Often times, when we thing of brand we thing of a company’s logo – and rightfully so, since the logo or “company’s signature” is what gives the company the most recognition within the brand. Nevertheless, a “brand” goes well beyond the logo and encompasses pretty much all forms of communications that any business, be it large or small, uses to interact with associates, suppliers and, most importantly, clients and customers. These include anything from business cards, to marketing campaigns and everything in between.

The most important roles of the company brand, beyond providing the firm with a unique face and personality everyone will easily recognize, are the following:

• To deliver consistent messages about what the company is all about
• To build and preserve the desired perception about the company
• To clearly convey what the company offers to its audience

In order to preserve the uniqueness of the company’s brand across the board, as well as delivering the right messages, it is necessary for any business to establish and keep brand continuity, which starts with a “Brand Foundation”.

Brand Foundation consists of a series of filters that helps ensure that everyone working and communicating on the company’s behalf does so in a way that keeps and re-enforces the brand continuity – without any personal or subjective interferences that might cause the weakening of the company’s brand and image. With this foundation in place, everyone involved in the company’s communication process will have a better understanding about the brand, as well as a series of guidelines about what the brand stands for and how it should be communicated.

According to Ted Matthews, from Instinct Brand Equity Coaches Inc., a brand foundation is comprised from the following elements:

• Core Purpose: why the company exists in the first place
• Company’s Vision: where the company is going and how it will get there
• Company’s Mission: what are the things the company does every day to achieve its vision
• Values: who the company is and what its principles are
• Position: how the company differs from its competitors and how it establishes and expresses its uniqueness
• Character: the company’s personality and attitude and its tone of voice

In the end, a well thought-out brand foundation will help a company develop and maintain a strong brand that will help achieve the desired consistency across all marketing and communication pieces – whether it’s an e-mail, a hand written note, a proposal, a billboard, or a TV commercial.

Regardless of the company size, and once the brand foundation has been established, it’s good to develop a basic list of branded material that which will ensure that the brand will be carried consistently across all types of communications initiated by the company.

Here is a basic list of marketing and communication material to get started:

Print Marketing Materials

• Folder: Cohesive way to hold all materials. Includes no specific information. Can be a simple two-pocket or a funky plastic envelope.
• General Brochure: Describes services/products in a general way; is easy to distribute.
• Product/program specific brochures, product sheets or postcards: Easy to reproduce, update and change.

Digital Marketing Materials

• Website: Looks like your print marketing materials, easy to update, keep it clean, update it often.
• E-newsletter: A cheap and efficient way to stay in contact with your public on a regular basis. Have recipients’ permission, have a professional HTML newsletter template designed and update the content each month.
• Product Demo: A digital presentation you can e-mail or mail on a DVD (like a little company movie). Staff at a sales meeting can use DVD to introduce a new product or service.

Internal Communications

• Internal Newsletter: Can be digital or photocopied or printed. Relax your standards, content includes what employees need to know and what they will enjoy knowing, give employees a forum to voice their own ideas.
• Memos: Use a template consistent with your stationery.

Printed Stationery

• Letterhead
• #10 Envelopes: These are standard envelopes for general correspondence
• Business Cards
• Forms: Invoices, donation forms, order forms
• Printed Notepads: Gives employees a way to insert a quick, informal note on something other than a napkin. Post-its with logo work well, can be used as leave-behinds.
• Fax Forms: Half sheets are fine, use photocopied forms not printed letterhead.
• Blank Cards and Envelopes (with your logo): Great for thank-you notes or reminders
• Window envelopes for Forms
• Large Envelopes: preprinted with logo and address, used to send folder
• Envelope Labels: If you use a lot of different size envelopes, these prevent you from having to preprint multiple envelopes. Preprinted with logo and address, get sheets that can go be printed or handwritten

Digital Stationery

• Letterhead Template: When e-mailing proposals and letters, Word files or PDFs can look like digital versions of your letterhead with your logo and address in the same color and location.
• E-mail Templates: You can design e-mail in most programs (Outlook, Eudora, etc.) Get everyone on the same page with font, color, and signature. Use a custom signature to include a monthly message.

We are pleased to unveil our new Web Site for 2010. After much research and a fairly steep learning curve, we decided to develop our new site utilizing WordPress as our content management system engine.

The WordPress CMS will allow us to keep our content fresh and up to date, with all the flexibility we need to expand our site as the need arises. This will also give us the pefect opportunity to showcase some of the capabilities we can offer to our clients with WordPress Powered site development.

Please stay tuned for frequent updates.

Mauricio Morales, Creative Director