How to maintain brand consistency when working with others in your creative business

Are you ready to start working with other people on your brand? Whether you’re collaborating with a designer, hiring an assistant, or contracting a PR consultant, it’s important to clearly communicate your brand with them so that they understand what you're about and can confidently implement things in a cohesive, consistent way.

When it comes to communicating important information about your brand, the details you share need to be accessible, understandable and up-to-date.

Accessible

First and foremost, information about your brand needs to be easy to access and all in one place. This reduces the barriers that might get in the way of someone you’re working with making sure what they’re creating is on-brand. So whenever you collaborate with or hire anyone, make sure that you send them the documentation for your brand in one easily-accessible place that they can continually refer to.

Understandable

Once someone has access to everything they need to know about your brand, it’s important that that information is easy to understand and leaves no room for error. Be clear, specific, and explicit about your brand and how it needs to be implemented (or not!)

Up-to-date

However you choose to store the information about your brand that you’ll share with others, it needs to update live so that whoever needs it knows that they’re always looking at the most up-to-date, accurate version. Keeping it all in a word document that requires you to send a new version every time will get confusing and overwhelming super quickly, and make it more likely that mistakes might be made. Instead, choose a tool or a platform that’s stored online and automatically updates the same link as you make changes or updates. And make sure to regularly check in on the info to keep things up-to-date.

Who you need to communicate your brand to

You might think that only designers need to know what your brand is all about, but keeping your brand consistent is important for anyone who creates anything for your business.

That might include:

• Graphic designers
• Copywriters
• Assistants
• Printers
• Brands
• Collaborators
• Social media managers
• PR consultants
• Managers
• Event managers

What you need to communicate about your brand

Depending on who you’re working with, what they’re doing for you, and what they need to do their job well, there are different things you’ll need to communicate about your brand, from your strategy to your identity.

Brand strategy

Almost everyone you work or collaborate with will need to know details about your brand strategy. This will give them the big picture and background information on what your brand is all about, why you do what you do, who your audience are, what goals you’re trying to achieve, and more, so that everyone can build a clear brand.

Communicating your strategy clearly makes it easier for people to create things for your business that are aligned with your vision, mission, and overall brand.

Your brand strategy could include:

• What you do
• Vision, mission, values
• Brand goals
• Who your audience are
• Your brand personality, voice & tone
• Copy guidelines
• Your brand archetype
• Messaging
• Your visibility, engagement, and retention strategies
• Collaborations you will or won’t do

Brand identity

Anybody creating anything visual for your brand, such as a social media manager, assistant, or graphic designer, will need to know details about your brand identity so that they can create things that are consistent with the rest of your visuals.

Having this clearly laid out with guidelines and examples will make sure these people know exactly what on-brand assets look like for your business, so they can keep things consistent.

Your brand guidelines could include information on your:

• Logos
• Colours
• Fonts
• Imagery guidelines

How to communicate your brand

Now you know what to communicate, now let’s talk about how to communicate it. Writing everything down in long paragraphs isn’t always the most clear or compelling way to explain things. Instead, think about what will explain or demonstrate each piece of information best.

Brand strategy

To communicate your brand strategy, you might include:

• Information
• Diagrams/frameworks
• Swipe files
• Word banks
• Dos / Don’ts

Brand guidelines

To communicate your visual branding guidelines, you could share:

• What to use
• How to use it
• How NOT to use it
• Examples
• Examples in situ
• Templates

SOPs

To communicate how to do things, you can create Standard Operating Procedures that list out step-by-step instructions for how to do things like:

• Set up templates in Canva
• Create a new opt-in
• Reply to a customer service enquiry

Where to communicate your brand

When it comes to storing the information about your brand that people need to know, don’t overcomplicate things. Use whatever tool is going work for you and make it really easy for you to communicate everything.

You could store information about your brand in a:

• Notion page
• PDF Document
• Google Doc
• Canva Document
• Web page

When it comes to creating a consistent brand experience, it’s important to set your collaborators up for success. No matter who touches your brand, it should all stay cohesive, and the key to that is communication. Having really clear instructions, guidelines and information about every single aspect of your brand will make it easy for anyone who creates anything for your business to make sure it’s on-brand, aligned, and as amazing as always.

Now you know what to communicate about your brand, how to communicate it, where to store it all, and who to share it with. Essentially, as long as you clearly explain your brand strategy, and show examples of your brand identity, you’ll help anyone you work with ensure they’re creating on-brand assets every single time.