Twice a year we organize a Brand VIP Event at a beautiful location somewhere in the Netherlands. An event where we invite all customer teams to listen to interesting speakers, to interact with colleagues Brand Portal owners and to enjoy a delicious meal together. In this way, we help our customer teams to optimize their Brand Portal, and we help with strategic thinking on topics such as Brand Portal implementation and corporate identity monitoring.
The theme of the last edition of the event was: managing your brand and corporate identity. A corporate identity gives your organization a character, something that distinguishes you from the competition and with which you show the outside world who you are. This makes it very important to ensure that the corporate identity is implemented consistently by all employees of the organization. This way you prevent incorrect use of the corporate identity or the brand.
Managing the corporate identity in a large organization and building a strong brand
We discussed the complexity of managing a corporate identity in a large organization with different departments, and how strong brands can be the basis of connection and progress. How do you optimally use your brand to create a community that helps you achieve your goals?
Of course, we did not do this alone. Especially for this occasion we have asked speakers from the field to share their experiences with us: Maren Wiersma and Milou Kempers. Maren is a senior adviser on Rijkshuisstijl and senior image adviser at the Ministry of General Affairs. Milou is a designer and brand strategist at Morskieft Designers. Both experts in their field. Maren is responsible for the corporate identity in all departments of the national government (and there are quite a few) and Milou is an expert in the field of branding and design. They both gave a great presentation, with a lot of interesting but also useful information for the customer teams. To put all the information from their presentations in this article would be at bit too much. But don't worry, because for everyone who couldn't be there, we made a top 3 of the takeaways from both presentations.
Takeaways Maren | central government
Maren told us that managing a corporate identity in a large organization with many different departments, each with their own identity, can sometimes be quite a challenge.
These are her takeaways:
Give space in applying the corporate identity. Assess whether the cohesion of the elements radiate the right brand values, guard the brand not a corporate identity.
Keep moving within the framework of your corporate identity and brand identity. Embrace innovation, and keep looking critically at your guidelines. In addition, do not focus too much on individual expressions, but look at the totality of expressions that are made.
It is important to continue to ventilate the importance of your corporate identity. It conveys your identity, ensures clarity and reliability. Be a corporate identity help desk instead of a corporate identity police.
Takeaways Milou | Morskift Designers
Milou told us all about a strong brand and how you can best use it.
Below, you can read her three takeaways:
Your brand is always a combination of communication, form, and behaviour. You can still have your visual identity in order, but only if this is really an extension of your communication and behaviour will you be able to live up to your brand experience.
Make sure you make clear choices on every part of your visual identity. This ensures that you can play with these elements in logo, colour, shape, typography, and image to optimally use them on every medium and channel.
Be bold! Sometimes dare to make the exciting choice. As a brand, you want to stand out (appropriately) and stand out. That only works if you dare to go for an unconventional choice. If nobody hates it, nobody really loves it. And those lovers, are your brand ambassadors!
Maren and Milou's tips are very valuable for every communication department and can help you a long way. However, it can sometimes be quite a job to keep everything running smoothly. Tired of playing corporate identity police and want to get the most out of your brand? We can help you with that. Schedule a meeting with one of our specialists and discover what a Brand Portal can do for you.