What if, one day, your agency became unreliable or too expensive? Or what if you acquired the resources to bring branding in-house? Would you be ready to take charge of your firm’s brand? Would you understand it well enough to lead the transition to a new agency?
Brand Self-Sufficiency Checklist
There’s no reason you can’t know your brand better than anyone. To help you unleash your inner brand expert, we’ve put together a little checklist. But be warned: it assumes you have both a brand strategy and brand guidelines. If your agency didn’t provide you with either, consider getting them done. If you do have these foundational documents, make sure you’ve got the following bases covered:
Strategy
- Ensure all employees are educated on the big ideas that drive your brand strategy: purpose, promise, position and personality
- Ensure your brand strategy is extremely clear on your personality, the style that drives everything you do
Systems
- Have pre-approved ‘about us’ copy at roughly 150, 50 and 25 words, so it’s easy to send clients or press information in your brand voice
- Ensure you have access to any templates your agency used to create stationery or ads
- Have an archive for all brand assets, things like logos, hero images, print fonts, web fonts etc.
Consistency
- Know the major dos and don’ts of your brand’s visual identity, messaging and voice
- Deputize a brand cop to educate others, enforce guidelines and manage brand assets
- Have access to your colour formulas and Pantone chips to QA colour reproduction
- Ensure you have a clear file naming convention for all your brand assets, so they are easy to find
You Know You’re Up to It
A good brand is much more than a logo. It’s a strategy, a story, a visual system and a face-to-face experience. Knowing how to manage each element can unshackle you from agency dependency and make you a self-sufficient brand leader within your organization.