Brand consistency is the ability of a brand to market itself in a way that is consistent with its identity, values, and overall strategy.
For businesses, brand consistency focuses on building consumer trust and loyalty via messages that are always in alignment with their identity and values.
When this is maintained over a period of time, brand consistency leads to brand recognition and competitive advantage.
Brand consistency does not discriminate on the nature of marketing messages so long as some aspects of the message are recurrent.
This may include the tone of voice, certain graphical elements, slogans, or the consistent application of a brand’s values to real-world situations.
To better understand this concept, we have included some examples of brand consistency in the following sections.
Netflix is a subscription-based business model making money with three simple plans: basic, standard, and premium, giving access to stream series, movies, and shows. Leveraging on a streaming platform, Netflix generated over $29.6 billion in 2021, with an operating income of over $6 billion and a net income of over $5 billion.
Netflix promotes its brand across multiple channels with quotes from famous movies and television shows in a way that is fun, energetic, and sometimes even self-deprecating.
The Netflix brand has managed to stay remarkably consistent as the company has transformed from a mail-order DVD rental service to a video streaming platform and now a movie and television show producer.
Consumers trust Netflix because it continues to deliver quality content in a dynamic and extremely competitive industry.
Starbucks follows a matrix organizational structure with a combination of vertical and horizontal structures. It is characterized by multiple, overlapping chains of command and divisions.
Starbucks achieves remarkable brand consistency despite operating almost 33,000 stores around the world. After suffering a sales slump in 2011, decision-makers instituted some major changes to the company’s logo.
Perhaps counterintuitively, the words “Starbucks” and “Coffee” were removed from the logo. This move coincided with a new line of Starbucks merchandise such as coffee mugs and shirts.
Both initiatives showed consumers that the company had a clear intention to offer a wider range of non-coffee-based products.
It also showed that Starbucks had enough confidence in its brand that the famous Starbucks Siren could easily be recognized on her own.
The simplified logo which appeared on all company products increased the brand’s visual identity and made it stronger as a result.
With a consistent brand and access to a larger target audience, the company’s stock price tripled in the months after the rebranding was launched.
Heineken
Dutch brewing company Heineken is notable for its event-based marketing campaigns characterized by high production value.
These campaigns tend to target younger consumers with a busy social life using sports, music, and innovative graphics that reinforce the brand’s green color palette and a distinctive red star.
When founder Gerard Heineken brewed the first Heineken beer in 1873, he established a commitment to quality that persists almost 150 years later.
This level of consistency means consumers know what to expect when they purchase Heineken products.
Heineken himself also realized early on that beer was a social product and that the easiest way to make friends with a stranger was to buy them a drink.
To that end, he focused on selling the Heineken brand rather than the pilsener beer contained in each bottle.
This approach to marketing, which continues to this day, allows the company to promote universal values of friendship, social status, and a good time to a global audience of beer drinkers.
Key takeaways:
Brand consistency is the ability of a brand to market itself in a way that is consistent with its identity, values, and overall strategy.
Netflix has found a way to consistently promote its brand despite wholesale changes to its business model and the wider industry. Starbucks simplified its green and white logo to promote its coffee and non-coffee-related products. The company’s high brand equity and consistent messaging were such that the removal of two important words from the logo made its brand even more recognizable.
Dutch brand Heineken made a commitment to quality that it has honored for more than a century. Founder Gerard Heineken also realized the importance of promoting Heineken as a brand that appealed to universal consumer values such as friendship, social status, and fun.
Case Study
Brand Consistency Strategy
Description
Netflix
Consistent Messaging and Brand Evolution
Netflix has maintained brand consistency by evolving its messaging and visual identity while delivering quality content. Messaging includes quotes from famous shows to maintain a fun and energetic tone, while the visual identity was adapted as the company transformed from DVD rental to streaming.
Starbucks
Simplified Logo and Diversified Offerings
Starbucks simplified its logo by removing “Starbucks” and “Coffee,” signaling its intention to offer non-coffee products. This move increased brand recognition and confidence. The company expanded into non-coffee products, aligning with brand confidence.
Heineken
Event-Based Marketing and Universal Values
Heineken uses event-based marketing with high production value to target younger consumers. These campaigns reinforce the brand’s green palette and red star. Heineken promotes universal values like friendship, social status, and a good time to a global audience of beer drinkers.
Apple
Minimalistic Design and Seamless User Experience
Apple is known for its minimalistic product design and a seamless user experience across its ecosystem. This consistency in design and user interface creates a strong brand image of simplicity and quality.
Coca-Cola
Iconic Logo and Emotional Branding
Coca-Cola’s iconic red and white logo and emotionally charged advertising campaigns create brand consistency. The brand evokes feelings of happiness and nostalgia through its messaging.
Nike
Swoosh Logo and Athlete Endorsements
Nike’s Swoosh logo is instantly recognizable and consistent across its products. The brand leverages athlete endorsements to reinforce its association with sports excellence and performance.
McDonald’s
Golden Arches and Standardized Menu
McDonald’s golden arches and a standardized menu worldwide create a consistent brand experience. Customers know what to expect in terms of food and branding when they visit a McDonald’s.
Amazon
Customer-Centric Approach and Prime Membership
Amazon’s brand consistency is built on a customer-centric approach and the value of Prime membership. It consistently focuses on fast shipping, a wide product selection, and convenience, reinforcing its brand promise.
Disney
Timeless Characters and Family-Friendly Entertainment
Disney’s brand consistency is based on timeless characters like Mickey Mouse and a commitment to family-friendly entertainment. The brand appeals to both children and adults, creating lifelong fans.
Harley-Davidson
Rebel Spirit and Unique Motorcycle Design
Harley-Davidson embraces a rebel spirit and unique motorcycle design, creating a consistent brand identity. The brand is associated with freedom, rebellion, and the open road, attracting a dedicated following.
Tesla
Innovative Technology and Electric Vehicles
Tesla’s brand consistency revolves around innovative technology and electric vehicles. The brand is known for pushing boundaries in the automotive industry and delivering sustainable transportation solutions.
Red Bull
Extreme Sports Sponsorships and Energy Boost
Red Bull consistently sponsors extreme sports events and athletes, reinforcing its association with energy and adventure. The brand’s messaging aligns with providing an energy boost to consumers.
Google
Clean Design and Search Dominance
Google’s clean and simple design is consistent across its products. The brand’s dominance in online search reinforces its reliability and trustworthiness. Google’s search engine has become synonymous with internet searches.
Lego
Interlocking Bricks and Creative Play
Lego’s brand consistency is built on interlocking bricks and creative play. The brand encourages imagination, learning, and creativity through its products, appealing to children and adults alike.
Adidas
Three Stripes Logo and Sports Performance
Adidas’s iconic three stripes logo and emphasis on sports performance create brand consistency. The brand is known for its athletic footwear and apparel, targeting athletes and fitness enthusiasts.
IKEA
Scandinavian Design and Affordable Furniture
IKEA’s brand consistency is based on Scandinavian design principles and affordable furniture. The brand offers functional and stylish home furnishings at competitive prices, resonating with a wide audience.
Dove
Real Beauty Campaign and Inclusivity
Dove’s brand consistency is built around the “Real Beauty” campaign and a commitment to inclusivity. The brand promotes self-esteem and celebrates diverse beauty, challenging traditional beauty standards.
BMW
Luxury and Precision Engineering
BMW’s brand consistency revolves around luxury and precision engineering. The brand is known for its high-performance vehicles and a commitment to driving excellence, appealing to car enthusiasts.
GoPro
Action Cameras and Adventure Lifestyle
GoPro’s brand consistency is centered on action cameras and the adventure lifestyle. The brand empowers users to capture and share their exciting experiences, reinforcing its association with adventure and adrenaline.
Zara
Fast Fashion and Trendy Collections
Zara’s brand consistency is based on fast fashion and trendy collections. The brand rapidly adapts to fashion trends, offering affordable and stylish clothing options. Zara’s quick turnaround keeps customers engaged.
Account-based marketing (ABM) is a strategy where the marketing and sales departments come together to create personalized buying experiences for high-value accounts. Account-based marketing is a business-to-business (B2B) approach in which marketing and sales teams work together to target high-value accounts and turn them into customers.
Ad Ops – also known as Digital Ad Operations – refers to systems and processes that support digital advertisements’ delivery and management. The concept describes any process that helps a marketing team manage, run, or optimize ad campaigns, making them an integrating part of the business operations.
Venture capitalist, Dave McClure, coined the acronym AARRR which is a simplified model that enables to understand what metrics and channels to look at, at each stage for the users’ path toward becoming customers and referrers of a brand.
Affinity marketing involves a partnership between two or more businesses to sell more products. Note that this is a mutually beneficial arrangement where one brand can extend its reach and enhance its credibility in association with the other.
As the name suggests, ambush marketing raises awareness for brands at events in a covert and unexpected fashion. Ambush marketing takes many forms, one common element, the brand advertising their products or services has not paid for the right to do so. Thus, the business doing the ambushing attempts to capitalize on the efforts made by the business sponsoring the event.
Affiliate marketing describes the process whereby an affiliate earns a commission for selling the products of another person or company. Here, the affiliate is simply an individual who is motivated to promote a particular product through incentivization. The business whose product is being promoted will gain in terms of sales and marketing from affiliates.
The bullseye framework is a simple method that enables you to prioritize the marketing channels that will make your company gain traction. The main logic of the bullseye framework is to find the marketing channels that work and prioritize them.
Brand building is the set of activities that help companies to build an identity that can be recognized by its audience. Thus, it works as a mechanism of identification through core values that signal trust and that help build long-term relationships between the brand and its key stakeholders.
According to inbound marketing platform HubSpot, brand dilution occurs “when a company’s brand equity diminishes due to an unsuccessful brand extension, which is a new product the company develops in an industry that they don’t have any market share in.” Brand dilution, therefore, occurs when a brand decreases in value after the company releases a product that does not align with its vision, mission, or skillset.
The brand essence wheel is a templated approach businesses can use to better understand their brand. The brand essence wheel has obvious implications for external brand strategy. However, it is equally important in simplifying brand strategy for employees without a strong marketing background. Although many variations of the brand essence wheel exist, a comprehensive wheel incorporates information from five categories: attributes, benefits, values, personality, brand essence.
The brand equity is the premium that a customer is willing to pay for a product that has all the objective characteristics of existing alternatives, thus, making it different in terms of perception. The premium on seemingly equal products and quality is attributable to its brand equity.
Brand positioning is about creating a mental real estate in the mind of the target market. If successful, brand positioning allows a business to gain a competitive advantage. And it also works as a switching cost in favor of the brand. Consumers recognizing a brand might be less prone to switch to another brand.
Business storytelling is a critical part of developing a business model. Indeed, the way you frame the story of your organization will influence its brand in the long-term. That’s because your brand story is tied to your brand identity, and it enables people to identify with a company.
Content marketing is one of the most powerful commercial activities which focuses on leveraging content production (text, audio, video, or other formats) to attract a targeted audience. Content marketing focuses on building a strong brand, but also to convert part of that targeted audience into potential customers.
One of the first mentions of customer lifetime value was in the 1988 book Database Marketing: Strategy and Implementation written by Robert Shaw and Merlin Stone. Customer lifetime value (CLV) represents the value of a customer to a company over a period of time. It represents a critical business metric, especially for SaaS or recurring revenue-based businesses.
Customer segmentation is a marketing method that divides the customers in sub-groups, that share similar characteristics. Thus, product, marketing and engineering teams can center the strategy from go-to-market to product development and communication around each sub-group. Customer segments can be broken down is several ways, such as demographics, geography, psychographics and more.
Developer marketing encompasses tactics designed to grow awareness and adopt software tools, solutions, and SaaS platforms. Developer marketing has become the standard among software companies with a platform component, where developers can build applications on top of the core software or open software. Therefore, engaging developer communities has become a key element of marketing for many digital businesses.
A digital channel is a marketing channel, part of a distribution strategy, helping an organization to reach its potential customers via electronic means. There are several digital marketing channels, usually divided into organic and paid channels. Some organic channels are SEO, SMO, email marketing. And some paid channels comprise SEM, SMM, and display advertising.
Field marketing is a general term that encompasses face-to-face marketing activities carried out in the field. These activities may include street promotions, conferences, sales, and various forms of experiential marketing. Field marketing, therefore, refers to any marketing activity that is performed in the field.
interaction with a brand until they become a paid customer and beyond.
Funnel marketing is modeled after the marketing funnel, a concept that tells the company how it should market to consumers based on their position in the funnel itself. The notion of a customer embarking on a journey when interacting with a brand was first proposed by Elias St. Elmo Lewis in 1898.
Funnel marketing typically considers three stages of a non-linear marketing funnel. These are top of the funnel (TOFU), middle of the funnel (MOFU), and bottom of the funnel (BOFU). Particular marketing strategies at each stage are adapted to the level of familiarity the consumer has with a brand.
A go-to-market strategy represents how companies market their new products to reach target customers in a scalable and repeatable way. It starts with how new products/services get developed to how these organizations target potential customers (via sales and marketing models) to enable their value proposition to be delivered to create a competitive advantage.
The term “greenwashing” was first coined by environmentalist Jay Westerveld in 1986 at a time when most consumers received their news from television, radio, and print media. Some companies took advantage of limited public access to information by portraying themselves as environmental stewards – even when their actions proved otherwise. Greenwashing is a deceptive marketing practice where a company makes unsubstantiated claims about an environmentally-friendly product or service.
Grassroots marketing involves a brand creating highly targeted content for a particular niche or audience. When an organization engages in grassroots marketing, it focuses on a small group of people with the hope that its marketing message is shared with a progressively larger audience.
Growth marketing is a process of rapid experimentation, which in a way has to be “scientific” by keeping in mind that it is used by startups to grow, quickly. Thus, the “scientific” here is not meant in the academic sense. Growth marketing is expected to unlock growth, quickly and with an often limited budget.
Guerrilla marketing is an advertising strategy that seeks to utilize low-cost and sometimes unconventional tactics that are high impact. First coined by Jay Conrad Levinson in his 1984 book of the same title, guerrilla marketing works best on existing customers who are familiar with a brand or product and its particular characteristics.
Hunger marketing is a marketing strategy focused on manipulating consumer emotions. By bringing products to market with an attractive price point and restricted supply, consumers have a stronger desire to make a purchase.
Integrated marketing communication (IMC) is an approach used by businesses to coordinate and brand their communication strategies. Integrated marketing communication takes separate marketing functions and combines them into one, interconnected approach with a core brand message that is consistent across various channels. These encompass owned, earned, and paid media. Integrated marketing communication has been used to great effect by companies such as Snapchat, Snickers, and Domino’s.
Inbound marketing is a marketing strategy designed to attract customers to a brand with content and experiences that they derive value from. Inbound marketing utilizes blogs, events, SEO, and social media to create brand awareness and attract targeted consumers. By attracting or “drawing in” a targeted audience, inbound marketing differs from outbound marketing which actively pushes a brand onto consumers who may have no interest in what is being offered.
Integrated marketing describes the process of delivering consistent and relevant content to a target audience across all marketing channels. It is a cohesive, unified, and immersive marketing strategy that is cost-effective and relies on brand identity and storytelling to amplify the brand to a wider and wider audience.
The marketing mix is a term to describe the multi-faceted approach to a complete and effective marketing plan. Traditionally, this plan included the four Ps of marketing: price, product, promotion, and place. But the exact makeup of a marketing mix has undergone various changes in response to new technologies and ways of thinking. Additions to the four Ps include physical evidence, people, process, and even politics.
Marketing myopia is the nearsighted focus on selling goods and services at the expense of consumer needs. Marketing myopia was coined by Harvard Business School professor Theodore Levitt in 1960. Originally, Levitt described the concept in the context of organizations in high-growth industries that become complacent in their belief that such industries never fail.
Marketing personas give businesses a general overview of key segments of their target audience and how these segments interact with their brand. Marketing personas are based on the data of an ideal, fictional customer whose characteristics, needs, and motivations are representative of a broader market segment.
Meme marketing is any marketing strategy that uses memes to promote a brand. The term “meme” itself was popularized by author Richard Dawkins over 50 years later in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene. In the book, Dawkins described how ideas evolved and were shared across different cultures. The internet has enabled this exchange to occur at an exponential rate, with the first modern memes emerging in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Microtargeting is a marketing strategy that utilizes consumer demographic data to identify the interests of a very specific group of individuals. Like most marketing strategies, the goal of microtargeting is to positively influence consumer behavior.
Multichannel marketing executes a marketing strategy across multiple platforms to reach as many consumers as possible. Here, a platform may refer to product packaging, word-of-mouth advertising, mobile apps, email, websites, or promotional events, and all the other channels that can help amplify the brand to reach as many consumers as possible.
Multi-level marketing (MLM), otherwise known as network or referral marketing, is a strategy in which businesses sell their products through person-to-person sales. When consumers join MLM programs, they act as distributors. Distributors make money by selling the product directly to other consumers. They earn a small percentage of sales from those that they recruit to do the same – often referred to as their “downline”.
The Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a measure of the ability of a product or service to attract word-of-mouth advertising. NPS is a crucial part of any marketing strategy since attracting and then retaining customers means they are more likely to recommend a business to others.
Neuromarketing information is collected by measuring brain activity related to specific brain functions using sophisticated and expensive technology such as MRI machines. Some businesses also choose to make inferences of neurological responses by analyzing biometric and heart-rate data.
Neuromarketing is the domain of large companies with similarly large budgets or subsidies. These include Frito-Lay, Google, and The Weather Channel.
Newsjacking as a marketing strategy was popularised by David Meerman Scott in his book Newsjacking: How to Inject Your Ideas into a Breaking News Story and Generate Tons of Media Coverage. Newsjacking describes the practice of aligning a brand with a current event to generate media attention and increase brand exposure.
A microniche is a subset of potential customers within a niche. In the era of dominating digital super-platforms, identifying a microniche can kick off the strategy of digital businesses to prevent competition against large platforms. As the microniche becomes a niche, then a market, scale becomes an option.
We can define pull and push marketing from the perspective of the target audience or customers. In push marketing, as the name suggests, you’re promoting a product so that consumers can see it. In a pull strategy, consumers might look for your product or service drawn by its brand.
Real-time marketing is as exactly as it sounds. It involves in-the-moment marketing to customers across any channel based on how that customer is interacting with the brand.
Relationship marketing involves businesses and their brands forming long-term relationships with customers. The focus of relationship marketing is to increase customer loyalty and engagement through high-quality products and services. It differs from short-term processes focused solely on customer acquisition and individual sales.
Reverse marketing describes any marketing strategy that encourages consumers to seek out a product or company on their own. This approach differs from a traditional marketing strategy where marketers seek out the consumer.
Remarketing involves the creation of personalized and targeted ads for consumers who have already visited a company’s website. The process works in this way: as users visit a brand’s website, they are tagged with cookies that follow the users, and as they land on advertising platforms where retargeting is an option (like social media platforms) they get served ads based on their navigation.
Sensory marketing describes any marketing campaign designed to appeal to the five human senses of touch, taste, smell, sight, and sound. Technologies such as artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and the Internet of Things (IoT) are enabling marketers to design fun, interactive, and immersive sensory marketing brand experiences. Long term, businesses must develop sensory marketing campaigns that are relevant and effective in eCommerce.
Services marketing originated as a separate field of study during the 1980s. Researchers realized that the unique characteristics of services required different marketing strategies to those used in the promotion of physical goods. Services marketing is a specialized branch of marketing that promotes the intangible benefits delivered by a company to create customer value.
Sustainable marketing describes how a business will invest in social and environmental initiatives as part of its marketing strategy. Also known as green marketing, it is often used to counteract public criticism around wastage, misleading advertising, and poor quality or unsafe products.
Word-of-mouth marketing is a marketing strategy skewed toward offering a great experience to existing customers and incentivizing them to share it with other potential customers. That is one of the most effective forms of marketing as it enables a company to gain traction based on existing customers’ referrals. When repeat customers become a key enabler for the brand this is one of the best organic and sustainable growth marketing strategies.
360 marketing is a marketing campaign that utilizes all available mediums, channels, and consumer touchpoints. 360 marketing requires the business to maintain a consistent presence across multiple online and offline channels. This ensures it does not miss potentially lucrative customer segments. By its very nature, 360 marketing describes any number of different marketing strategies. However, a broad and holistic marketing strategy should incorporate a website, SEO, PPC, email marketing, social media, public relations, in-store relations, and traditional forms of advertising such as television.
Gennaro is the creator of FourWeekMBA, which reached about four million business people, comprising C-level executives, investors, analysts, product managers, and aspiring digital entrepreneurs in 2022 alone | He is also Director of Sales for a high-tech scaleup in the AI Industry | In 2012, Gennaro earned an International MBA with emphasis on Corporate Finance and Business Strategy.
