What do you do if your brand strategy lacks cohesion across different platforms?

Inconsistent brand experiences across platforms create dissonance. 2 quick tips to help you achieve brand cohesion across platforms: 1. Craft a Brand Bible: Your style guide (not the holy kind ) ensures consistent messaging, visuals, and voice across the board. 2. Develop overarching brand themes that transcend platforms. These themes become the threads that weave together a cohesive narrative for your audience.

Audit Existing Content: Review all current content across platforms to identify inconsistencies. Define Brand Guidelines: Establish comprehensive brand guidelines that cover tone, style, visuals, and messaging. Unified Strategy: Develop a cohesive strategy that ensures consistent messaging and visuals across all channels. Centralize Content Creation: Use a centralized content creation and approval process to maintain uniformity. Training: Train all team members on the brand guidelines and the importance of consistency. Regular Reviews: Conduct regular audits to ensure ongoing adherence to the brand guidelines. Feedback Loop: Gather feedback from your audience and team to identify and correct inconsistencies.

If your brand strategy lacks cohesion across different platforms, start by conducting a comprehensive audit to identify inconsistencies in messaging, visuals, and tone. Develop a unified brand guide that outlines key messaging, visual elements, and tone of voice to ensure consistency. Implement cross-platform coordination to align all teams and channels with the updated guidelines. Regularly review and adjust your strategy based on performance metrics and feedback to maintain cohesion and reinforce a strong, consistent brand identity.

Throughout my career, I've conducted diverse audits, each with its own unique focus. Whether examining competitors or scrutinising brand differences across social, physical, visual, and messaging channels, my method remains consistent. I begin by defining audit objectives and identifying the target audience of my report. From there, I develop a framework—starting with initial channel observations, potentially followed by in-depth data analysis, and concluding with actionable recommendations. Some audits are surface-level without metrics, while others involve thorough data analysis. Each audit ends with deliverables like summaries, key points, action steps, and timelines.

You tend to see inconsistencies across messaging across multiple customer touch-points as a business and brand evolves. It is important that you don’t lose the core essence of your brand and your why. So in Apple’s case their why is ‘think different’ and their what is: ‘computers, phones, earphones, tablets, watches etc) and you’ll see across all their brand comms, brand identity and brand visuals their ‘why’ shines through. It works because it is underpinned by Global Brand Strategy that gives them a clear advantage and a Point of Difference (PoV) in the market within their niche. 💜

What can also be useful is to circle back to your stakeholder map and evaluate the behavioral shift. Perhaps not all messages are in tune with the specific audiences you are targeting or need to be adjusted. Stick to the overall strategy, test and re-introduce.

Once you've pinpointed inconsistencies, revisit your core message. In my view, this is the heart of your brand. Make sure it's clear and resonates everywhere. If it's not, refine it. Sometimes, tweaking taglines or marketing materials can make a big difference in clarity and consistency.

Start with basics. If your brand strategy lacks cohesion across different platforms, first, ensure that your brand message is clear and consistent everywhere. Use the same logos, colors, and tone of voice across all platforms. Regularly review and adjust your content to keep everything aligned with your brand's core values and goals.

I've seen firsthand how a muddled message can confuse customers. Recently, we overhauled our entire communication strategy after realizing our social media voice didn't match our website's tone. It was eye-opening! Here's a quick tip that worked wonders for us: We created a one-page "brand bible" with our core message, key phrases, and tone guidelines. Every team member now has it pinned to their task page in the work management software, their desks, and the company chat group. It's amazing how this simple tool boosted our consistency.

Visual elements are often what people notice first. Ensure your logo, colors, and fonts are consistent. Honestly, updating your visual style guide might be necessary. Consistency here makes your brand instantly recognizable, no matter where customers encounter it.

9/10 it's an execution problem, and that's generally because people are thrown in with a glorified branding guidelines document which can be nuanced, and confusing to someone who isn't in the know. Small details like formatting, hierarchy, image selection, and colour pairing can change the whole vibe of the visual execution. Get this wrong and it can completely shift the perception. It's important to make sure there are clear rulings and someone is in charge of managing the creative, ensuring it aligns with the core message of the comms. Alongside a written document, try having a video version that steps out explanations in a different way for different learners. And, have templates set up that people can simply replicate and drop and drag.

Agreed 100%. Consistent engagement helps build trust and reliability, making your brand more recognizable and memorable. It fosters a stronger connection with your audience, as they know what to expect from your brand. Uniformity across platforms also enhances your brand's professionalism and credibility, ultimately driving better customer loyalty and retention.

Consistent engagement across platforms is vital. This means not just regular posting but maintaining a uniform tone and style. In my opinion, this helps build a strong, cohesive brand identity that your audience can trust and relate to.

Having everyone on the same page mitigates the problem of conflicting messages that cause time, effort and often misunderstandings. Create a schedule to plan and coordinate all posts across all platforms, so your message and look are always aligned, whoever creates them. Also, write simple rules for each platform to keep your brand's key elements consistent while tailoring content to fit how each platform works best.

Internal alignment is as important as external cohesion. Make sure your team understands the brand strategy and how to implement it. Regular training and communication can keep everyone on the same page, ensuring a unified front.

Make sure your whole team understands the brand strategy by aligning internally. Start with a clear and concise brand guide that everyone can access. Regularly train team members across departments, ensuring they grasp the core brand values and their roles in maintaining consistency. Set up frequent check-ins and feedback loops to address any misalignment quickly. This cohesive approach leads to a unified brand presence, improving customer perception and driving business growth. Think of it as syncing all instruments in an orchestra to play a harmonious piece.

Brand isn't a set-and-forget, it's an ongoing evolution and should be treated that way. With the constant changes in society and how people think, act, and behave, having your finger on the pulse isn't a nice to have, it's a must. Be aware of consumer trends, biases, and societal narratives, for the overarching messages. Research and be weary of technological changes, so you can innovate and adapt should situations change, giving you the ability to pivot seamlessly because it's been factored in. Most importantly, know the empathy gap, and how environmental factors influence buying behaviour, and work in strategies that flow with this.

Remember, your brand strategy should evolve with your business. However, any changes must be strategic and cohesive across all platforms. Planning updates in phases or a significant relaunch can help maintain this cohesion.