Brands express themselves in colors, typeface fonts, photo imagery, voice, and they have a "mood" and a set of characteristics that reflect their personality. Brand guides help to centralize all this information and make it "turnkey-simple" for your company to reproduce and speak for your brand in a way that delivers a consistent experience to your customers and prospects. If you are looking for Brand Guide inspiration, grab a cup of coffee and check out these graphically inviting links to brand guides of every kind.
I love this visually enticing HubSpot blog post about brand guides. The post displays 22 brand guides that would inspire any Marketing Manager. If you've got a brand guide that you've been meaning to update, you'll be inspired because we've also included some other creative and instructive resources that you can easily adapt to what you are using currently.
Brand Guides ultimately communicate to your prospects and customers about what is important to you. This Manifesto below, by Momu Homes in Perth, Australia, is a creative way of telling consumers what their brand is about. I don't know if it's in their brand guide, but it says alot about what is important to them. They've figured out a fun way to tell customers and prospects how the brand is expressed through employees. Part of having a brand guide is knowing how to articulate what it means internally to your employees too.
I won't mention names, but we have brand guides that approach 80-100 pages for large Builder brands (and yes, our team reads them). It's a critically important piece of Marketing infrastructure that informs employees, stakeholders and partners so that the Builder brand is experienced consistently by homebuying prospects as they engage along their journey to purchase a new home.
However, if you are a regional or mid-size builder, you may not need an 80 page document. You can actually get exactly what you need in 6-10 pages. I like this brand guide from Scrimshaw coffee. They've really nailed the core pieces of information with clarity and simplicity. It's a pretty easy format to mimic if you are looking for motivation to get started.
If you (like many of us), get writer's block when you start any project involving written communication, you will love this article about what goes into creating a brand guide.
New Home Builder Marketing is unique in that Builder firms are intentionally decentralized in order to stay close to their regional and local markets. The Brand Guide is a cohesive set of instructions that helps the whole enterprise synchronize with a consistent brand message that resonates across all markets.
Builder Promotions is a nationwide builder solution, helping to deliver brand consistency to marketing products that are used to support the new homebuyer journey. The team at Builder Promotions lives, eats and breathes brand style guidelines that apply to outdoor merchandising, sales center supplies, customer and realtor gifts, signing products and welcome home packages, on behalf of Builders nationwide. We think that's why more New Home Builders are consolidating their marketing spend through our builder-centric platform.
Do you have a favorite resource for brand guide development? Please share on our Facebook page. We'd love to hear from you. Thanks for stopping by! See you soon.
Cheers!
Leslie Bridges, Chief Blogger
Pssst.....Coming soon look for our interview with Builder Funnel's, Spencer Powell. Our interview with Spencer will reveal the ultimate Grand Opening checklist. Spencer consolidates and simplifies all things New Home Community Grand Openings into a convenient checklist to help you get ready for yours.
