Brochures

The Brand Consistency discussion – a case for brand guidelines

Brand guidelines are put in place by brand creators in order to make the representation of the brand in almost every instant as accurate and consistent as possible.

However, as trends emerge and technology induces some subtle and some not – changes in the way communication is handled, the question of whether the brand guidelines are safe guarding the brand or simply making it dreary begins to surface – a lot.

The purpose of brand guidelines is to ensure:

  1. Brand visibility
  • Increased brand visibility needs to go hand in hand with a standards measure stick that prevents the erosion of said brand.
  1. Brand awareness
  • Unfortunately, many Companies do not view their brand as an asset. If they did, they would invest time and money in its development and maintenance as they do on the physical assets.
  • As a result, of Companies not taking their brands seriously, there is a deficit in public awareness that would otherwise not be there if it was structured into their marketing planning.
  1. Brand preference
  • With a high level of brand awareness, trust and top level information is generated in the mind of a customer and this affects choice and preference levels.
  • This is dependent on the product/ service meeting the needs of the customer or meeting its quality and value balance as per the brand promise.
  1. Brand advocacy
  • This is the ideal goal. The point at which the brand sells itself with minimum effort from your marketing and sales campaigns.
  • This is the point at which your brand is so well known, people automatically pick it off the shelves.

Takeaway:

Target audiences are drawn to consistency, so though using the same elements time and time again may seem dull to directors and internal stakeholders, it will ultimately help identify your brand more quickly and hopefully start building an emotional attachment to your company.

Small changes to the brand look and feel must be made deliberately and not on a whim with considerations that these changes will need to be factored into the brand on the long term.

Africa Trade Corporation Corporate Profile

When Africa Trade Corporation (ATC) approached us to develop a brochure for them, we were very excited because we have not designed a brochure for a security products provider before.

This is always interesting for a design firm as it presents an opportunity to do design work without any  skews from previous experience – the design is inspired completely from and of itself.

Speaking of inspiration, we spent hours looking at ATC’s products, attempting to establish what made these products unique and how we could show potential buyers this.

One thing that became very apparent early on was that ATC deals in quality products only. There are no poor quality products stocked by them and everything sold by ATC comes with a guarantee.

That is unique in Kenya and perhaps in East Africa – a supplier who offers you a guarantee with products? We had not heard of it before.

With that unique selling point backed by solid, quality products, we had to develop a brochure that reflected as much.

So we embarked on designing a brochure that was not squeezed and allowed the products to stand out, in their environment and on their own. We backed these powerful images up with copy that described how the products have been used all over the world. The copy also briefly covered why the products were the best in their class.

Check out the result below:

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AgMark Company Profile and Brochure

AKSENT designed a profile for AgMark that allowed AgMark to showcase its work throughout Africa in the agricultural space and also highlights to potential partners areas that they can partner with AgMark to further boost farmer incomes.

The profile was designed to communicate to the above audience as well as partners in the same space to expose opportunities for synergy as well as the farmers themselves so that they can quickly see what AgMark can do for them.

We worked with a consultant who was hired by AgMark to roll out its corporate brochure and website right here in Nairobi, Kenya.

See the corporate profile below.

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