide whether the unfamiliar still feels right.

Not:

“Have we done this before?”

But:

“Does this still feel unmistakably like us?”

Because your brand guidelines should protect what makes you distinctive… without protecting you from ever doing anything distinctive again.

Part 4: What Should Actually Stay Consistent?

If consistency doesn’t mean making everything identical, what should remain consistent?

The things that actually define you.

Your fundamental promise.

Your values.

Your positioning.

Your character.

The way you treat customers.

And the experience people can reasonably expect from you.

These are the foundations.

They’re the things customers gradually learn about you.

“They’re reliable.”

“They’re straightforward.”

“They understand our industry.”

“They’re easy to deal with.”

That’s brand consistency at a much deeper level.

When those things remain stable, the way you express them can evolve.

Your colours may change.

Your typography may change.

Your photography can evolve.

Your website certainly will.

Your social content should.

None of that necessarily weakens the brand, provided the underlying idea remains recognisable.

This is particularly important as businesses grow.

The company you were five years ago probably isn’t the company you are today.

Your customers may have changed.

Your products may have changed.

Your markets may have expanded.

Your competitors certainly won’t have remained still.

So the brand has to move too.

The mistake is assuming that evolution somehow means abandoning consistency.

It doesn’t.

Evolution should strengthen what matters and reconsider what doesn’t.

This is where rebrands occasionally become slightly overenthusiastic.

A company announces:

“We’re evolving the brand.”

Excellent.

Six months later…

New logo.

New colours.

New typography.

New photography.

New tone of voice.

New messaging.

New positioning.

Possibly a slightly mysterious new name containing fewer vowels.

Customers look at it and say:

“Who are these people?”

The company proudly replies:

“We’re still us.”

Are you?

Because you’ve changed your name, appearance, personality and the way you speak.

At this point you’re less of a rebrand and more someone entering witness protection.

Good brand evolution shouldn’t erase recognition.

It should build on it.

So instead of asking:

“Does everything look the same?”

Ask:

“Are we consistently reinforcing what we want to be known for?”

Strong brands know which elements are sacred and which are simply habits.

They protect the first.

They challenge the second.

And they leave enough room between the two for the brand to continue evolving without forgetting who it is.

Part 5: Consistent Experience Beats Consistent Colours

This is where brand consistency becomes genuinely interesting.

Businesses often obsess over visual consistency while completely overlooking behavioural consistency.

The logo is perfect.

The fonts are correct.

The photography is beautifully art-directed.

The website has been polished until every pixel is exactly where the brand guidelines say it should be.

Then a customer phones.

Nobody answers.

They leave a message.

Nobody calls back.

They send an email.

Three days later they receive a response beginning:

“As previously stated…”

Congratulations.

The typography was flawless.

The experience was dreadful.

And which part of the brand do you think they’ll remember?

Your customer experience is part of your brand consistency.

In fact, it’s one of the most important parts.

Branding creates expectations.

Experience either confirms them…

or quietly dismantles them.

If your advertising says you’re friendly, you need to be friendly.

If your website says you’re easy to work with, you need to be easy to work with.

If you describe yourself as responsive, someone should probably answer the email.

And if your brand talks endlessly about innovation but your customer has to print a form, sign it, scan it and email it back…

we may have detected a slight inconsistency.

Nothing says:

“We’re building the future”

quite like:

“Please print this document and return it during office hours.”

Customers don’t separate brand from operations in the way businesses often do.

They simply think:

“That company was difficult to deal with.”

That’s the brand.

Customers don’t only recognise brands visually.

They recognise patterns of behaviour.

If every interaction feels helpful, straightforward and human, that becomes part of what you’re known for.

If every interaction feels complicated, slow and slightly defensive…

that becomes part of what you’re known for too.

And the second version is surprisingly difficult to fix with a new logo.

The strongest brands align what they say with what they do.

That’s real consistency.

Not merely visual repetition.

Behavioural reliability.

Trust isn’t built by telling people the same thing repeatedly.

It’s built by delivering the same standard repeatedly.

Again.

And again.

And again.

The visual identity creates recognition.

The messaging creates expectation.

But the experience provides the evidence.

And when all three line up, you don’t just have a consistent-looking brand.

You have a brand people can actually believe in.

Part 6: The Danger of Becoming Boring

There’s another danger with consistency.

Predictability.

Brands need to perform a slightly awkward balancing act.

You need to be familiar enough to be recognised…

but different enough to be noticed.

Too much change and nobody recognises you.

Too little and nobody notices you.

It’s rather like marriage.

Familiarity is reassuring.

But occasionally you should probably go somewhere other than the same garden centre on Sunday.

Brands need surprise.

Creativity.

Evolution.

New ideas.

Not random change.

Purposeful variation.

Think jazz rather than a ringtone.

There’s structure.

There’s a recognisable theme.

But there’s room for improvisation.

And that’s the balance.

The objective isn’t to make everything identical.

It’s to make everything belong together.

Part 7: Build a Brand People Understand, Not Just One They Can Police
Perhaps this is the real lesson.

If maintaining your brand requires everybody constantly consulting a 180-page PDF, you may not have created a strong brand.

You may have created an administrative system.

The strongest brands are understood instinctively by the people inside them.

Employees know:

How we talk.

What we value.

What we would do.

What we wouldn’t do.

What feels like us.

That creates something far more powerful than compliance.

Judgement.

Because you cannot write a rule for every situation.

Eventually somebody will encounter something the guidelines didn’t anticipate.

A new platform.

A new customer problem.

A cultural moment.

A new technology.

A completely unexpected opportunity.

At that point, they need to understand the principles behind the brand.

Not simply the rules.

A good brand system says:

“Here are the boundaries. Now create.”

A bad one says:

“Here are the boundaries. Please remain seated.”

And nobody ever built an interesting brand by remaining seated.

Part 8: Consistency Without Rigidity

So…

is brand consistency a myth?

Not exactly.

Consistency matters enormously.

Recognition matters.

Familiarity matters.

Trust matters.

But the myth is that consistency means sameness.

It doesn’t.

Strong brands evolve.

They respond.

They experiment.

They surprise.

They adapt to different audiences and different contexts.

But underneath all that variation, there’s something stable.

A recognisable point of view.

A clear promise.

A personality.

A set of values.

A way of behaving.

That’s what makes the brand consistent.

Not whether somebody used precisely the correct shade of blue in an Instagram Story.

Perhaps the simplest test is this:

If you removed your logo, would people still know it was you?

From the language?

The ideas?

The attitude?

The experience?

The way you behave?

If the answer is yes…

you probably have a strong brand.

If the answer is no…

making the logo 12% bigger probably isn’t going to solve it.

 

Thank you for joining me for this episode of The Overthinker’s Guide to Modern Marketing.

Until next time…

Stay curious.

Keep questioning.

And remember:

Consistency should make your brand recognisable.

It shouldn’t make it predictable.

Protect what makes you distinctive.

Keep the promises that matter.

Give customers an experience they can rely on.

But leave enough room to evolve.

Experiment.

Occasionally surprise people.

Because strong brands aren’t frozen in time.

They’re recognisably themselves…

while constantly becoming something slightly better.

And if your brand guidelines currently require written approval before somebody can move the logo three millimetres to the left… perhaps don’t tell the Brand Manager I sent you.

The Overthinker’s Guide to Modern Marketing is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Audible, and most places where people go to think slightly more deeply while quietly wondering whether anyone would notice if we used Pantone 294 C instead.